Happy Dog

04/04/2025

Obedience or cooperation? 🤔

Obedience has always sat uncomfortably with me.

Doing something someone says “just because they said so” or because you fear the consequence of not doing as told or being guilt tripped into “you should do it because you love me”, will never be reason enough for me to do anything someone says I’m afraid.

Is requiring a reason rather than being forced disobedience? 🤷‍♀️

👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️My husband and I omitted the traditional “obey” section of our marriage vows.

🧒🧒My children were brought up without punishment.

🐶🐶My dogs are taught through positive reinforcement.

This does not mean that I don’t get annoyed, frustrated or angry, what it does mean is that I try to pause and rationalise my own emotions so that I am able to live and teach rationally, with understanding, compassion and mutual cooperation.

Of course I’ve got it wrong at times…I’m not super human! 🙈😂

But that is my aim…not to demand obedience but to strive for cooperation.

What’s your thoughts? Obedience or Cooperation? 💭💭💭

25/02/2025

Was talking to a client about how to help dogs chill and relax when out and about. And was reminded of this reel I did a few years ago with my dog Fern who passed away very recently 🥰…
Take the opportunity to take time out from all the rushing around and sit quietly with your dog, developing and rewarding calmness. Relax and watch the world go by together, taking in the sights and sounds (and scents…can you see my dog air scenting) while in the clip?) without any need to react and get involved in anything. Practice the skill of just “being” in the environment. “Observing” rather than “Doing” has its benefits for both you and your dog! 🐾❤️
(If your dog struggles with this try not to force it, instead keep yourself calm, notice and reward any disengagement from distractions and any relaxed body language your dog manages.… Still struggling? Drop me a message and I can help. 🫶🏻)

14/02/2025

Fern ♥️ 💔😢

08/02/2025

⚠️Got a dog reactive dog?

Try…

Replacing…

❌Tight leads
❌Lead jerks
❌Reprimands
❌Commands and demands
❌Leave it’s
❌Stop that’s
❌Being firm
❌Trying to distract

With…

✅Loose leads
✅Reducing tension
✅Promoting, facilitating and rewarding calmness
✅Rewarding choices
✅Rewarding disengagement from triggers
✅Rewarding engagement with yourself

⁉️⁉️⁉️OK….BUT HOW ON EARTH CAN I DO ALL THAT WHEN MY DOG IS GOING BATSH*T CRAZY AT THE END OF THE LEAD!!!!
I hear you shouting at me!…

…Well that’s where I come in…I can teach you the techniques to enable you and your dog to achieve all the ✅ points above to help reduce or eliminate your dog’s reactive emotional outbursts and replace them with calm, clear independent decision making to be able to make good alternative behavioural choices.

I will thoroughly explain, demonstrate, coach and support you through your journey with friendly one to one sessions, written step by step notes and follow ups so that you and your dog can enjoy your walks together with less stress and tension.😊 🐶 🐾🐾🤎🤎

🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🤎🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾 🐾

09/12/2024

A new bed for an old dog 💤💕

15/06/2024

Yes!! 100%
I don’t have a magic wand and quick fixes are not how you teach effectively.
Helping your dog learn the things you want them to learn can be a slow process but the rewards for you and your dog as you progress will be great. 🌟
Take your time, understand your dog and where they’re at and I can help you get where you want to be with them. 🐶🥰

Here's the secret to getting the most out of working with a dog trainer:

It's all about your mindset and expectations!

Dogs are not robots. I, as a trainer, cannot come into your house, teach your dog some "obedience" skill, and fix all of your problems in an hour.

Dogs are individual beings with emotions, preferences, and past learning histories.

It is all sooo much more than sit and stay. It's about looking at the problematic behaviors from a big picture lens and helping you as the pet parent to help your dog in a comprehensive way.

So, step 1: don't look at your dog's behavior as something that needs to be fixed. Change your mindset so that training involves improving the bond, understanding your dog better, and reducing stress for both of you!

Follow for more tips!

02/05/2024

I’m often asked for dog training tips when I’m out and about when people learn that I’m a dog trainer.

The truth is I would love to give you dog training tips…it’s my absolute favourite subject to talk about! But the reality is to be properly useful to you that “tip” will take about 1 - 2 hours of time. A quick 5 minute conversation where I say “Oh just do x and all your troubles will be over!” really will not be of any help to you.

You wouldn’t expect a doctor to give you a quick tip to treat a medical condition.
You wouldn’t expect a car mechanic to give you a quick tip to solve your cars mechanical problems.
You wouldn’t expect a financial advisor to give you a quick tip to solve your financial problems.

Quick tips don’t solve problems; they don’t tell you what you really need to know and have the potential to make matters worse.

But….book in with me for a dog training session, and I will go above and beyond to give you proper structured advice, with demonstrations and tuition and structured detailed written notes so that you have the very best chance of success. Nothing makes my heart sing more when I pack my client and their dog off after that first session to start their training journey armed with new knowledge and understanding and complete with big smiley faces and waggy tails!! 🥰

So don’t ask for a tip; ask for a training session! You will love it, your dog will love it and so will I! 👍❤️🐶😃

24/04/2024

Reactivity is an emotional issue not an obedience issue. So trying to get a dog to comply with obedience commands when they have a reactive emotional outburst will not address the underlying reason for the reactivity.

Facilitating calmness gives them the opportunity to be able to think instead of immediately reacting. Then we can help them realise they are able to make different behavioural choices rather than the barking lunging etc.

Reactivity happens due to a lack of being able to control a situation (in humans as well as dogs) but if we allow dogs to think for themselves we give them back a little bit of control so they don’t feel like they need to immediately launch into a reaction! 🧠⚙️

When I work with a reactive dog I want to orchestrate situations where the dog is in a mindset to think, to learn and to choose a behaviour based only on the positive outcomes they have achieved by doing so in the past. This mindset can only be created by facilitating relaxation and calmness, without stress, anxiety or tension, where reactive emotional outbursts can be replaced by conscious calm decision making.

In some cases we can facilitate this calm mindset and achieve behavioural change very quickly; much to the fascination and delight of the owners of a particular dog I was working with yesterday evening.
We achieved this within an hour and a half last night, with Bleu, a golden retriever who is prone to reactive emotional outbursts when excited and frustrated by the sight of another dog.

Meeting Bleu and his owners for a 1:1 session, I began straight away to facilitate relaxation by changing Bleu’s lead and lead handling so that he was under much less stress and tension. Then took Bleu through the foundations of focus and engagement where we reward Bleu’s choice to engage with and focus his attention on his humans. We then built on this by rewarding his choices to disengage from something he wanted and to choose to re-engage with his humans again.

Within an hour and a half Bleu was able to maintain a relaxed attitude while seeing another dog, was able to refrain from any emotional outbursts, was able to disengage his focus away from the dog and re-engage his attention and focus back with his humans again all while staying calm and relaxed throughout.

No commands, no reprimands only rewards for his own free choice to focus and engage.

A lovely session with a happy waggy tail from Bleu and happy smiley faces from his owners!!👌⭐️😃
Now let the journey of practice and progress commence! ❤️

04/04/2024

🐾 PAWTENTIAL IMPACTS ON THE COUNTRYSIDE

🪧Signs are going up all over the countryside right now asking that you walk your dogs on a lead in certain places. 🦮

This is because this is the start of a very sensitive time for wildlife and farm animals. And no matter how cute, fluffy, adorable or well behaved our dogs might be, it’s vital that we are aware of and appreciate the predatory nature of our four legged friends. Even if they have no predatory intent, they will be viewed as a predator by birds and other animals. Exposure to a perceived predator can lead to a stress response which may result for example, in lambs being aborted, deer calves becoming lost and dying, nests being abandoned by ground nesting birds, and chicks becoming lost and dying without their mothers protection.

Even if your dog has fantastic recall they could very easily disturb wildlife in the thick undergrowth without you even realising. You do not need to see your dogs chasing wildlife for them to have a detrimental impact.

The scent of an animal that has recently crossed the path that you and your dog are walking on can excite some dogs who may dash off the path into the undergrowth to investigate, which may mean that your dog will find it more difficult to respond to your recall.

Walking your dog on a lead in areas where there is a high chance of coming across livestock, or wildlife is the best way to mitigate against any of the above scenarios.

In the Badenoch and Strathspey area of Scotland where I live many of the woods where people walk their dogs are home to the rare and magnificent capercaillie, a ground nesting bird that is now “red listed”, which gives it the highest level of protection a species can receive due to its declining population. Capercaillie are incredibly sensitive to disturbance from people and their dogs and so if we want to help this species from extinction it really is vital that we make sure that if we are walking dogs in woods and see signs asking us to walk our dogs on the lead we do so.

If anyone else walks your dog for you let them know of your desire to make sure your dogs don’t have detrimental impacts on the countryside and make sure they are being responsible for your dogs and also to the local wildlife.

Let’s make sure the love and care we have for our dogs extends to the wildlife we share our dog walks with and act responsibly so we minimise our pawtential impacts. 🐾🥰

04/04/2024

The concept of clicker or marker training is sometimes best demonstrated by showing how you can teach human subjects how to do tasks. Here is one such example…

18/03/2024

I know that walking your dog on lead can be challenging, frustrating and exasperating at times! 😫😤😡

And with lambing time 🐑 and nesting time 🪺for vulnerable ground nesting birds just around the corner, those of us who live in this part of the country will probably need to keep our dogs on lead a lot more over the spring and summer months to make sure we do our bit for the countryside and conservation.

But don’t worry…the good news is, that with the help of Happy Dog’s lead walking training programmes lead walking doesn’t have to be all ☹️and no 😃!
Yay!!🥳

I have 2 different lead based training programmes on offer this year, to help make lead walks with your dog easier and more fun. Both programmes are available as 1 to 1 sessions or as group classes (class dates still to be confirmed)

⭐️ LOOSE LEAD MASTERCLASS 👨‍🎓 is a training programme that gives you and your dog the necessary skills and information to achieve your dream on-lead walk with your dog. Fun for both you and your dog, Happy Dog’s Loose Lead Masterclass will help you understand your dog and help your dog understand you. Teamwork makes the dream work! 🐶😊

⭐️ LEAD THE WAY AND HARNESS THE FUN is a training programme where you can discover ways to make walking on lead super fun for your dog, by introducing lots of activities and games that provide a mix of “do” stuff and “chill” stuff to allow your dogs to get the balanced walk they need.
(This programme is suited for dogs that already walk reasonably well on lead, and want to add a bit of spice! 🌶️)

Get in touch for more information and to book on to start your Happy Dog lead walking journey! 🐕‍🦺🐾

05/02/2024

More often than not we can change a problem into an opportunity to strengthen our relationship with our dog.

For instance this week Happy Dog was contacted by someone who’s dog had started chasing wildlife, which is indeed a problem, but through the application of the principals of Predation Substitute Training I demonstrated how we can turn this problem into an opportunity to engage more positively with our dogs, providing outlets that fulfil their predatory needs while putting boundaries in place within which they can practice some natural predatory behaviour.

By working together with your dog in such a way we are able to enjoy each others company on walks more - both dog and human become more engaged and attentive to each other, creating more harmony and a better relationship.

The dog in the photo is engaged in hunting for cheese that “grows” in and around the trunk of this tree, rather than hunting the deer scent on the ground. Just one of the many and varied predation substitute training games we can employ while walking.

This one activity won’t solve the problem, but when employed as part of a whole package, the opportunities are great and solutions plentiful!

27/11/2023

The effect of pulling and jerking on your dogs lead…
Using your lead to correct behaviour can have serious consequences for your dogs health and wellbeing. For your dogs sake learn how to teach using positive reinforcement techniques instead. 👍

Jerking Your Dogs Leash
Many dog owners use a leash jerk to stop a dog barking, try to get a dogs attention, or to try and stop a dog pulling. In fact they may jerk a lead for a variety of reasons.
The anatomy of a dogs neck is remarkably similar to our own and one can only imagine how many times a human could take a leash jerk before needing to see a specialist.
Often when leashes are je**ed dogs are seen to lip lick and head turn, they may also start blinking heavily, a sign that the leash jerk has caused the dog to feel stressed, as let’s face it leash jerks cause discomfort. Studies have shown that cause laryngeal damage, whiplash and there’s a clear correlation between leash jerks and cervical damage. I’ve also spoken to a canine massage therapist who could feel rotation in the cervical vertebrae of a dog who’d been leash je**ed. Dogs don’t always respond to pain in the way we think they should. It’s not all about yelping and vocalising. A dog with neck pain may have a low head carriage and find it difficult to give eye contact or turn around.
Leash jerks can also ruin your training by poisoning your cues. For example if the handler is asking the dog for a sit and it doesn’t comply fast enough the handler may leash jerk the dog to try and get a faster result, however to the dog the word sit now means something unpleasant is going to happen.
Leash jerking may appear to work in stop some behaviours, however it doesn’t tell the dog what we do want from them or help them feel better about a situation they may be finding aversive.

07/11/2023

If you would like to get started training your dog using positive reinforcement or are feeling a bit lost in between the clicks and treats then let me know and I can teach you what you need to know in my one to one
⭐️Introduction to Positive Reinforcement and Clicker Training session. ⭐️
Contact me to find out more.

Training your dog using positive reinforcement and a clicker/marker is far more than just clicking and throwing treats to your dog…

🐾It’s about understanding what motivates your dogs behaviour.

🐾It’s about learning to communicate what you Do want instead of what you don’t.

🐾It’s about breaking behaviour down into stages to allow your dog to be successful.

🐾It’s about accurate timing so that communication is as clear as it possibly can be.

🐾It’s about learning how to use your clicker/marker in the best way as you progress training to get the behaviour you want.

In a nutshell it’s about teaching your dog how to THINK! And I love it!!! And I think you and your dog will too!!! 🐶❤️

31/10/2023

Continuing with the Dorothy theme…
“There’s no place like home.” 🏡🪵🔥🐶👠

29/10/2023

Dorothy knew what was what! 👠🐶

11/08/2023

❤️I LOVE MY JOB!! ❤️
Love, love, love watching wee doggy brain cogs turning away 🐶🧠⚙️ while I work with a dog and then witnessing that absolutely magical moment when the lightbulb suddenly flashes on!! 💡💡💡
Job Satisfaction right there!!!!! Nothing better!!! 🥰🥰👌👌😊😊😊

10/08/2023

Love, love, love watching wee doggy brain cogs turning away 🐶🧠⚙️ while I work with a dog and then witnessing that absolutely magical moment when the lightbulb suddenly flashes on!! 💡💡💡
Job Satisfaction right there!!!!! Nothing better!!! 🥰🥰👌👌😊😊😊