Dog Only Knows - Behaviour & Training

30/06/2025

Some puppy and kitten dealers don’t care about the welfare of the animals they sell. They can make a fortune by shipping animals that have been bred in poor conditions overseas for sale here. There are laws in place for dog and cat imports, but there are loopholes that these uncaring puppy and kit...

25/06/2025

One of the most persistent myths in dog training and behaviour is the belief that if you comfort a dog when they’re frightened or even give them a treat you’ll somehow reinforce the fear causing them to become even more frightened. As if fear were a behaviour you could accidentally train into them, like jumping up or begging for food.

Let’s be absolutely clear: You cannot reinforce an emotion. You cannot reward fear with praise, comfort, or food.

Fear is not a behaviour. It’s an involuntary emotional and physiological response to a perceived threat. The dog isn’t making a conscious decision to be scared. They’re experiencing a shift in body and brain chemistry, a fight-flight-freeze response often outside of their control.

This also means: You cannot make a dog more afraid by giving it a treat when it’s scared.

What you can do is help the dog form a new emotional association:

"Scary thing happens → good stuff follows."

That’s not reinforcing fear, that’s using classical conditioning to help change the emotional response to a trigger.

In fact, treating during fearful moments can:

✔️ Reduce the intensity of the emotional response
✔️ Help the dog stay below threshold
✔️ Speed up recovery and create more neutral or even positive associations with triggers.

1. DePorter & Landsberg (2019) The concern that fear can be reinforced through comfort or food is unfounded and not supported by scientific evidence. Comforting or rewarding in a fearful moment can reduce the intensity or duration of fear.

2. Dreschel (2010) Owner behaviour plays a significant role in the emotional regulation of fearful dogs. Supportive responses, including food and physical contact do not reinforce fear but help moderate it.

3. Levine et al. (2007) In studies on noise phobia, dogs supported by their guardians recovered faster and had fewer ongoing behavioural issues than dogs left alone to “tough it out”.

What If a Dog Pretends to Be Scared for Attention? If a dog whines and glances at you when mildly unsure, that’s not the same as genuine fear. Dogs can learn behaviours that bring attention, yes but they do not "fake" fear for a reward.

Compassion is never a mistake

19/06/2025

Hot Forecast Due 🌅 Met Office Heat will build through the week. On Wednesday the highest temperatures values in the UK are expected to be around 27ºC.

Is it true that if we use cold water on heat stroke pets they will go into shock?

One of the most common things we still hear is that we can only use tepid water on a pet with heat stroke, incase they get some complications like hypothermic overshoot, peripheral vasoconstriction hindering a cooling response, and cardiogenic shock...

We have heard not to use cold water in case it causes shock... this rarely happens!

But guess what? In a recent study over 26% of dogs presented with heat stroke died, with flat faced breeds making up nearly half of heat stroke cases seen in the study.

You should:

💧Get someone to call the local veterinary practice and tell them you're going to travel down with a heat stroke patient
💧Pour, hose or if possible immerse the pet in very cold water (this should obviously be done under constant supervision, ensuring the head is fully above water and immersion should not be attempted if the animal is too large, or you are unable to do so without hurting yourself)
💧NB: If using a hose pipe, make sure it has run through until cold, as they can often contain water that is extremely hot in the tubing initially
💧Do not drape in towels and leave them in situ. Keep the cold water flowing.
💧Move to a cool, shaded area
💧Prepare to transport to vets in a cold, air conditioned car

In studies they found that:

🌅International consensus from sports medicine organisations supports treating EHS with early rapid cooling by immersing the casualty in cold water.
🌅Ice-water immersion has been shown to be highly effective in exertional heat stroke, with a zero fatality rate in large case series of younger, fit patients.
🌅Hyperthermic individuals were cooled twice as fast by Cold Water Immersion as by passive recovery.
🌅No complications occurred during the treatment of three older patients with severe heat stroke were treated with cold‐water immersion.
🌅Cold water immersion (CWI) is the preferred cooling modality in EHS guidelines and the optimal method applicable to UK Service Personnel
🌅Studies suggest using either ice-water or cold-water immersion

The best intervention is PREVENTION, but if you find yourself with an animal with heat stroke, using cold water either by pouring, hosing or ideally (if safe) immersion then this may help reduce their temperature to safe levels while you transport to a veterinary practice.

Read more below:

https://www.vetvoices.co.uk/post/cool-icy-cold-or-tepid

11/06/2025

OMG!

07/06/2025

27/05/2025

So true.

TEACH KIDS TO BE DOG FRIENDLY

I’m often asked - “How can I make my dog more child friendly?”

The question really should be - “How can I make my child more dog friendly?”

Children don’t come with an inborn ability to know how to interact with dogs. It’s up to us to teach them.

It’s surprising that there aren’t more dog bites considering how often children are seen treating dogs like stuffed toys.

If you think about it, dogs are actually amazingly tolerant and patient with us. They try their best to communicate with us, in the only way they know how, through using their body language.

A dogs attempt to show us they’re uncomfortable, scared, stressed or anxious is so often completely ignored or not understood.

As parents, I believe it should be a non-negotiable responsibility to teach our children about how to respect and behave around dogs to keep both of them safe.

Always supervise children and dogs, even if a dog seems relaxed and friendly.

Here are some links to free, on-line resources if you’re looking for more information on how to keep children and dogs safe together -

https://kidsarounddogs.co.uk/pages/free-resources

https://www.gooddoginabox.com/top-20-ways-keep-kids-and.../

https://www.familypaws.com/resources/

https://www.cooperandkids.com

https://poochparenting.net/blog/

27/05/2025

Nice short video on dog body language.

Animals speak all of the time, as spoken through their body language, but many times their messages are misunderstood or go unheard. As a result, a dog may b...

07/05/2025

27/04/2025

Difficult subject.
We often ignore very clear signals given.
We don't mean to, but sometimes our needs override taking a step back and assessing.
➡️Our insistence as a society on patting dogs we just meet
➡️Ignoring subtle signals from our own dogs
➡️Not respecting that a dog can consent to touch (just as we can).
➡️Teaching children to say "yes" to patting dogs they have just met and do not know.
➡️Patting dogs when they are resting/sleeping because they look "just so cute".
➡️Not respecting that they have the right to change their mind and that the patting and cuddling habits may have changed today...and that is OK !
➡️Completely ignoring the moving away, turning away and sometimes "wrestling" with a fidgety dog just to give them love...by patting.

In saying all this, this graphic is also very individual.
Some dogs will flatten their ears in preparation for a good pat session that they thoroughly enjoy.

Take a second look.
Adjust what you are doing if you have to.
It will only increase your bond...not diminish it.

This is handout is available through https://www.abcdogsnz.com/product-page/abc-dogs-patting-a-dog

19/04/2025

05/02/2025

I NOSE HOW YOU FEEL
One of the most incredible things about dogs is their ability to recognize and respond to our emotions, but just how do they know how we’re feeling?

They may not understand the emotion we are feeling, but their brains are wired to understand whether that emotion makes them feel safe or not.

From an evolutionary perspective; for their survival, it was and still is, important for dogs to know which humans were safe to be around and which were not.

Dogs recognize the different chemical scents we produce through our skin or breath, our facial expressions or body language and our tone of voice.

Although we’re not aware of it, we emit different scents when experiencing positive emotions compared to when we experience negative emotions. Dogs have an amazing ability to recognize these different scents.

A dog's sense of smell is incredibly powerful and far superior to ours. Dogs have +/- 300 million olfactory receptors in their nose, sometimes more depending on the breed, compared to +/- 5 to 6 million in humans. In addition to this, the part of their brain that processes scent is around 40 times bigger than ours.

Dogs also recognize our facial expressions and body language. Just like we might stay well away from or not want to interact with someone who looks really angry and be more drawn and responsive to a happy, relaxed looking person.

Tone of voice – more info on this in my previous post.

Dogs can be such a comfort to us when we need emotional support or aren’t feeling well, but some of our emotions many have a negative effect on them.

Working with or interacting with a dog when we’re feeling angry, stressed, frustrated or having a bad day is not a good idea. It’s far better to wait until we feel more relaxed and calmer.

Dogs have rich emotional lives – just as we should try to be aware of their emotions, also be aware of how our emotions may affect them.