Dog training advice from 8,000+ dogs trained

Lead pulling is the single most common thing owners ask us about. In over 8,000 dogs trained, we have almost never met a dog that ...

A dog that barks and lunges at other dogs on the lead is not usually an aggressive dog. It is a dog that has no way to create dist...

Door barking is a rehearsed routine. The bell goes, the dog explodes, the person appears anyway, and the dog concludes that barkin...

Separation anxiety is one of the most miserable problems to live with, for the dog and the household. It is also one of the most c...

A dog that ignores recall has usually learned that coming back ends the fun. Every time the recall means the lead goes on and the ...

Puppy biting is normal, it is not aggression, and it is also not something you have to simply endure for six months. Most of it is...

Guarding is normal dog behaviour that has become a problem in a human house. The growl is information, not defiance, and punishing...

Jumping up is a greeting that got paid. Dogs greet face to face, we are tall, and every hand that reaches down to a jumping dog co...

Most of what owners call aggression is noise. Some of it is not. Knowing the difference matters, because the wrong plan applied to...

The dog that had brilliant recall at five months and ignores you at eleven months has not been ruined. It has grown up, and adoles...

Toilet training is not a training problem, it is a management problem. Puppies do not have the bladder control to make good decisi...

A crate is either the best thing in a dog's day or a small prison, and the difference is entirely in how it is introduced. Done pr...

Noise fear is one of the few problems with a hard deadline, because bonfire night arrives whether the dog is ready or not. The wor...

Chasing is the hardest habit to break because the dog does not need you to reward it, the chase pays for itself. It is also the on...

Most owners have already tried to buy their way out of pulling before they call us. There is a drawer with three harnesses in it. ...

The long line is the most useful and most misused piece of kit in dog training. Used properly it lets a dog make choices while you...

Essex has more livestock and more deer than people think, and the lanes and fields around Harlow, Epping and the Rodings put plent...

This is the bark that follows you round the house. It happens when you sit down with a cup of tea, when you take a phone call, whe...

Owners rarely ring us on the first growl. They ring after the lunge at the postman, or the moment a visitor pulled their hand back...

A fight between two dogs who have lived together for years is frightening in a way that street reactivity is not, because there is...

Two dogs can look identical on the pavement: barking, lunging, owner hauling them past. One desperately wants to reach the other d...

A muzzle is a piece of safety kit with a public relations problem. Owners avoid them because of what people will think, and then l...

Separation anxiety advice is usually a list of principles with no timeline attached, which is useless when you have a job and a do...

Crate training a puppy is straightforward. Crate training an adult rescue that may have spent time shut in something is a differen...

The window between roughly three and sixteen weeks decides a great deal about the adult dog you end up with, and most of it happen...

Plenty of dogs arrive in their forever homes at two, three or five years old having seen almost nothing. Lockdown puppies, farm do...

Garden barking is the problem that costs owners their neighbours. It builds quietly, because the dog is unsupervised, the barking ...

Prices vary enormously, and the cheapest option is rarely the cheapest in the end, because problems that get half fixed come back ...

Board and train means your dog comes to live with us for a set period and trains every day inside a real routine. It is the fastes...

The honest answer is that it depends on what you are asking the dog to change. A young dog learning structure is a different job f...

Day one is about information, not performance. We want to see the real dog, including the behaviour you are embarrassed about, bec...

Group classes and private training are not competing products, they suit different dogs. Putting the wrong dog in the wrong format...

Training starts the day the dog arrives, whatever its age. What changes is the content, not whether you are teaching, because the ...

Dog training is unregulated in the UK, so anyone can print a card. That puts the responsibility on you to ask better questions, an...

Group classes are excellent at one job, which is teaching a dog to work while other dogs exist nearby. They are poor at another, w...

Owners ring us with a puppy at eight weeks old and one question underneath everything else: what is this going to cost me over the...

The first week sets more of the tone than any training class you take later. It is also the week most owners are running on no sle...

Dog training is unregulated in the UK. Anyone can print a card and call themselves a behaviourist tomorrow. That puts the burden o...

A large proportion of the behaviour cases we see in Essex trace back to the first eight weeks of a dog's life, before the owner ev...

Walk into any pet shop and there are forty ways to spend a hundred pounds, and roughly four of them will help. This is the kit lis...

A family protection dog is first a family dog. It lives in the house, sleeps by the sofa, is safe with your children and your visi...

Protection training is mostly obedience. The bite work is the part people picture, but it is the smallest part of the programme an...

Security work is unglamorous and repetitive, which is exactly why temperament matters more than drive. A dog that cannot switch of...

Assistance and therapy dogs are built around a person, not around a syllabus. The starting point is always the individual's daily ...

We turn people away from protection dogs regularly, and that is part of the job. A trained protection dog in the wrong home is a l...

People ask about the price of a protection dog long before they ask about the ownership, which is the wrong way round. The purchas...

These three terms get used as if they mean the same thing, and they do not. Buying the wrong one is expensive, sometimes dangerous...