Island Canine Consulting

07/01/2026

Couldn't say this better myself!! 👇🏻👇🏻

Fireworks and Pets: What Every Pet Owner Should Know 🐾

While fireworks are a fun part of many celebrations, they can be a major source of stress for our pets. Dogs and cats experience the world very differently than we do. Their hearing is far more sensitive, making the loud, unpredictable bangs and whistles overwhelming and frightening.

When pets become scared, their natural instinct is to fight, flee, or hide. Unfortunately, every year, animal shelters and veterinary clinics see an increase in lost pets after fireworks because frightened animals escape fenced yards, slip out of collars, or bolt through open doors.

Here are a few ways you can help keep your pet safe:

🐾 Keep pets indoors before fireworks begin. Even dogs that are usually comfortable outside can panic unexpectedly.

🐾 Close windows, blinds, and curtains to reduce flashing lights and muffle outside noise.

🐾 Provide background noise such as a TV, fan, or calming music to help mask the sound of fireworks.

🐾 Create a safe retreat. Allow your pet access to a quiet room, crate, or cozy hiding spot where they feel secure. Never force them out if they choose to hide.

🐾 Exercise your dog earlier in the day. A walk or play session before the fireworks can help them relax later in the evening.

🐾 Ensure identification is current. Make sure collars fit properly, ID tags are attached, and microchip information is up to date in case your pet gets loose.

🐾 Stay calm. Your pet looks to you for reassurance. Avoid punishment or forcing them to "face their fears," as this can increase anxiety.

A little preparation can make a big difference. Let's help keep our pets safe, secure, and as stress-free as possible during firework season. ❤️🐶🐱

06/22/2026

06/21/2026

🐾 The SuperBowls pattern game from Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed® program is one of the most practical tools you can add to your training toolkit. And the concept is beautifully simple.

You place several colourful bowls in a line on the floor. Then you wait. The moment your dog looks up at you, you mark it with a "yes!" and drop a treat into the next bowl. You walk the line together, bowl by bowl, and repeat the loop.

That's it. But here's what makes it so powerful 👇

🟡 The predictable pattern gives your reactive dog structure and calm in an otherwise unpredictable world.

👁️ Your dog's eye contact becomes a start button. Their way of saying "I'm ready to keep going." If they look away, the game simply pauses. No pressure. No punishment. The dog is always in control of the pace.

🐕 Because the dog controls when the game continues, this isn't just a focus exercise. It is a counterconditioning procedure with built-in choice. That combination is what makes it so effective for dogs who struggle around triggers.

You start at home with zero distractions, then gradually introduce mild stimuli nearby. A stationary bicycle, a stuffed dog, eventually the real thing. Always at a distance your dog can handle.

One small step at a time. 🐾

📥 I put together an illustrated step-by-step guide you can download, print, and keep on your fridge or share with anyone you like (and you will support my work by doing so):
👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/trainmeplease/e/546548

▶️ Watch the full explanation on YouTube:
👉 https://youtu.be/wGs394SlbNM

This post is inspired by the SuperBowls pattern game from Control Unleashed® by Leslie McDevitt. All credit to Leslie for this wonderful tool. We just love sharing it with our community. 🐶

06/15/2026

TEACHING A RECALL

Recall is less about coming when called and more about having a dog that wants to be with you.

There are lots of things you can do. Hand feeding, clicker training, playing tug or fetch, teaching collar touches and hand targeting, encouraging the dog to check in and reinforcing any desirable behaviours heavily.

Most important though is to prevent the behaviour you do not want especially something that is so self rewarding.

Have your dog on a long line attached to a harness. In a safe, fenced area the line can trail and when you want her back you either wait for her to finish running or you stand on the line when the opportunity arises and walk up it to her.

In an area where you need to keep hold of the line you will need to keep it relatively short, let it out longer when appropriate and shorten it again if necessary. This is an art form so you should practice it in the safe area so that if you are worried she will pull you over you can just let go.

Hand Feeding
Feeding her from your hand outside is a good way of getting focus on you. Start in the garden, every meal time put her food in your pocket or a food pouch, go to the garden and feed a handful at a time when she is in front of you, wanting the food. Step back, say her name excitedly, feed. Repeat. She doesn't have to do anything except step towards you and want to eat.

Two or three weeks of this and you should be able to go to the field/park and do this at meal times. No running about if she has a full tummy just go there to eat and come home again. Then when you are there for exercise, treats can be used to reinforce her for being there with you.

Clicker Training
If she is clicker trained then you can click and treat any behaviour that you like. For recall I would click & treat just a glance back at you or looking at you as she walks past. You can throw her the treat and not even need her to come right back to you for the first stages. Gradually you would shape the behaviour into the complete recall and you add the cue once she's doing it reliably and of course mostly she gets dismissed to go again.

Playing
Toys can be devalued if she has them all the time. Let her have a chew toy or two and keep the favourites for playing with together. Tug of war is a great bonding game. For the most part play outside rather than indoors because this can make a lot of difference to the attention your dog gives you when out.

Collar Touch
Teaching a collar touch just means that every time you want to give her a treat, a fuss, her dinner, let her in the garden, you take hold of her collar prior to giving her something she wants. This is actually a very powerful exercise and the result is that the dog will eventually move her neck towards your hand anytime she wants one of the aforementioned rewards.

Hand Target
Teaching a hand target is similar. It's easy to clicker train a dog to touch your hand with their nose and can be paired with the collar touch for maximum effect.

Check in
Teaching a check in and reinforcing desirable behaviours starts indoors. Set yourself a challenge. Put twenty treats in a pot on the kitchen side and every time she looks at you (not when you ask her to) give her a treat. Count the treats left at the end of the day. Next day try and beat your record. Then take it to the garden. Lower your expectations for this. And of course then eventually out and about.

Premack
One of the biggest reasons for a dog failing to recall is because there is something better on offer if they don’t come back. Premack is all about using the rewards the dog wants. Play with the dog, chase the squirrell, p*e on the tree.... what the dog wants the dog can have, if appropriate, for checking in with you first or coming when called and is a good solution for the problem of what to do when she sees another dog.

Enlist the help of some willing friends with dogs.
Arrange to meet someone with a dog who will appear at a strategic point, have your dog on her long trailing line. When she sees the dog stand on her line and the other dog will stop approaching as pre arranged. Call her back to you. She can choose to stay where she is and look at the dog in the distance or come back to you and be released to go and play. It will take a few repetitions for her to learn how to earn the reward that she wants. You will need several sessions with several different dogs and you will also need to vary the rewards. She doesn’t always get to go and play because it won’t always be appropriate, sometimes she gets food sometimes a game with you.

Your aim is for her to see a dog and return to you when off lead eventually. This gives you time to ascertain whether it would be appropriate to allow her to go and see the dog.

Distance Down
See the video 'The best way to teach stay' by KikoPup as this shows a brilliant way to teach a reliable down because the release is incorporated into the exercise so the dog will stay put if you don't release her.

Once you have added value to your attention, toys and treats I'd suggest that when you get to the field/park start tossing treats for her to catch, get a tug toy from your pocket and have a game for ten – twenty seconds, then run about and have her chase you, do some collar touches, hand targets, whatever else she likes to do with you all still on lead and with the line attached (to a harness) as well. More treats, more play, drop the lead, pick up the lead, unclip the lead, put the lead back on all whilst feeding and playing. Do this for a minute or two and finish with lead off, putting toy and treats back in your pocket and tell her “off you go”.

Whichever way she goes, you go the other way. Give her some sniff time, then start cheering and whooping and running again, get the toy and treats out again and repeat ad infinitum.

The one thing you shouldn’t do when letting your dog off lead is ask her to sit and wait and then take the lead off and let her go because she'll spend that waiting time scanning the horizon and anticipating the release.

When you get to the field or park with your dog you want her thinking “Is she going to feed me, is she going to play with me or is she going to tell me to go?” When you take off her lead you want her thinking “Is she going to feed me, is she going to play with me or is she going to tell me to go?”

Sally Bradbury

06/06/2026

This!! 100%

Yes, of course we should ask the dog! Except when we shouldn’t...

I was at the airport the other day and there was a gorgous "therapy" dog there. The man had his leash wrapped tightly around his hand and he went around from person to person, physically positioning the dog while hands groped his body. The dog looked as though he had completely shut down.

He came over to me and I simply smiled, had a short conversation, and kept my hands to myself. There was clearly no reason for me to even ask this dog.

When it comes to touching a dog, especially for "petting" purposes, I almost always prefer to let the dog ask me, rather than the other way around. This is especially true if they are unfamiliar to me, eating, chewing, sniffing, exploring, resting, sleeping, watching something interesting, or already engaged in another activity.

Asking is important, but asking is not always neutral. Sometimes the question itself creates social pressure. It asks the dog to respond to us, manage our proximity, and make a choice in a moment when they may have preferred not to be included in the interaction at all. That is why “ask the dog” should not mean interrupting whatever they are doing to offer touch.

Sometimes the more respectful question is the one we don't ask. Their body is not an open invitation just because they are nearby.

So, first: Don’t ask. Wait!

Notice what the dog is already doing. Notice whether they are awake, relaxed, and available for interaction. Notice whether they are choosing to come closer, stay nearby, orient toward you, soften, nudge, lean, or re-engage.

When there is some indication that the dog may be asking us, or is at least fully awake and engaged with us, then yes, ask before assuming. When we do ask, it needs to be an actual question, not a polite announcement before we do what we wanted to do anyway. We can ask by inviting them into our space. By turning slightly sideways instead of looming. Soft eye contact without staring. By inviting interaction without closing the distance.

The most important part is whether “no” was easy, safe, and respected.

A dog who turns away, ducks, freezes, licks their lips, goes still, moves off, exposes their belly, or simply does not re-engage has answered.

But better yet, LET THEM ASK YOU!

Dogs ask us in quiet and not so quiet ways. They come closer, sometimes guns blazing with tail wagging widely and a loose, wriggly body. They choose to stay. They make soft eye contact in conjunction with these other asks. They press into us. They nudge a hand. They lean a shoulder or hip against us. They paw our hand, they rest a chin on us give us a soft look. They return after we stop. They make the interaction mutual.

And even then, it is still a conversation, not a contract!

The dog who wanted touch thirty seconds ago may be done now. The dog who leaned in for a chest scratch may not want a hand over their head. The dog who enjoys affection on the sofa may not want it while chewing a bone.

So yes, ask the dog and never assume! But first, ask whether this is even a moment in which the dog should have to negotiate an answer.

05/30/2026

You are enjoying a quiet walk when a stranger approaches. Their dog is pulling hard on the end of a tight leash, and the owner calls out, "Is it okay if they say hi?"

You freeze. The polite, societal instinct is to say yes. But forcing dogs to meet on a leash goes against every rule of natural canine communication, and it is a primary driver of leash reactivity.

In the dog world, a polite greeting involves loose, curving approaches and sniffing from the side. A leash prevents this entirely. It forces dogs into a tense, head-on approach, staring directly at each other as they walk forward. To a dog, this is incredibly confrontational.

Worse, the leash traps them. When an animal feels stressed, their primary survival instinct is to move away. A leash removes that option. When a dog feels overwhelmed by a stranger in their face and realizes they cannot escape, their brain tells them they have only one option left to create space: a loud, defensive display of barking, lunging, or snapping. We put them in a pressure cooker, remove the release valve, and then blame the dog when they boil over.

You do not owe anyone a polite interaction at the expense of your dog's mental health.

Normalize ignoring other dogs on walks. When you see someone approaching, step off the path. Put your dog in a sit or scatter some treats in the grass, and cheerfully but firmly say, "No thank you, we do not say hi on leash." Your job is to be your dog's protector, not to please a passing stranger.

05/29/2026

"I want to get at least one litter out of her first."

I hear this constantly. An owner with a lovely, but perhaps slightly nervous, young female dog delays her spay because they want her to experience motherhood, they want a family member to have a dog just like her or they think raising puppies would be fun for the family.

It is a well-meaning sentiment, but treating canine reproduction this casually is quietly fuelling a massive behavioural and animal welfare crisis.

Breeding is not a fun weekend project; it is an incredibly complex science. When an owner decides to have "just one litter," they often do not realize that temperament is highly heritable. If a mother dog has a genetic tendency toward fear, those traits are passed directly to her puppies.

Furthermore, if those puppies do not receive structured socialization during their critical early development, their brains will literally lack the pathways required to process novel experiences. Love and good intentions cannot replace necessary neurological development.

This casual approach to reproduction is exactly why Nova Scotia is facing an animal welfare crisis. Because our province lacks strict breeding regulations, inexperienced owners are unintentionally mass-producing dogs with severely compromised nervous systems.

I see the result in my consulting business every day. I am hired to manage the severe fear, aggression, and reactivity that dogs born into these unregulated environments develop. When families realize they cannot safely manage these complex behaviours, the dog is surrendered. This is the exact pipeline crushing our local rescues and shelters.

We must stop treating canine reproduction as a casual family milestone. Leave breeding to ethical professionals who dedicate their lives to genetic screening and stable temperaments. We cannot expect rescues and shelters to keep carrying the burden of an unregulated system.

05/27/2026

"Don't worry, he's friendly!" is perhaps the most universally dreaded phrase a dog owner can hear on a quiet walk. It is almost always shouted from a distance by an owner trailing behind an off-leash dog that is rushing head-on toward your leashed dog, with absolutely no attempt made to call them back.

Society treats a dog's "friendliness" as a free pass to ignore basic safety, leash laws, and the concept of consent. But in canine communication, a dog sprinting directly into another dog's personal space is not being friendly; they are being incredibly rude and highly threatening. When your dog is on a leash, their natural instinct to flee from an overwhelming situation is physically removed. They are trapped. When an off-leash dog rushes them, it forces even the most tolerant dog to resort to loud, defensive behaviours, like barking, lunging, or snapping, simply to protect their own boundaries.

Furthermore, relying on your dog's good intentions because you do not have a solid recall is a dangerous gamble. Scientifically speaking, a 100 percent reliable recall does not exist. Dogs are living, breathing creatures with natural instincts, not programmed machines. If you cannot call your dog away from a highly motivating distraction, you do not actually have control. Your dog's desire to play does not ever override another dog's right to feel safe in their environment.

Stop using "he's friendly" as an excuse for a lack of management. If you choose to have your dog off-leash, it is your absolute responsibility to call them back and physically secure them the moment you see another dog.

If you are walking the leashed dog, you do not have to endure this rude approach. Drop the social expectation to be polite. Step completely in front of your dog to act as a physical barrier, hold your hand out, and loudly instruct the other owner to come collect their dog immediately. Your only job in that moment is to protect your dog's trust in you.

05/25/2026

05/23/2026

We're tackling house painting and yard work today. It's gorgeous out, and Poe is helping by doing absolutely nothing. Honestly, I couldn't be happier.

Right now, he's just lying in the grass watching us work. It looks like he's just resting, but he's actually doing something really valuable.

It's easy to feel guilty on weekends if we aren't constantly entertaining our dogs or throwing a ball. But simply hanging out and observing a busy environment is a crucial skill. Processing the noise of the tools, the movement, and the new smells without feeling the need to react is a healthy mental workout. It teaches dogs they don't have to be the centre of attention to be part of the family.

If you're catching up on chores this weekend, give yourself a break. Set up a comfortable spot in the yard and let your dog just supervise. If you catch them quietly watching, toss a treat or give them a calm word of praise.

What boring weekend chores does your dog like to supervise? Let me know in the comments. Bonus points if you add a photo!