Reset Your Aussie

Reset Your Aussie Helping owners understand and support
Australian Shepherds

Focus • Connection • Life skills

For a calmer, more easier partnership

Reset Your Aussie supports Australian Shepherd owners who are struggling with over-excitement, overwhelm, barking, or reactivity. This work isn’t about obedience or control. It’s about understanding the breed, meeting their needs, and helping Aussies learn calmer, more thoughtful responses in everyday life. Programs are offered in two streams so owners can start where their dog actually is. Founda

tions -f or over-excited Aussies,
Reactivity - for dogs who bark or lunge t

The goal is simple - a calmer dog, a clearer plan, and a better life together.

09/01/2026

If I’d been two seconds slower, they might have called Maeve reactive.

Today I took Maeve to her new vet for a happy visit.
I was working on helping her feel comfortable and calm in the waiting room.

The vet tech warned me there was a dog in the exam room that opened directly into the waiting room. I moved Maeve closer to the front door and farther away from the exam room. 

A few minutes later the door opened and two people and a dog walked out.

I was already on my feet and moving.

Maeve turned toward them and went up on her hind legs but I had the front door open before she had much chance to respond.

She gave one little woof as we went through the door.

Afterwards I thought about what probably would have happened if I’d been a couple of seconds slower.

Maeve would have barked. I suspect people watching would have thought, “That dog is reactive.” 

Maeve isn’t a reactive dog. But she is an Aussie Shepherd.
A dog had suddenly appeared through a doorway into the space she was occupying.

For generations, Aussies were bred to notice changes in their environment and alert by barking if something suddenly appeared near their herd.

There are lots of reasons dogs bark. Fear. Frustration. Excitement. Happiness. Anticipation. Alerting. Genetics. Learning.

But we have become very quick to put the reactive label on barking.

Barking is information. It tells us something is happening. It’s up to us to try to determine why. 




Understanding helps us figure out what our dog trying to tell us and how we can help them.

What does your Aussie bark at?

If you have an Aussie who barks and you’re trying to understand what’s behind it, I created a free guide called Understanding Aussie Barking.
You’ll find it through the link in my bio.

08/27/2026

Have you ever taught your Aussie something at home, then taken them somewhere else where that response seemed to disappear?

Your Aussie didn’t forget what you taught them. The whole world around them changed.

When they’re overwhelmed by that new environment, it can be much harder to use what they’ve already learned.

Aussies were bred to notice and respond to what was happening around them as they managed their herd. That awareness was incredibly useful in a working herding dog.

But it can also mean that a new environment is a much bigger challenge for our Aussie than we realize.

We’re thinking, “I’m asking you to do exactly the same thing.”
But our Aussie may be processing an entirely different picture.

Quinn struggles with this.

Before he came to us, he hadn’t had much experience simply walking calmly in different places. Most of his outings were limited to being driven to the dog park.

The first few times I took him off our farm, he was incredibly wired up.
There was so much to take in - new places, sounds, smells, movement and people.

So I didn’t expect him to take the skills he’d learned at home and perform them perfectly somewhere else. A lot of his response was spinning, whirling and twirling.

My first priority was to help him cope with those different environments.

Even now when I take him somewhere new, my goal isn’t to work with people. It’s simply to help him use his skills calmly in a new place.

Can he walk with me? Follow a familiar pattern? Notice what’s happening and still think? Turn back to me?

If he can, that’s success.

He’s gradually learning that the skills he knows at home work out here too.

So if your Aussie can do something beautifully at home but struggles somewhere else, don’t assume they’re ignoring you or being stubborn.
Remember what they were bred to do.

They notice the world.
And when the world changes, we may need to help them learn how to respond in that world too.

Learn it here. Learn it there. Learn it everywhere.




08/21/2026

People might think that because I’m a dog trainer, I spend hours every day training my Aussies.

I don’t.

Most days, what people would call “training” happens in minutes. Sometimes seconds.

I’m not particularly interested in having perfectly obedient Aussies.
Instead I want to build a partnership with my dogs that allows us to go places and do things together.

And I think that matters particularly with Australian Shepherds.

Aussies as herding dogs were bred to notice what’s happening around them and work as partners with their human.
Those traits can make them incredible dogs to live and work with.

But our modern world is a lot for them to deal with. There is so much to notice. So much movement. So much happening around them that they may feel they need to respond to.

Obedience can teach an Aussie to sit, stay or walk beside you.
But it doesn’t necessarily help them when the world becomes too much.

That’s where I think partnership matters.

Whenever Maeve and I go somewhere, I pay attention to her.

I know what she’s likely to find difficult. I know when she needs more space, when movement will help her, when she needs time to process something and when she’s capable of figuring it out herself.

She knows I’ll support her when she needs it. She knows the patterns we use when the world gets difficult. And she knows that when she makes a good choice, I’ll notice.

After 18 months together, we’ve become pretty good at reading each other.

That’s not something we built through hours of obedience training.
Instead a few seconds of connection here. A choice there. Hundreds of tiny conversations over time.

That is how our partnership has grown.

Tell me in the comments — what does your partnership with your Aussie look like?
 



08/18/2026

I’ve taken Quinn twice now to the parking lot of our local Foodland to work on his reactivity to people.

I chose it because people predictably walked from their cars to the store and back again. We could watch from a distance where Quinn could move around.

And he did really well depending on what I asked him to do.

We used the same pattern games we teach in our Games program. For those who aren’t familiar with them, we move together in simple, repetitive patterns while I count out the pattern.

Quinn could do that.
He could walk beside me on a loose leash. He could focus on me. He could even look at the people and then turn back to me.

But if I stopped and gave him a simple cue he knew very well — something like sit or down?

I got a blank stare.

I could have decided that his lack of response meant he was ignoring me. Being stubborn. Maybe even defiant.

After all, he’d just shown me that he could listen.

But if I looked a bit more closely, his behaviour was giving me more information than that.

In that environment, the familiar movement and predictability of our pattern games were something Quinn could manage. Processing a cue and responding to it wasn’t.

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t do it. In that moment, he couldn’t.

So I didn’t keep asking. I went back to what he could do and gave him more time without asking for something that wasn’t available to him yet.

And I think this is particularly important with Australian Shepherds. They are smart, responsive dogs, which makes it even easier to assume that when they don’t do something they’re choosing not to.

We are very quick to interpret our dogs’ behaviour from our human perspective. I believe we need to look at their behaviour as information they are offering from their point of view.

Sometimes the most important thing your dog tells you isn’t that they need more training.

But that they need to be in a better place emotionally and mentally to be able to respond.
 

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08/14/2026

From the time Maeve was 10 weeks old, I approached leash walking differently.

Instead of making staying close the goal, I wanted to see what would happen if I gave her enough space to move, think, and make good decisions.

Australian Shepherds aren’t bred to sit and wait for life to happen. They are bred to move through it.

For generations they worked livestock freely. If something changed in the herd, they had to notice, adjust, make decisions in the moment and then act on them.

But today, we often ask them to do almost the opposite. We clip on a six-foot leash and ask them to walk calmly at our side. We ask them to sit while the world moves around them. And we ask them to ignore the very movement they were bred to notice.

For some Aussies, that’s easy. For others, it can be incredibly frustrating. Sometimes that frustration becomes anxiety or reactivity.

I saw this with Maeve. Even as a puppy, movement was everything to her. If another dog, a person, or something unexpected appeared, her responses were huge and incredibly fast.

I knew I couldn’t teach her different choices by shortening her line. It would only lead to frustration. She needed enough space to move, gather information and think. That also meant creating more distance from the things she found exciting or overwhelming.

The long line and distance gave me the opportunity to teach her that she could choose a different response.

Over time, one of the choices Maeve began making on her own was turning back toward me. She also began choosing to walk with me.

She wasn’t turning back or walking beside me because of tension on the leash. The longer line gave her the freedom to make that choice.
It also meant she didn’t have to pull to access what she wanted in the world.

And as those responses became more predictable, they stayed with her even when we needed a shorter leash in busier or more urban environments.

How do you give your Aussie opportunities to think, move and make good decisions? I’d love to hear in the comments.

And if this resonated with you, share it with another Aussie owner who might enjoy it.
 




08/11/2026

When an Australian Shepherd is overwhelmed or over-excited by the world around them, it often seems natural to ask them to sit and watch.

I suppose the idea is that eventually they’ll get used to what they’re looking at and calm down. But that rarely happens.

Imagine someone asks you to sit in a chair while the very thing you’re worried about slowly moves closer and closer to you.

You can’t leave.
You can’t create space.
You can’t decide when you’ve had enough.

Would you become calmer? Or would your anxiety grow with every step?

Movement is one of the ways dogs naturally respond when something in their environment doesn’t feel right. And I think this is especially important to remember with Australian Shepherds.

As herding dogs Aussies were bred to notice changes in their environment and respond to them. Movement was part of how they did their job. They could move closer, move away, or change direction. 

Now we often ask them to do almost the opposite. 
Stay still. Sit. Watch.

When Quinn was a puppy, he was tied up and expected to sit while unfamiliar people came into his home. Looking back, it’s not surprising that people have become something he reacts to.

When a dog can’t use movement to help themselves feel safe, reacting may be one of the only strategies they have left.

That’s why I don’t ask Quinn to sit and watch people.

If he needs more distance, we move away together.
If he feels safe enough to look, that’s his choice.
If he chooses to sniff, explore or reconnect with me instead, that’s okay too.

My goal isn’t to teach Quinn to tolerate people by demanding stillness.

It’s to help him discover that when he encounters something that worries him, he still has choices.

Instead of having to sit there until he can’t cope anymore.





08/07/2026

If your Aussie is “reacting” to everything, there’s a good chance it isn’t reactivity.

Some of you might be wondering, “If my Aussie isn’t reactive then what am I seeing?”

One possibility is something called Sensitivity to Environmental Change (SEC).

Australian Shepherds were bred to notice sudden changes in their environment. 
A sheep breaking away from the herd. 
A predator appearing. 
Something moving that wasn’t there a moment ago.

Their job wasn’t to ignore those changes. It was to notice them and alert their handler.

That’s very different from reactivity.

Reactivity is an emotional response to a specific trigger.
SEC is an instinctive response to unexpected change.

I saw this with Maeve when she was only four months old. She started barking at dogs we met in the forest, and I worried she was becoming reactive. 

Then I noticed something. She wasn’t barking at every dog. She was barking at dogs that suddenly appeared. 

Just the other day she barked at a dog she’d passed calmly countless times before. The difference? This time the dog appeared unexpectedly from behind a large boulder.

It wasn’t about the dog at all. It was the sudden change.

In this video, Quinn has stopped to look at horses in a field for the first time. With practice he’s learned that when he notices something new, that isn’t a trigger for him, he can turn back to me instead of feeling like he has to deal with it on his own.

Understanding why your Aussie is responding is always the first step.  Once you understand the why it becomes much easier to know how to help them.

Has your Aussie ever reacted to something that seemed completely random? Tell me what it was in the comments.

If you’re enjoying these Aussie behaviour posts, you’ll find three free guides to help you understand your dog even better through the link in my bio.




08/04/2026

People often describe Australian Shepherds as reactive.
I think that’s far too simple.

I’ve lived with six Australian Shepherds. Three of them could have been labelled as reactive dogs or reactive Aussies.

Quinn mistrusts people he doesn’t know.
Maeve, as a young dog, wanted to control movement.
Maddie was afraid of other dogs.

Three Australian Shepherds.
Three specific responses to three different situations.
Not because they were Australian Shepherds.
And not because reactivity was their personality.

But because of how each dog experienced one small part of their world.

Spend a day with Quinn at home and you’d probably describe him as calm, soft, and easy to live with.  And because that’s who Quinn is  I’m confident he can learn to trust unfamiliar people.

Watch Maeve walking through the forest and you’ll see a dog who is thoughtful, engaged, and completely appropriate with the people and dogs she encounters. She no longer feels the need to control everything.

Maddie was a soft, loving dog, with people once she got to know them . Eventually she was able to substantially reduce her fearful responses to dogs.

These dogs are why I don’t think of reactivity as a personality.
I think of it as an emotional response to specific situations.

And that’s an important distinction.
Because if we tell ourselves a dog is reactive, it starts to define who they are. As an individual dog. And sometimes even as a breed.

But if we recognize that it’s just a response then we can start asking better questions.
What is my dog feeling?
What are they responding to?
What support do they need to change their  response?

Those answers will be different for every dog.

That’s why I don’t work with Australian Shepherds or any dog based on a breed label.

I simply work with the dog standing in front of me.
 
What’s one behaviour you’ve never quite understood about your Australian Shepherd? Tell me in the comments—I might cover it in a future post.

If you’d like to understand your Aussie even better, I’ve created three free guides to help you. You’ll find them in the link in my bio.
 


07/29/2026

Quinn and Maeve are both 18 months old and right in the middle of their teen years.

Like many Australian Shepherds, they’re incredibly aware of and responsive to the world around them.

Maeve can still get excited when she sees dogs in the forest.
Quinn is just beginning to understand that unfamiliar people can be safe.

My goal for them both is the same.
I want them to feel neutral about the world around them.

To notice distractions - or, in Quinn’s case, triggers - without feeling they have to respond. To simply notice...and then walk on by.

But I can’t ask them to choose neutrality if they don’t know what it feels like.  So first, I give them opportunities to experience it.

To feel settled. To feel safe. To be able to think.

Then we take that feeling out into the real world, working at the distance and intensity where they can be successful.

One step. One interaction. One good choice at a time.

If you live with an Aussie, what would “neutral” look like for your dog?




shepherdtrainer

07/24/2026

Why do Aussies struggle with nail trims?

I think it’s because they’re often being exactly what they were bred to be.

They were bred to solve problems, think independently, move freely, and make decisions for themselves.

Being restrained doesn’t come naturally to many of them.

So when we hold them tightly, pin a paw, or stop them from moving away, they often don’t feel safer. They feel trapped.

I don’t force my dogs to stay.
I don’t hold onto a paw because “it has to get done.”
I don’t ask for more than they’re ready to give.

Instead, I give them choices.

I’m not trying to get them through a nail trim.
I’m helping them discover that they can handle it.
That they can make choices throughout the process.

That’s exactly how both Maeve and Quinn learned.

Neither one was restrained.
Both were free to leave.
And both eventually chose to stay.

The truth is, restraint was never going to work for Maeve.
She has very little tolerance for restraint, but she’s very big on making her own choices.
So I gave her the option to stay... or go.
And she completely bought into it.

That’s why I don’t think this post is really about nail trims.

Whether we’re working on loose leash walking, recall, getting in the car, meeting new people, walking past dogs, or helping a reactive Aussie, my goal is always the same.

To give them better options.
To make the experience predictable.
To help them feel safe enough to build confidence, one successful experience at a time.

I’m not trying to change behaviour first.
I’m trying to change how my dogs feel.

Because when emotions change...
behaviour often changes too.

To me, that’s what living with an Aussie is all about.

Not controlling every decision they make...
but helping them feel safe enough to make better ones.

Question
How does your Aussie let you know they’ve had enough?

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