Paws-a-Bella

13/07/2025

Love this post! Having had many years being a professional dog trainer for organisations, I always tell new trainers reward based training is so much more than just giving the dog reinforcement, it’s the art of communicating between you and your dog 🐶❤️

What Impresses Me Most as a Trainer 🐶✨

It’s not the flashiest retrieves, the fastest agility runs, or the most obedient heelwork that impress me.

It’s the trainers who are working to high standards with their dogs using positive reinforcement 🦴, neuroscience 🧠, emotional literacy 💛, and buckets of empathy and compassion 🤲💜
The ones who recognise behaviour as communication, and training as a conversation 🗣️🐾
The ones who don’t reach for punishment when things get hard ❌💥

Because when you’re a reinforcement-based trainer and something doesn’t work, you don’t throw it all out and say “rewards don’t work.”
You get curious 🧐
You problem-solve 🔍
You learn 📚
You grow 🌱

And you realise: you’re not alone.
There’s a whole community of compassionate, skilled trainers out there, figuring it out too 💬🤝
Someone will have an answer, you just have to go and find them 🧭

I’m a crossover trainer. The more I’ve learned, the less I’ve needed to use punishment 🚫
And I’ve never felt more skilled, more connected to my dogs, or more inspired by the people I train alongside 🐕💡

✨ This is the good stuff.
✨ This is where real dog training lives.
Let’s amplify the voices of ethical, skilled, heart-led trainers everywhere 💬💛

01/07/2025

Miss Maple smashed it out of the park progressing her scentwork in a novel environment while wearing a harness 🤩 still some more to work on but look forward to getting started on trials with this little one 🥰

01/03/2025

“How long will it take for my dog to get used to being handled and groomed?”

Reality is that it can be an ongoing process, some dogs cope better than others, some dogs need to have a different approach than others. Even though my older dogs are used to being groomed I still top up that experienced with intermittent reinforcement to maintain their positive experience of the process. Bluebell is now learning about stillness and having her coat cut with no specific aim to what she needs to look like at this stage, the focus is on her training journey 🥰

19/01/2025

Bluebell was a little star on her first groom 😍 the aim was just for her to have a positive experience being on the grooming table and being introduced to the different equipment. I tend to take time with this training, American Cocker Spaniels are an amazing breed but sharing your life with them means a lot of grooming time!

07/01/2025

Baking time for the Spaniels again, this time Mint and Parsley dental sticks and Liver and Apple treats 😋

26/08/2024

🐾Happy International Dog Day! 🐾

30/07/2024

Power of reinforcement placement 💪
For me as a dog trainer, the power of where and when I reinforce my dogs is so important when training behaviours. Place training is a perfect example, I build value for the dogs being on the platform and then they are so keen to get on that platform no matter what 😅 Love training these guys 🥰

12/07/2024

As a dog parent, the reality is when you’re working with your dog you will have good and bad days. Some things will work, others won’t, sometimes you will make the wrong decisions, sometimes your dog may just not be in the right frame of mind for the training. But when it comes together and your dog just smashes it, those are the times to remember that it’s all worth it 💪 My youngest, Maple reminds me that dog training is a continuous learn experience and that a small change can make a massive difference to a training session! Thank you to places like which was a great training location 🐶

25/12/2023