Linda Hams - Dog training and Behaviour

05/09/2026

One of the things I notice when I’m watching dogs interact is that they can sometimes recognise something familiar in another dog.

Whippets will often appear particularly interested in other whippets. Collies can seem to notice other collies. Dogs who move, posture or communicate in similar ways can appear to understand each other quite quickly.
That doesn’t mean dogs only want to be friends with their own breed, or that breed determines whether two dogs will get along. It is much more interesting than that.

Dogs communicate through an enormous amount of body language. Posture, movement, facial expression, ear position, eye direction, proximity and the way they approach or move away all give information.
If another dog communicates in ways that are familiar, those signals may simply be easier to understand.

Think about a very hairy dog, for example. Some of the facial and body signals another dog normally watches may be partly hidden. Or consider a very squishy-faced dog whose facial movement may be less obvious. The ears may sit differently, the face may move differently and some of the subtle expressions another dog is used to seeing may simply be harder to interpret.

Movement can be different too. A dog who moves in a very different way, holds their body differently or approaches in a way another dog isn’t familiar with may take a little more working out. Sometimes what looks like, “He’s fine with dogs, he just doesn’t like those dogs,” might actually be closer to, “I’m not quite sure what you’re telling me yet.”

I think that is a useful thing to remember when we watch dogs interact. We can be very quick to label a dog as rude, unfriendly or selective, when they may simply be trying to understand another dog.

Familiarity doesn’t guarantee friendship, but being able to recognise and understand the signals another dog is giving can make social interaction much easier.

Sometimes the most useful thing we can give dogs isn’t another greeting - It’s time to work each other out.

04/09/2026

Sometimes I have to remind myself to stop trying to fix things

I spend a lot of my life watching dogs. I observe, analyse, notice patterns and, almost without thinking about it, start working out why something is happening and what might help. It is my job, but it is also a genuine hobby. Put me in a café, pub or park and I can become completely distracted by the dogs around me.

But sometimes I have to remind myself to stop trying to fix things.

Not every behaviour needs fixing. And, importantly, I am not there to decide what should be fixed simply because it isn't something I would choose for my own dogs. When I work with a client, my job is to help them with the things that matter to them and affect their life with their dog. Their dog isn't my dog, and their priorities don't have to be mine.

There is also something to be said for simply being present. Sometimes a dog doesn't need another behaviour analysed, another response changed or another problem solved. Sometimes they just need us to sit beside them, notice them and enjoy being together.

For someone who naturally watches and analyses dogs almost everywhere I go, that can be surprisingly difficult.
But perhaps knowing when not to fix something is just as important a skill as knowing how to fix it.

03/09/2026

Is your dog actually being “naughty”?

We use words like naughty, rude, bad manners, stubborn and disobedient very easily when talking about our dogs. But I sometimes wonder whose manners we are actually talking about.
What does “good manners” mean in a dog?

Is it sitting quietly when we ask? Not jumping up? Walking nicely on a lead? Leaving things alone because we have told them to?Those are certainly behaviours that make life easier for us.

But dogs have their own social rules and their own ways of communicating, too. And if we look at it from their perspective, we break their rules rather regularly. We interrupt them when they are sniffing. We insist they greet people or other dogs. We enter their space. We touch them when they would rather not be touched. We pull them away from something they find fascinating.

Then sometimes, when they object, we call them rude.

Perhaps the more interesting question isn't whether our dog has good manners. Perhaps it's whose definition of manners we are using.

Living successfully with a dog surely has to involve some compromise.
We teach dogs how to live comfortably in our human world.

But perhaps we also need to become better at understanding their world.
Because manners are really about respecting the social rules of those around us.
And that should work both ways.

02/09/2026

The skill of doing something difficult badly

One of the most valuable things we can teach our dogs is that they don’t have to get everything right.

For some dogs, particularly nervous or less confident dogs, trying something new can feel quite difficult. If every attempt is quickly corrected, guided or rescued, they can learn that getting it wrong isn’t safe.

Instead, I want my dogs to learn that experimenting is okay.
That means being patient. Waiting. Watching carefully for the smallest try.
Perhaps they look at something they were unsure of. Maybe they take one step towards it, investigate with their nose, offer a behaviour they haven’t been asked for before, or simply choose to have another go.

That is the moment I want to notice.
We don’t always need to wait for the finished behaviour before rewarding. Sometimes the attempt is the most important part.

Because when we notice and reward the try, rather than only celebrating the correct answer, we teach our dogs that having a go is worthwhile.
And for a nervous dog, learning “I can try this and nothing bad happens if I get it wrong” can be enormously empowering.

Sometimes doing something difficult badly is exactly how we learn to do it well.

01/09/2026

If you are struggling with your dog ‘s recall we have a workshop at Dereham Dog Academy later this month

A reliable recall isn’t built by simply calling your dog more often. It comes from teaching them that turning back to you is a decision worth making — and then developing that decision gradually as the environment becomes more challenging.

Our 2-Part Recall Workshop is designed to do exactly that.

Part 1 – Thursday 17th September, 6pm | Dereham Dog Academy

We’ll establish the foundations of a strong recall: effective cues, engagement, reward strategies and an understanding of why recall so often starts to break down. You’ll leave with practical exercises and a clear plan to work on before Part 2.

Then we take the training somewhere more challenging.

Part 2 – Saturday 26th September, 11am | The Walled Garden, Letton Hall

The enclosed Walled Garden gives us the opportunity to start applying those foundations in a much larger, more realistic environment. We’ll look at adjusting reward value to suit the situation, using food and toy play to strengthen motivation, and gradually increasing freedom as each dog is ready for it.

Depending on individual progress, we’ll incorporate long-line and off-lead work, with guidance tailored to the dog in front of us.

The aim isn't just a dog that recalls beautifully in a training room. It's to start building a recall you can actually take out into the real world.

£49 for both sessions.

Places are limited.

https://bookwhen.com/derehamdogacademy/e/ev-sw3ks-20260917180000

01/09/2026

What happens between training sessions when you work with me?

This is so often where the real transformation happens.

My job during a 1:1 isn't simply to give owners a list of exercises to practise. It's to give them a different way of looking at their dog.
The exercises might only take five minutes a day, but those five minutes teach owners something. They start to discover what motivates their dog, what makes things easier, what changes their behaviour and, importantly, why.

By the time we meet again, they aren't just reporting whether the homework was completed. They're bringing observations.

Juno is a great example. She barked at people and horses on walks and, if her owner didn't spot the "hazard" quickly enough, she would run towards it barking. Her recall was actually good, but recall alone wasn't solving the problem.

We changed her off-lead rules and taught her to manage her distance from her owners rather than running too far ahead.
Two weeks later, walks were less stressful and Juno was much easier to control.
The biggest change wasn't just in Juno.
Her owners had learned to see her differently.

And that's what happens between sessions: the training plan becomes understanding.

31/08/2026

The tiny signs we sometimes miss

Dogs don't always go from perfectly comfortable to obviously stressed.
Often, they tell us much earlier that something isn't quite right.

A lip lick. A huff. A sudden scratch. A full-body shake when there isn't anything to shake off. Turning their head away. Sniffing suddenly. Becoming unusually quiet or busy.

None of these behaviours automatically mean a dog is stressed. Context matters. But when you know your dog and notice these little changes in a situation you already know they find difficult, they can be incredibly useful clues.

I often think of them as an early warning system.
Your dog may be telling you, "I'm finding this a bit much."
If we notice those signs early, we have an opportunity to help rather than waiting for the dog to bark, lunge, hide or try to escape.
We can create some distance, leave the situation or simply give them a moment to recover.

Learning to notice the whispers can prevent us from having to deal with the shout.

30/08/2026

Can you touch your dog all over?

One of the things I think every dog should learn is that being touched and examined all over their body is a normal part of life.
Not because I expect owners to become vets or groomers, but because if you can't comfortably touch your dog's paws, ears, mouth or body, how can you expect someone else to do it when they need to?

Think about brushing. Can you brush every part of your dog, including the areas they might find more sensitive?
Can you pick up each paw and look between the pads and toes? Can you check for a grass seed, a sore patch or a cut pad?
Can you look inside their ears?
Can you examine their mouth?
Can you gently run your hands over their body and notice when something feels different?

I see many dogs who are particularly sensitive about their ears or paws. Often, the first time anyone has tried to examine that area closely is because there is already a problem. Unfortunately, if an ear is sore or a paw is painful, your dog isn't going to understand that this is suddenly necessary. They may understandably object to being handled.

The same applies to claws. You might not intend to clip your dog's claws yourself, but if you can't get near their feet, you can be pretty sure that a groomer or veterinary professional is going to struggle too.

There is another part of this that I think is easily overlooked: knowing what is normal for your own dog.
Do you know what your dog's gums normally look like? Do you know the normal appearance of their eyes? Do you know how their ears feel and smell when they are healthy? Do you know how their body feels when you run your hands over it?
Knowing your dog's normal makes it much easier to notice when something has changed.

And you don't need to turn this into a wrestling match or try to examine your dog from nose to tail in one session.
In fact, please don't.

Teach one paw. Reward. Leave it.
Another day, practise touching an ear. Reward. Stop.

Gradually build your dog's confidence and make handling something that is familiar, predictable and rewarding.
The goal isn't to make your dog tolerate being handled.
The goal is to teach them that your hands checking their body are nothing to worry about.

Because when there is a genuine problem, the last thing you want is for the first close examination of your dog's paw, ear or mouth to happen when something hurts.

29/08/2026

What I notice

Sometimes I wish I wasn't quite so observant.

When you spend your life watching dogs, you learn to notice the smallest changes. The things that stand out to me might pass unnoticed by someone else.

At the moment, I notice Sonic slowing down. I notice him stumbling occasionally on his back legs and not recovering quite as easily. I notice the muscle and strength disappearing from his back end.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought has changed from if to when I will have to make a decision about him. Not any time soon, I hope, but once that thought has entered your head, you can't quite unsee it.

I've seen it before. Rufus, a Labradoodle, wasn't walking quite right. I mentioned it to my friend who Rufus belonged to and a vet visit eventually revealed an aggressive cancer. He lost a leg but went on to have another four wonderful years.

Then there was the little Collie whose head was slightly tilted. I noticed it and suggested a vet check. It turned out to be a brain tumour.
Sometimes noticing things can save a dog. Sometimes it simply breaks your heart.
And I suppose that's the burden of being observant: once you see something, you can't unsee it.
I wouldn't change the knowledge. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could switch it off.

28/08/2026

What the dogs still teach me

After more than 35 years working with dogs, you might think there wouldn't be much left to surprise me.
There is!

I still come across situations where I haven't quite seen that particular version of a problem before. And honestly, that's one of the things I love most about working with dogs.
Recently I've been working with two households where dogs were fighting. On the surface, the problem looked very similar. In reality, the triggers were completely different.

In one case, two littermates were fighting over one of their owners, but only under very specific circumstances. It wasn't simply a case of resource guarding the owner all the time.

In the other, an older dog and a younger dog were fighting. The older dog's declining health appeared to be an important factor, but not in the way you might expect. There were also a number of other circumstances and stressful variables that the family simply couldn't control.

The dogs, of course, hadn't read the books about behaviour. They didn't know what they were "supposed" to do.
They just behaved.

And that's why I think continuous learning matters so much. Knowledge shouldn't be static. We should always remain curious, question what we think we know and, most importantly, keep listening to the dogs.
Because they are still my best teachers.