Emily Coombe-Positive Dog Training

22/07/2025

I had the pleasure of working with Mina and Daisy all the way from Italy last week!

Intensive training courses are a great option for addressing multiple behavioural issues and keeping up momentum with training. See the post below for everything we covered in our sessions 🤯

GIRLS ON TOUR 💃🏾

Mina and Daisy are from Italy and their lovely family decided to dedicate one week of their four week trip to the UK to staying in Bristol and working intensively with Team CAB Emily.

This was Emily’s first intensive training client, and like me- she’s experienced that you get a heck of a lot done (include quicker trouble shooting /fine tuning of advice) when you see clients in quick succession.

Mina and Daisy had 6 sessions last week, covering:

🐕 💥 Managing their interactions within the home and on walks to reduce inter-dog aggression. Mina has arthritis and this has affected her behaviour towards Daisy later into their walks, where she is most likely to react to Daisy after 30 minutes. Carefully regulating exercise has had a positive affect on her behaviour!

🐕 💨 Emergency recall and normal recall.

🚗 Car, door and gate waits

🧘‍♀️ Settle training (which has helped in lots of contexts to reduce risk of conflict),

🚪 De-sensitisation to the door bell and visitor arrival

🐶 Interactions with unknown dogs

🦮 Loose lead walking

🦆 Calm behaviour around water and birds

Phew!! That’s pretty comprehensive!

Well done team Mina & Daisy! 🤘
We hope the rest of your visit to the UK is now more enjoyable!

Intensive sessions enable clients outside of Bristol to stay in the area and work with us. However, it’s not exclusive to those living further away! If clients in Bristol want intensive support, we are all over that! You just need to book well ahead.

Intensive training or not, we always see the most progress in the cases who keep up the momentum- especially in the early stages of behaviour modification!

Whether that’s with follow ups or utilising email/whatsapp support. Those who communicate what is and isn’t going well allow us to get trouble shooting and prevent/reduce rehearsal of undesired and/or dangerous behaviour more quickly.

24/04/2025

Say hellooo to Piper 😍

Following an initial behaviour assessment we worked hard on building Piper’s confidence gradually within the home, on her walks and with me!

Thanks to her owners dedication, Piper is now able to enjoy more walks! These photos are from her third session with me, in which we set her up with a hot date/ social buffer (Mohawk the collie) and headed out on some new streets (a environment she used to find very challenging). She aced it and it was so nice to see how much she has grown in confidence 👏

24/04/2025

The handsome Max has completed his 6 weeks of training 🐶 🎓 We have covered husbandry training, loose lead walking, reducing reactivity to traffic, emergency stop, drop and settle. It has been lovely to see the bond between Max ans his owner strengthen during our sessions and Max has LOVED training for snacks! 🦴

31/03/2025

📹Arlo and his owner have been working on reducing his reactivity to being handled in the veterinary practice.

🐕 In session 1 and 2 we worked on a chin rest, husbandry training and muzzle training at home.

🎬This video is from session 3 which we did at Arlo’s vets, to make sure he could generalise the training to this environment.

👩🏼‍⚕️The next step is to get his vets involved in the training.

Big well done to Arlo and his owner, Arlo has made a lot of progress and they have been so consistent with their training! 👏

15/03/2025

Team Tina have put in so much work to help Tina grow into the confident pup she is becoming 💓 I will miss having my shoe laces gnawed on now and then ( don’t worry she had a great drop on cue!) 😂

🗣️ “I just wanted to email some feedback about our training sessions with Emily. We booked 3 one-on-one training sessions for our rescue cockapoo, Tina.

When we adopted Tina she was very nervous and found the world quite overwhelming. After 3 sessions with Emily (and countless informative emails with tips and tricks) she’s a completely different dog!

With Emily’s help she is fully house trained, is now sleeping downstairs through the night by herself and is growing in confidence out on walks.

We cannot thank Emily enough and will definitely be recommending Mutty to any of our friends with new dogs!"

Well done Team Tina and of course, well done to my team member Emily! 💕

She is such a sweet little dog and I LOVE her name.....it's simply the best.....but I bet she can't stand the rain! 🤣

14/03/2025

This week, Cooper completed his package of 3 training sessions with me- and left a nice slobbery stain on my camera to celebrate 🐶 👅

04/03/2025

Congratulations to the handsome Zeus and his owners for completing his 6 week training course 👏 Some of the behaviours we covered were loose lead walking, waiting at doorways and at curbs, food manners, recall, emergency stop and interactions with other dogs. I will miss seeing those gigantic ears every week! 🐶 ♥️

17/02/2025

Training or Behaviour? 🐶 ❓

🤔 When looking to change a particular behaviour your dog is showing, we need to consider what triggers/ cues the behaviour, what motivates your dog to perform the behaviour and what emotions your dog may feel when performing it or as a consequence of preforming the behaviour.

These are just some of the factors I must consider when recommending whether a client would benefit from training sessions or a behavioural assessment.

🐕 When do I conduct Training Sessions?

1. Generally, training sessions focus on life skills behaviours, such as loose lead walking, recall, settling on a mat, dropping items and other fun training exercises such as tricks or self-control games.

2. Training sessions are great for owners looking to prevent more serious problem behaviours by training alternatives before a problem develops.

3. Training sessions are best suited to dogs who are not experiencing a negative emotion (heightened stress, anxiety, fear or frustration) in the context the problem behaviour is taking place.

🧠 When do I recommend a Behaviour Assessment?

1. If a dog is experiencing a negative emotional state or is excessively aroused or stressed in the context the problem behaviour is taking place in.

2. When there may be some underlying health concerns potentially contributing to the problem behaviour. When conducting behaviour modification, I work alongside the client’s veterinarian via a veterinary referral, and carry out a thorough assessment.

💬 If you are unsure of whether a training session or behavioural assessment is most suitable for your dog, please feel free to get in contact so I can help advise you.

07/02/2025

Puppy Socialisation 🐶💗

🧠 The sensitive socialisation period for our puppies occurs between 5-16 weeks of age. Within this period a puppies brain is like a sponge, rapidly absorbing information from the world around them. Neuronal pathways are being altered, specifically the functional and structural connections of neurons in the cortex, which are involved in receiving and analysing sensory information.

❓What are our puppy’s learning in this period?

🧠 Experiences puppies have during this period will likely affect their behaviour in response to similar experiences/ stimuli after this socialisation period has ended. So if a puppy has a positive interaction with another dog, a puppy may show happy, excited or relaxed body language around meeting new dogs in the future. If a puppy gets scared by a bus passing in close proximity, the puppy may respond fearfully to buses in the future.

🧠After 16 weeks of age, a puppy is more likely to show anxiety towards anything in its environment that it did not get exposed to during the socialisation period.

🐕So what does successful socialisation look like?

✔️Socialisation should be composed of carefully managed exposure to a range of different stimuli that our dogs are likely to encounter in day to day life, in a positive and gradual process. It is important that we build up exposure to stimuli slowly, as and when our puppies can cope well. How quickly you can introduce a stimulus will vary between pups!

So, we need to start by considering all of the stimuli that our dogs may encounter in our day to day life. Some common stimuli include (this is not a comprehensive list!): Dogs, people (including vets!), children, other animals (E.g. Cats in the same household), vehicles (bikes, cars, lorries, buses, trains, scooters Etc.), day to day objects inside the home and on walks (umbrellas, hoover, mop, dustpan and brush, bins Etc.), sounds (sirens, fireworks, dogs barking, planes passing overhead Etc.), grooming/ vet equipment (E.g. brushes, nail clippers, stethoscope Etc.), scents, surfaces they walk on.

✔️ How can we introduce these stimuli in a gradual way? Below are some examples.

🌳 Prior to your puppy having all of their vaccinations you can take them out in a sling/ carry them to quiet places to watch the world go by. If your pup is calm and happy, you can also pair stimuli (E.g. car passing in the distance) with a treat.

🦴Take your puppy to the vet for social visits, where they can be given treats and then leave.

☂️Avoid pressuring your pup to interact with dogs, people or objects. Always follow them away from stimuli if they are trying to avoid it so they do not feel as though they have to escalate their behaviours (E.g. barking at things that scare them).

🐩Help your puppy notice when other dogs do not want to interact or have finished interacting, and help them move away.

👩‍🦰Coach visitors and strangers you meet on walks on how to interact with your puppy calmly.

🔊Pair noises such as the door knock or fireworks (starting at low volumes first) with treat scatters to help them form positive associations.

The above is not a comprehensive list. If you would like further support socialising your puppy, please give me an email at [email protected].

31/01/2025

Loose Lead Walking 🐕

Loose Lead walking training is one of the most common things I train in both my 121 training sessions and behavioural modification plans.

Most dogs have to be walked on lead at least daily, in multiple contexts surrounded by lots of potential distractions. So, it is our job to help them learn that walking on a lead is a positive and calm experience and that they do not need to feel frustrated or pull.

Loose lead walking helps keep the owner, dog and members of the public safe and creates and enjoyable walk for everyone involved 😀

🐾 How can we set up our dogs to succeed with loose lead training?

🌳 We need to start our training in low-level distraction environments to set our dogs for success. Regular walks, such as the route to the park is likely already associated with a strong history of pulling, so avoiding these routes to start may be helpful.

🤯If your dog is easily distracted by people and dogs, you may want to drive to quiet residential areas, hire a secure field or even start the training in your home/garden.

🍖 Use high value rewards
Moist, smelly, high value treats (E.g. cooked meats) tend to work best for most dogs- especially when generalising your training to high level distraction environments. Varying these treats may help your dog stay motivated.

🐽Along with treats, dogs are also rewarded for walking nicely on the lead by being able to move forward and access sniffs and greetings were appropriate. For example, if they are pulling, we do not allow movement forward to these reinforcers. If they are walking nicely, we can stop and allow them to sniff/ say hi to another dog or person.

✔️ Consistency and patience are key in loose lead walking training. Although some might achieve a loose lead quickly, for others with previous learning experiences, loose lead can be a long process which has to be carefully managed.

Below is a video of Zeus the handsome Husky nailing some loose lead walking in our training session 👏

If you would like to book in a session to work on your dog’s loose lead walking, please give me an email at [email protected].

You can also purchase my loose lead training guide on my website: https://www.emilycoombe.com/blank-1

29/01/2025

Self-Control Training 🐶

Self-control training helps our dogs cope with feelings of frustration and helps them learn how to access rewards in appropriate ways. As a result, it helps us as owners keep our dogs under control in a large variety of contexts🐕‍🦺

Hope and Faith’s (two lovely Lab sisters) owners have been working hard on self-control training around food and toys. Hope and Faith had a challenging start to life, in which they likely had minimal access to valued resources (E.g. toys, treats) and had to compete with dogs/ each other for these resources. In addition to this, competition tends to be stronger between siblings, so when they were rehomed with Angela and Jeremy, we quickly realised that self-control was an area we needed to strengthen in multiple contexts.

🎬The video below demonstrates how we built up to helping Faith and Hope stay calm when Angela and Jeremy were handling treats, toys and balls (which they used to jump up towards and attempt to sn**ch out of hands). With every resource we introduced, we started with short, sweet exposure, before upping the movement of the resource and lowering it to the floor to increase difficulty. The girls are rewarded for keeping all 4 paws on the floor, and when using toys, we rewarded occasional repetitions with another toy they could play (to prevent frustration building too high during the training).

We also worked on building a strong recall and emergency recall, which we can use to help them move away from distractions in the environment (E.g. another dog’s ball!). 🐕💨

The next step for the girls will be to continue to increase the difficulty of the exercise, by dropping/ rolling, throwing toys and rewarding them for staying calm/ recalling off them.

Other areas of self-control training that Hope and Faith have nailed include door waits and loose lead walking!

A big shout out to Hope and Faith’s amazing owners who have put in so much hard work with the girls. It has been a privilege to watch the girls grow in confidence and progress in all areas of their training💗

17/01/2025

Let’s talk about 'Dominance' 🐩

Words like ‘Dominance’, ‘Alpha’, ‘Leader of the Pack’ or ‘Top Dog’ are still floating around the dog training world, often misused as damaging labels for dogs and owners.

The Dominance theory is based on the idea that human owners need to assert authority (become the ‘alpha’) over their dog and need to prevent their dog from achieving a higher social status over them (becoming ‘dominant’).

These outdated beliefs contributed to the development of techniques based on punishment, coercion, and aversion, which used to be common practice in the dog training world. These training methods are detrimental to a dog’s welfare, lead to a break down in the human-dog relationship and often worsen the dog’s behaviour by forcing the dog to escalate their behaviour (E.g. to communicate or defend themselves).

I am here to tell you to not worry- your dogs are not planning on taking over the world (..yet) and they just want to fit into your family! 🐕‍🦺💗

So why is the Dominance Theory outdated? 🐺📚

Many of the early studies that supported the dominance theory were conducted on groups of captive unrelated wolves that that were forced to share a territory. This environment created stress and unusual social behaviours. When we observe wild wolves in their natural habitat, they tend to form cohesive, cooperative social structures which resemble more of a family group rather than a linear hierarchy. Aggression is rarely seen between individuals and aggressive behaviour does not appear to serve the purpose of achieving a higher social status.

The early studies also assume that wolves and dogs behave and form similar social structures. Despite sharing a common ancestor, the domestication of dogs is believed to have started anywhere between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago- and as a result of the domestication process the dog and the wild wolf differ in many ways. Studies on free-ranging feral dogs show that their social structures are fluid, with unrelated individuals coming and going.
Similarly, groups of domestic dogs are not observed to form strict and hierarchical structures, and interactions between individuals are not driven by the aim of achieving a higher social status.

This is not to say that dominance doesn’t exist at all, as social order can be seen in the majority social species. But the intent of the theorists who devised the social dominance theory was to use it to describe interactions and explain and predict patterns of conflict resolution within a society-forming group of animals, rather than to use “dominance” as a label or individual trait. Social dominance theory was also not intended to be used to predict conflict management across species. We believe that dogs know humans are not dogs, and therefore we cannot assume they form social groups with humans in the same way they do within their own species. Human owners provide their dogs with everything they need to survive and therefore dogs do not need to form ‘packs’ or climb the ‘social ladder’ to meet their needs. Dogs are also unlikely to be in competition with their owners for resources.

In my experience, the majority of dogs just want to “fit in” and be a loved member of our family. I have never felt it relevant, accurate or helpful to apply the Dominance Theory with my clients. I instead make the welfare of the clients my priority whilst using positive reinforcement training and management strategies, supported by scientific research, to help modify a dog’s behaviour.

When looking for any dog professional (groomer, walker, trainer, behaviourist, sitter), it is important to make sure they have a good understanding of, and implement training or handling based on positive reinforcement. You can find a list of accredited trainers and behaviourists on the APBC and ABTC websites.

Below is a picture of my last dog Poppy being 'Top Dog' by sleeping on top of me on the sofa 😆