Wülfgang Dog Training

09/08/2026

07/08/2026

Misty has been showing some signs of pain over the last week, her gait has been ‘off’, her right hip has seemed stiff, she’s been holding her head lower and she’s just looked absolutely miserable. I’ve spoke to her vets and have sent some videos of her gait off to them for their opinion before I arrange to take her in.

She’s been playing, jumping onto my bed, she jumped in and out of the car today, but she still just hasn’t seemed her usual self.

Because of this we’ve just been doing slow on lead walks and mostly in quiet areas, avoiding busy areas where there are usually a lot of dogs, because pain can massively increase reactions, even in dogs that aren’t usually reactive, but particularly in dogs that are.

Misty’s triggers tend to be:

On lead dogs facing her

Dogs running quickly past her in close proximity.

Dogs that “come out of nowhere” facing her.

Dogs that she perceives as being a little over the top.

Today despite her showing quite a few signs that she is experiencing some kind pain, we walked past two on lead dogs that were facing her.

A young spaniel charged at her, ran right past her twice, recalled back to his owners and then came towards us again.

A German shepherd came from behind a tree facing her.

And then we stopped and chatted to someone with a border collie who was doing a fantastic job at herding his humans, something that Misty would’ve usually of found ‘too much’.

All of this without a single reactions, whilst potentially being in pain, and without using food too.

Not so long ago Misty would’ve reacted to every single one of these dogs, she would’ve lunged, barked, snarled, bared her teeth, and done a few back flips whilst she was at it.

There’s a huge misconception that if we don’t use tools to correct our dogs reactivity then we must use a lot of treats and distractions.

I’ve been on both sides, I’ve tried both. I used to try to correct Misty’s behaviour, and I also used to try to distract her from every dog we would see. But neither of these helped, in fact they made things worse.

Whilst sometimes I think helping a dog out with food or toys in certain situations can be useful, using food to distract from every single dog they see, or don’t see isn’t going to decrease your dogs reactivity.

But time, patience, trust and understanding will.

Reactivity can take time to work through, particularly in cases like Misty where there have been multiple traumatic incidents surrounding other dogs from a young age.
I’ve been working on Misty’s reactivity for more than 5 years, and I made a lot of mistakes during that time, which made our journey take even longer.

I needed to learn to be patient with Misty, feeling frustrated with her because she was simply showing her emotions in the only way she knew how didn’t help either of us. Which takes me to trust.

With me feeling frustrated with her, she mirrored that, and felt frustrated too. It’s hard to trust eachother when you’re both constantly frustrated with eachother.
I also struggled to trust her after the vet suggested we muzzled her for future vet visits, and with her dog reactivity I assumed she was aggressive, dangerous and couldn’t be trusted at all.
And because I tried to correct her behaviours, forcing her to sit as dogs walked past us, telling her off, trying to sound more ‘dominant’ by making my voice deeper. She didn’t trust me either.
(Going back to time, trust took us both time to rebuild from scratch).

To be able to trust each other again, I needed to understand her.
I needed to understand her emotional, social and biological needs.
Why does she feel the way she does around other dogs? Why is she amazing with some dogs and not with others? How can I help her to have a more fulfilling life safely to meet her biological needs?

When all these pieces start to come together, that’s when you will notice a huge change in your dog’s emotions and behaviours.

Not through distractions, but through time, patience, trust and understanding.

Without these, your dog’s reactivity may become suppressed, but will it really resolve in the long term?

06/08/2026

Assessments!

Today I visited a lovely owner and a very lovely dog.

Why did I go do an assessment if the dog is so lovely?

A person offering a service decided on a meeting with the adolescent dog that it was guarding the owner and needed some serious training and to top it off a trainer who uses aversive methods/techniques.

Thank god they never listened but was left wandering if their young dog was ok.

Well the owner is now rest assured that their adolescent dog is actually very friendly and certainly does not guard the owner and the dog happily played and we took a walk with the dog and the dog happily left the owners side no issues at all.

The owner easily could of listened to that uneducated advice and the young dog could of been subjected to aversive training.

Just assuming things really does not help owner or dog.🙄

Now back off to have fun with my board 😊

05/08/2026

I will be away from Thursday 13th until Monday 17th August, I won’t be available for walks, 121 sessions and may not have signal to reply to messages either.

If anyone needs any support whilst I’m away you can speak to one of the admin of our group Dog Training Support South Wales and one of the admin will get back to you as soon as they can🐾

02/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/194xe8egeM/?mibextid=wwXIfr

01/08/2026

Two off lead dogs with no owner insight approach you and your dog. What do you do?

When Misty was a puppy I would’ve panicked if an offlead dog approached us, It was a reflex response that I couldn’t control at the time. But I’m pretty sure my reaction to other dogs contributed to her becoming dog-reactive.

I would tense the lead in an attempt to keep Misty as close to me as possible, I would try to drag her in the other direction, my heart rate would increase, once I even screamed because I felt so scared of an off lead dog charging at us.

But what good did that do to Misty? It made her think that if there’s a reason that I was scared of other unknown dogs coming near her, she should be scared of other dogs coming near her too.

This morning two dogs that live near by escaped their homes, I know both dogs, but I didn’t recognise them at first. They were both running around, their arousal was high and I didn’t want to take the risk of another one of my dogs being bit during such a crucial period of their life.

Misty was bit at around 7 months of age, a month older than Gobi is now, so that is something that I do still fear.

So without panicking, whilst remaining calm I picked Gobi up, walked the other way to create some distance and put him back down again. These two dogs then somehow ended up infront of us, and that’s when I recognised them, I know these dogs are friendly with other dogs and I didn’t feel that allowing them to approach us would’ve been a risk.

I kept the lead slack, I moved around the dogs and I didn’t create any unnecessary tension in the lead.

It actually went quite well, and Gobi ended up having a run around the field chasing the small grey lurcher😅

But in a different environment or with different dogs who were displaying different emotions, I may have done things differently.

I’ve stood infront of Misty with Misty behind me and shouted “stay” at two large German Shepherds who were attempting to approach us a few years ago. The “stay” surprisingly worked which gave me enough time to assess how Misty was feeling. Misty was relaxed enough to meet them and so I allowed them to meet once I’d made sure Misty was okay with that.

I’ve picked Gobi up a few times when I haven’t been sure if meeting another dog would’ve been appropriate, he’s still learning, can be very excited and can jump on other dogs, which some dogs won’t appreciate.
I’ve only done this on narrow paths if there hasn’t been much space for either dogs to escape, or today when there was no other human in sight and the other dogs arousal we’re very high.

I used to shout at owners “can you put your dog back on their lead?” “can you recall your dog?”
And with some dogs I still do, but this isn’t something I do with Misty anymore, I found that I would usually just get frustrated when the other dogs didn’t have recall, and Misty would feel my frustration leading to her feeling worse about the situation.

But I’ve also allowed both Misty and Gobi to meet unknown off lead dogs, like today with these two.

I don’t think there’s just one thing you should do when an off lead dog approaches you, even if your dog is reactive like my Misty can be.

It depends on how your dog is feeling, the environment, how the other dogs are feeling and how you’re feeling too.

But one thing I do always do is take a deep breath, relax my shoulders, arms and hands and relax the lead so that I’m not creating tension through the lead.

What do you do when off lead dogs approach you?

30/07/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/14hPLxj8Y8T/?mibextid=wwXIfr

How big an impact does sleep have on canine behavior? Probably more than you and your clients realize, according to this literature review.

29/07/2026

So much behaviour advice is about stopping the behaviour.

But what if we started asking why it’s happening instead?

Dogs were bred for a purpose. Those instincts don’t just disappear because they live in our homes.

A scent hound wants to sniff.
A terrier wants to dig.
A herding breed wants to control movement.
A sighthound wants to chase.

When dogs don’t have healthy outlets for those natural behaviours, frustration can build, and that can have a huge impact on behaviour.

This is where breed-specific outlets can make such a difference.

Predation Substitute Training games are a great example. Instead of trying to stop predatory behaviour altogether, we give dogs safe, appropriate ways to use those instincts through games like searching, chasing, stalking, grabbing and carrying.

And it’s not just about keeping them busy.

These games can help reduce frustration, build confidence, improve emotional regulation and become part of a behaviour modification plan too. They’re not a magic fix for reactivity, but they can help put your dog in a much better place to learn.

Here’s Misty this morning.

There were loads of squirrels about and she was starting to get pretty bouncy. I could have let her chase one, and risked her catching one (I wouldn’t forgive myself if she did😩) or recalled her away, put her on lead and stopped the fun, but instead I gave her a hunting game that we could do together.

She still got to use those natural instincts, just in a way that was safe, controlled and reinforcing.

Not only did it help take the edge off her arousal, but every time we play these games together we’re building our relationship too.

Sometimes behaviour isn’t about asking, “How do I stop my dog doing that?”

Sometimes it’s about asking, “What does my dog need right now, and how can I meet that need in a way that works for both of us?”

24/07/2026

This👇

22/07/2026

I hope everyone's coping okay with the fires by us over the last few days

The smoke is so bad at all times, we've got all the windows closed (which isn't ideal in this heat 😅)

I know my asthma has been playing up due to the smoke, so it will also be affecting the animals too, so please be mindful where your walking your dogs in regards to where the smoke is blowing

Across blaenavon areas are almost all of our favourite walks, and it's so sad to see so much of it on fire. It was only just starting to grow back in in a few areas after another fire there a couple of years back 😔

Please keep yourself and your dogs safe!

Photo of Spike on his favourite screaming stone on one of our walks up there in the past