Christopher’s Canines

21/06/2025

“The dogs are too anxious to even leave the house”

This is what my client was told by her force-free dog trainer, all the while he sat in her house drinking tea for 2 hours, throwing sausages at the dogs behind a barrier and charging a fortune to do so.

People like this love a little bit of emotional manipulation, they know how to tug on heartstrings to make people cough up their hard earned cash for subpar services and 0 results.

Taking advantage of people’s love for their animals is next level scummy, and even scummier to gaslight them into believing they’re horrible people if they use anything other than kindness and love to train.

It’s really sad and disheartening to see.

Stay tuned for some videos and updates about the client and her dogs.

14/06/2025

Proud of this guy. He’s getting on so well, especially in the last week. Went a bike ride today and two large dogs went for him, he handled it accordingly without escalating the situation and getting right into it.

Super boy Etho! 🐾

13/06/2025

Never met a dog as enthusiastic as Dusty is 🙄

12/06/2025

Wee Harley the Patter-Jack is in for a 2 week residential, his main thing is over arousal around other dogs, as well as working on getting him comfortable with people touching him for grooming/vet visits as his vet previously labelled him as “extremely aggressive”

13/05/2025

28/04/2025

Wee update on Charlie who I worked with a few months back. Charlies owner was no stranger to dogs, her dad trained dogs for the military and police and she’d been around them since day one. Charlie was the exception though, frantic and all over the place, literally making every walk a nightmare that would reduce her to tears and the circle of stress seemed never ending.

Happy to report that Charlie is doing very well now and they’re enjoying some much deserved quality time together without the stress of Charlie acting up when he sees other dogs!

24/03/2025

Apologies for not posting much on my socials lately.

Last few months have been busy, between my new dog, driving lessons and family matters I haven’t had time to be as active lately.

April will be pretty busy with boardings, then I’ll be taking a week off mid May.

I should be able to post more regularly nearer the end of April/beginning of May - including making longer form YouTube videos documenting Etho’s progress in obedience and some other bits and bobs to look forward to!

Hope y’all are enjoying this lovely weather too 🙌

Chris 🐾

09/03/2025

Cuddle buddies 4 life

22/02/2025

Feel like I’m in a Dr Seuss book 👀

14/02/2025

Calming signals are subtle body language cues given off by our dogs constantly, they indicate a desire to de-escalate tense situations and are also a sign of stress and anxiety.

In this video I have a running counter of calming signals given off by Junior while he’s wearing a ‘gentle’ leader halti.

The force free charlatans will tell you this is kinder for the dog, but the proof is in the pudding here - 11 signals (and that’s just the ones we could clearly see) were given by junior to indicate his discomfort and desire to escape the stimulus that he found aversive, in this case the stimulus is the pressure of the head collar.

Compare that to the segment of video where he’s on a slip lead, there were maybe two or three communications, and that was over a longer duration too.

There is absolutely nothing *gentle* about these tools. They chafe and rub the skin around the muzzle, if the dog lunges hard or fast enough they can get whiplash, and just when they pull slightly it’s constantly turning their head which only adds to the frustration especially when the dog is already slightly reactive.

We spent 15 minutes conditioning him to the pressure of a slip lead by positively reinforcing him for ‘yielding’ to the negative reinforcement (gradual increase in tension on the lead) - this ensures that the overall experience is neutral and is neither aversive, or overly exciting.

The change in his body language speaks for itself.

Don’t let the emotional rhetoric of the ‘purely positive’ extremist charlatans get in the way of being able to achieve these results with your dog.

Raise your expectations - guide your dog, and without guilt or reservation teach them how to live in the real world.

05/02/2025

Proud to be a member of the Scottish Canine Trainers Alliance.

Our focus is to highlight the importance of the inclusion of all training tools and methods in modern day dog training, and to challenge the governments current stance on the use of aversive methods and tools and their perceived impact on the welfare and wellbeing of dogs, which are based on a virtue-signalling report by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC)

The SCTA does not recognise the authority or the integrity of said report. The findings are conjecture and inflammatory, and are contradictory to the combined testimonies of our collective client bases.

Please give the page a follow and together hopefully we can oppose the proposed ban on vital equipment that many people rely on to keep their dogs off the euthanasia table and to give them the best quality of life possible.

Crufts and slip collars!

Not long to go until the biggest dog show in the world hits our TV screens once again.

At SCTA we support well bred dogs and showing the best breed examples.

However we don't support the kennel clubs hypocrisy.

27'000 dogs attend crufts each year and every single one that enters the famous green ring wears either a slip collar or chain around it's neck.

But the kennel club who run crufts are currently pushing for a ban on check chains!

It seems it's okay to choke a dog for a rosette but not to stop it dangerously lunging at traffic or people.

Priorities, What's more important?

25/01/2025

Wee Charlie the Jack Russell

Little man could talk the talk for sure but deep down is just a soft touch. I got called out to help with his reactivity to other dogs on walks outside, his owner felt like she had hit a dead end even though she done lots of research and tried countless methods to help his behaviours.

Sometimes all it needs is someone with the know-how to give a bit of guidance and encouragement in person and it can make the world of difference, which was pretty much exactly the case with this little dude.

After spending 10-20 minutes conditioning him on a slip-collar and explaining why he was behaving the way he did we then went into King’s Park and worked around at least a dozen or so different dogs with only one reaction, and all it took was a slight change in handling and appropriate interruptions of his fixation and loading.

Owner delighted with the results and will be looking to sort out some other things like separation anxiety in future sessions.