Anna Balch Dog Trainer

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Anna Balch Dog Trainer

🐕 Classes, 1-2-1s & Behaviour
🧩 The missing piece in your training journey
🐾 Specialising in reactivity
⬇️ Contact us to get started ⬇️

I promote positive, kind methods that improve your relationship with your dog along with environmental factors so that you can live in harmony. I can come to your house to work with you and your family on a one-to-one basis and provide long-term solutions that enable you to build on your relationship with your dog.

05/11/2025

Are you missing the point when it comes to training? Why do you train your dog anyway?

Training simple exercises helps to build life skills. It helps to meet your dog’s needs. It’s a way to expand your dog’s ability to navigate our world.

🐕 Training helps build problem solving skills. Gentle, positive training enables your dog to make good choices, to think about what they need to do and why it will be beneficial for them. This transfers into so many areas of life.

🐕 Training helps build patience and impulse control. Something your dog would learn quickly as a street dog. Our dogs are so impulsive and impatient and thats because they haven’t had the chance to properly work through impulse control and what it really means to wait, switch off, resist something and cope with frustration.

🐕 Training helps build drive. It sounds simple but the more your dog enjoys working with you, the easier life will be. Do you want your dog to settle in a cafe? Then teach them to stay near you with calmness. Would you like your dog to have a good recall? Then build up the value it what it means to be with you.

Training is a way of communicating with each other and helping your dog learn the skills they will need to succeed with us.

03/11/2025

A little while ago we got message asking if we could offer a home to a 6/7 month old bulldog….

Well here he is. A new addition to the ABDT family.

Meet Blue.

02/11/2025

We have exciting news…but can you guess what it is?

31/10/2025

Very pleased to be awarded 3 Best Rated Dog Trainers, Newbury for another year. A very big thank you to my wonderful clients and team. Here's to another year!

29/10/2025

A bit of an honest one coming up.

I’m a dog trainer and here are my honest worries about getting a new dog.

1. That it will make me miss my old boys even more. Our boys have been gone for over a year now but their memories live on. They were pretty special dogs and I am worried that my next won’t live up to them.

2. I know too much. Thanks to my job, I can now see behaviour issues as they just start to creep in, health issues as they start to show themselves, joint and gait issues stand out to me like crazy. Seeing it all feels like a lot of pressure and might cause me to question everything.

3. Not enough time. I might be a dog trainer but I am busy! We are a busy family. I work pretty much 6-7 days a week and the amount of time I can give a dog (as weird as it sounds) to meet my high standards of what they need, needs to be a consideration.

4. I’ll do a bad job. I think most dog trainers can relate to this. There’s always the fear of failure and not being able to do what I preach! I have to be kind to myself and remember that my boys were the quality dogs they were because I did a good job and I can do it again.

5. Money. Knowing what I know, I will always want the best for my dog. The best food, the best care, hydro, physio, supplements and more. This all costs money and things are more expensive than ever.

💫 Have you been a dog trainer or owner with these feelings? Would love to hear from you.

27/10/2025

My walks with a reactive dog are actually very structured and planned out. They have to be to make each one a success.

I’m in two modes. Either I’m just going for a walk and therefore away from all my dog’s triggers in a calm happy environment OR I’m training.

Each part of my walk is thought about and considered and I try to fit in these things:

🐕 Positive exposure to triggers.
This means that I have thought about and picked where I want to go with my dog to exposure then to their triggers in the right way.

🐕 Some fundamental training.
These are easy training skills that we have started working on at home. They give my dog a chance to practice them in the real world and they are focused around building confidence and engagement.

🐕 Lots of sniffing time.
This is the most important part. A reactive dog is often rushing and stressed so time to slow, sniff and explore is a key part of keeping them calm and able to face the world. My clients often underestimate how much they need to slow their walks down.

🐕 Fun!
This gets lost for both owner and dog when reactivity is a challenge. Incorporating fun into a walk helps keep morale high and minds positive.

💫 Save this for future walks.

26/10/2025

Come join our training community.

🐶 Puppy classes and 121
🐶 Good Companion Awards
🐶 Behaviour
🐶 Reactivity
🐶 Reactive Rehab Membership
🐶 Dynamic Dog gait assessments

We have your dog training needs covered.

🌟 Positive reward based methods only
🌟 Building strong bonds between owners and dogs
🌟 Specialisingin reactivity and behaviour linked to health issues

👉Drop us a DM or WhatsApp for more info.

24/10/2025

4 simple steps to follow for recall success:

1️⃣ Long line
So important! A long line helps you to get it right everytime. Star with a long line to teach basics, practice around different distractions and in different environments.

2️⃣ Put value in being close.
REWARD your dog for checking in, staying close and coming back. If you think you do this well, think again. Most people don’t reward enough.

3️⃣ Practice, practice, practice.
Where most recalls fail is not enough practice. Training needs to be consistent. Every walk, every scenario and every type of distraction.

4️⃣ Proofing.
If you think you’ve practiced enough, try off lead. Try simple scenarios first and work up to bigger ones. If it doesn’t work the you haven’t proofed properly. Put the longline back on and practice again.

💫 Press the follow button. We want to see you again 😄

🐶🐶

23/10/2025

🌟We still have a few spaces on our Foundation classes starting 1st November.

Start your training journey with us here: https://portal.busypaws.app/customers/anna-balch-dog-training-and-behaviour?series_id=486

Perfect for Beginners and pups over 6 months.

22/10/2025

There’s one thing that underpins everything I do with my dogs and my clients dogs. Before training, before counter conditioning and rewarding and management and all that good training stuff.

✨ Communication. Communication in everything. I don’t mean the words we use in our training. I mean your dog and you understanding each other on a deeper level. Forming a bond with them that builds trust, connection, positive patterns and reliability.

Get to know your dog’s quirks. Their preferences. What drives them. What worries them…and LISTEN.

Communication meets your dog’s needs.

“When dogs talk, listen completely. Most people never listen” Ernest Hemingway (almost)

💫 What do you do to bond with your dog?

20/10/2025

There will be signs that your dog’s reactivity is building up and about to show itself. Whether that’s over time or in the moment.

Dogs show signals ✨all the time✨

Here are some examples:
- fixating and staring
- rushing and seeming ‘over excited’
- lip licks, yawns
- moving away
- lifting a paw
- rolling over
- taking their treat or toy to a different room
- growling or grumbling
- wide eyes and worried face
- skittish, flighty panic
- excessive jumping up and mouthing
- body and tail goes stiff
- side eye…

….the list goes on and on.

Our dogs signals are endless, it’s just that we either miss them or mis-understand them. If we keep ignoring them, our dog learns to shout louder!

This can happen over months or seconds.

💫 Drop us a DM if you want to understand your dog’s signals better.

19/10/2025

It’s been a busy month so far!! Seeing colleagues, helping lots of dogs, classes going well, reactive dog group bossing it! It might be coming up to winter but progress is hot and clients are amazing.

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