Welsh Dog Whisperer

01/11/2025

Mirroring work in puppy class this morning

24/10/2025

02/10/2025

Hi everyone here are the dates for the final puppy course of 2025 🙂

The classes will run from my training centre in taibach, Port Talbot.

Cost = £90 for a 6 week course and they run at **11.00am - 12.00pm** on a Saturday Morning.

On the course we will cover -

Marker training - My six marker sounds and how to use them

obedience commands - sit, down, stand, stay, recall, leave. Learn how to switch your dog off to distractions at home. Impulse control. Heel work. Off lead socialising. Confidence building on my assault course and road safety.

There are a couple of weeks off due to me being away with the family/coaching commitments.

Dates are as follows

October 18th

ONE WEEK OFF

November 1st
November 8th

ONE WEEK OFF

November 22nd
November 29th
December 6th (assessment)

Can you please confirm that you will be attending by texting me on 07806788333?

I will then send directions to my centre and what you need to bring

Thank you

_*Please note - the puppies need to be aged 3 - 6 months when starting the course. Smaller breeds can be a little older *_

07/08/2025

Hi everyone here are the dates for the summer puppy course 🙂

The classes will run from my training centre in taibach, Port Talbot.

Cost = £90 for a 6 week course and they run at **11.00am - 12.00pm** on a Saturday Morning.

On the course we will cover -

Marker training - My six marker sounds and how to use them

obedience commands - sit, down, stand, stay, recall, leave. Learn how to switch your dog off to distractions at home. Impulse control. Heel work. Off lead socialising. Confidence building on my assault course and road safety.

There are a couple of weeks off due to me being away with the family.

Dates are as follows

August 16th
August 23rd

ONE WEEK OFF

September 6th
September 13th
September 20th
September 27th (assessment)

Can you please confirm that you will be attending by texting me on 07806788333?

I will then send directions to my centre and what you need to bring

Thank you

_*Please note - the puppies need to be aged 3 - 6 months when starting the course. Smaller breeds can be a little older *_

16/06/2025

You may remember a post about an XL bully named Titan that had to be neutered but his heart wasn’t well enough to go through the procedure. Unfortunately his health has deteriorated considerably and his owners have had to make the decision that it isn’t fair on him anymore. XL bullies have had such bad attention of late but I have had the pleasure of working with some absolutely beautiful XL’s and none more so than Titan. He was amazing with my family, so affectionate with me, live wire at my centre and he had such an amazing friendship with my Dobe Ben. I can’t thank his family more for letting me be so involved in his training. He is a credit to the breed and dogs in general. Vicky, Ben and their son Roman were lovely enough to call to my house to let me see him one more time. Titan was his usual self showing me with affection but then lost energy very quickly. His heart just can’t function anymore. 20 months old is way too young but he had made a huge impact upon a lot of people in that short time 💔

06/06/2025

I love involving my dogs in everything I do. Hiking, mountain biking, going out in my kayak or on my paddle board. I love setting time aside for training/playing with each of my dogs. However sometimes there’s nothing better than just relaxing and having your best friend at your side 🥰 Happy Friday everyone

04/06/2025

After our morning walk it was time for some individual fun with my four today. I’ve spent plenty of time using balls and tug toys for excitement training but today I introduced them to a flirt pole. Just five or six minutes each and they were all ready to settle down. It took around half an hour rotating and playing with them all. It didn’t all go perfect but that’s dog training. Doesn’t help that I was holding the camera in one hand and the flirt pole in the other but I think this reel shows how much fun all four had and as I always say - whether you have a big or small dog they all need the same time spent playing/training

22/05/2025

Bo is one week away from the end of her training period. She has taken massive steps forward over the last three weeks. Yesterday was spent concentrating on lead work and she was brilliant around dogs, ducks, Swans, cyclists and some other distractions that she would normally have found very difficult to ignore. Today we used any distractions available to us when she was free roaming with the other dogs.

I always say our dogs live in three states of mind -

1) switched on - here they are already engaged with us during a task or playing. They can ignore distractions because they are already focussed on the handler.
2) switched off - we’ve asked them to settle either on a loose lead or a set place (as shown in the previous video using the place command)
3) free roaming - just part of the family free roaming at home, in the garden or off lead on a walk.

It’s been important to spend equal amounts of time working on all three. In this video you’ll see Bo in the field with the other dogs and a local primary school walks past. The excitement of all the children would definitely have triggered Bo to bark and become territorial of the area in the past. Today I allowed her to make her own decision fully prepared to give direction if needed. Once she did a great job here I asked her to sit and switched my continuation marker (clicker) for my excitement marker (the word “free”) where she came to me to get a reward. This meant that we used the same distractions but worked on her decision making when free roaming and when she’s given direction. She was excellent again and is definitely understanding that remaining calm/disengaging from distractions is more fun than reacting 😊

16/05/2025

Upside of being a LhaPom and living with Dobermanns is your bodyguards are never far from your side. Downside of being a dog that lives this close to the floor is you need more grooms after hiking up Kilvey Hill every morning. Leia is back to her pretty little self, well at least for the next six weeks 😂

15/05/2025

Meet Bo the Cane Corso. Bo has come to me for help with her reactivity on the lead, fine tuning her social skills and to help control her guarding instincts at home.

I spent the first two weeks working on Bo’s understating of my marker system -
Preparation marker - “Ready”
Excitement positive marker - “Free”
Calm continuation marker - (clicker)
Prevention marker - “aaa”
Wrong marker - “no”
Finish marker - “break”

As always part of the training has been spent creating a safe place. To create/maintain a safe place you need to remember my five D’s to teach your dog to switch off on command -
Direct
Disengage
Distance
Distraction
Duration

Bo has been achieving very good results both at home and in less stimulating places. Well today I decided to progress her training by bringing her safe place into the field. I decided to use my boy Ben to help her because they have a strong bond and she tends to copy him on occasion. Here you will see that I have DIRECTED them both to the safe place. I DISENGAGE and create DISTANCE. There are multiple DISTRACTIONS being used and the DURATION will gradually increase over time.

My continuation marker (clicker) is used to let them both know they’re doing well. Notice they don’t move after receiving the rewards as the clicker has been used to communicate that I want them to continue with the current behaviour. The finish marker “break” is used to end the exercise.

This has been a big step in the right direction for Bo 😊