The South Shields Dog Trainer

The South Shields Dog Trainer Dog trainer

🏆 Twice Voted UK Best Dog Trainers by the public
🥇 5x Winner Dog/Puppy Trainer/Behaviourist of the Year
🌟 500+ 5 star Reviews
🎓 Qualified and Accredited
🐶 5000+ Dogs
🤝 Recommended By Vets, Dog Groomers, Dog Walkers, Pet Shops and More!

Poppy and George Graduated from South Shields Puppy Class on Monday. They have both achieved so much and gained lots of ...
05/08/2025

Poppy and George Graduated from South Shields Puppy Class on Monday. They have both achieved so much and gained lots of confidence over the 6 week course. Next course start on the 11th! who's in?

How to slow down a spaniel! 🐾We’ve been back to see Rory — a lovely little King Charles Cavalier.He’s very, very excitab...
05/08/2025

How to slow down a spaniel! 🐾

We’ve been back to see Rory — a lovely little King Charles Cavalier.
He’s very, very excitable… and originally, he just didn’t stop at all. All day.

He couldn’t switch off.
He always had to be doing something — usually trying to involve his owners.
Although they love him to bits, it was getting a bit much.

🥱 He couldn’t rest
😴 He couldn’t sleep
😖 And when he got tired, he started getting a bit naughty

We put things in place:
🧸 Toys at certain times of day
🔕 Removing stimulation at others
🧠 Reinforcing calm behaviours like lying down
🗓️ A bit more of a daily schedule

We’ve just started looking at his separation anxiety too — very early days.

This session was at the World of Dogs, where we looked at his:
– Recall
– Loose leash walking

Rory is excitable and independent outside. He wants to sniff, run, and mark everything in sight (full swing adolescence). So we:

🦴 Swapped to high-value treats
🏃‍♂️ Used runaway recalls to create urgency
👀 Taught a “what’s this?” cue
🏓 Played ping pong games to encourage check-ins

All of this helps transition into a more focused, calmer loose leash walk.

One session to go — we’ll either continue with recall and leash work, or focus on his separation anxiety.

Well done Rory. Amazing work from his owners too 👏

River the Great Dane 🐶We were at Saltwell Park with River — a young female Great Dane 🐕‍🦺Originally, she struggled quite...
04/08/2025

River the Great Dane 🐶

We were at Saltwell Park with River — a young female Great Dane 🐕‍🦺

Originally, she struggled quite a lot with other dogs and meeting new people.

She could bark, she could lunge — and being a huge Great Dane, that can be scary.

But River is doing fantastic.

She’s more than happy now to just walk past people and most dogs.

Before, that would’ve triggered a reaction. Now, she’s managing beautifully.

We’ve worked on:

👣 Counter-conditioning so she can look back at her owner
🧠 Changing the owner’s behaviour too — avoiding the quick pull back that predicts a reaction

River absolutely loves attention… but only when she’s comfortable.

It takes a few moments to warm up — and that’s okay.

During this session:

🐶 She walked past loads of dogs with no issue
👫 She met people (and even children!) calmly

She’s calming down. She’s learning to think. And she’s doing really, really well 💛

Well done to Claire and River — you’re both doing great.

🐾 No More Fights and reactivity sorted 💪Meet Luna, the little Cockapoo 🐶We were originally called out because she and Ra...
02/08/2025

🐾 No More Fights and reactivity sorted 💪

Meet Luna, the little Cockapoo 🐶

We were originally called out because she and Ralph (the other dog in the house) were fighting at home.

It was random, really stressful for the owners - and the fights were quite bad.

But now?

✅ The fights have completely stopped
✅ That is no longer a problem

Now we’ve been focusing on Luna’s reactivity…

She was:

🚗 Reactive to traffic (but only in her street)
🐕 Reactive to other dogs, especially big dogs

We’ve done a couple of sessions already, and today we went to Plessey Woods.

She met Chloe (my German shepherd) and plenty other dogs on a walk and was completely fine.

Luna can now:

👀 Look at a dog
👋 Look back at her owner
🧠 Stay calm, even around traffic back in her street

She’s doing absolutely fantastic 💛

We’ve got one session left, and we’ll be working on recall - especially around birds, because they can chase.

Luna, Ralph and her owners have absolutely smashed everything we started out wanting to achieve.

👏 Well done to the dogs. Well done to the owners. You’ve done fantastic.

🥺 Molly the Little Toe Biter 🐾We headed to the far side of Blaydon to see Molly - a tiny, very cute Wirehaired Dachshund...
01/08/2025

🥺 Molly the Little Toe Biter 🐾

We headed to the far side of Blaydon to see Molly - a tiny, very cute Wirehaired Dachshund 🐶

At home she’s a loving, happy little dog.
But on walks she can be quite nervous 😟

She’s reactive to children… dogs… and doesn’t like meeting new people.
Occasionally she’ll even try to bite toes 😬

Today was all about the basics:

– Stopping the reactivity in the garden (where she’s surrounded by dogs)
– Starting the counter-conditioning process
– Teaching the marker cue

We taught her to look at the dog…

✅ Say the marker word
✅ Reward when she looks back (or deliver food if she can’t)
✅ Repeat until she automatically checks in with her owners

From here, everything changes.

She can’t bark at a dog while she’s looking at her owner. Confidence goes up. Reactivity goes down.

The fear starts to fade 💛

By the end of her first session, she looked at Chloe and then looked back at her owners!

She still needs distance, and more practice — but she’s off to a fantastic start.

👏 Well done Molly. Well done to her owners.
We’ll be back soon for session two!

Puppies doing amazing work practicing their impulse control amd leave it.
30/07/2025

Puppies doing amazing work practicing their impulse control amd leave it.

🥲 His Little Legs Were the Problem All Along…We visited Max in North Shields — a lovely Dachshund x Poodle 🐕He’s sweet, ...
29/07/2025

🥲 His Little Legs Were the Problem All Along…

We visited Max in North Shields — a lovely Dachshund x Poodle 🐕

He’s sweet, clever… but struggles around some bigger dogs.

When he sees them, he starts stalking and can’t break focus. But during this session, we barely saw any big dogs — so we focused on other big issues:

🏠 Barking at home
🌳 Barking in the garden
👀 Barking out the window
🚶‍♂️ Randomly stopping on walks

Max would lie down and refuse to move unless bribed or dragged. After trying a few things, we realised the real issue…

His little legs just couldn’t keep up 😅

His owner walks quickly, and Max was simply struggling with the pace. Once we slowed everything down to his speed, he walked beautifully — no stopping, no stress.

🐾 His reactivity training is coming on brilliantly
🧊 He’s doing great with the Fridge Game for resource guarding too

This was only Max’s second session and the progress is amazing already.

👏 Well done to Max and his owner — you’re doing a brilliant job!

Can’t wait to see you again soon.

🐾 Dexter’s Second Session – Timing, Tweaks & a Working System 🐶The final dog on Golden Retriever Monday was Dexter, the ...
23/07/2025

🐾 Dexter’s Second Session – Timing, Tweaks & a Working System 🐶

The final dog on Golden Retriever Monday was Dexter, the Golden Retriever 💛

(Side note – if you’re a Dexter fan of the TV series, there’s a new season out and I am fully into it. But back to dogs rather than serial killers! 😂)

Dexter had his second session this week and it went really well 👏

The training from the first session had worked to a point, but it wasn’t going as smoothly as we’d hoped.

Why?

👉 The timing was slightly out
👉 The distance was slightly off
👉 Dexter was either very focused on the food or very focused on the dog

If the food came out first, he didn’t notice the dog.
If the dog came out first, he didn’t notice the food.

What we need is:

🐶 Dexter noticing the dog first
🍗 Then being able to focus on the food

That’s how we’ll teach him to stop reacting to dogs and look back at his owners when he sees one.

We made some slight tweaks to the system:

✅ Adjusted the distance from dogs
✅ Changed the timing of when the food came out

This made a really big difference 🔥
He saw a load of dogs – and looked back to his owners for the food… instead of pulling or lying down and trying to jump on them.

So well done to Dexter 👏
Well done to his owners 🙌
We’ll be back soon to start closing that distance.
Now we have that working system in place – it’s time to start levelling this up!

🐶 Meet Scout – Soaked, Silly, and Stealing Socks! ☔🧦Next up on Golden Retriever Monday, we were in Hebburn to see Scout,...
22/07/2025

🐶 Meet Scout – Soaked, Silly, and Stealing Socks! ☔🧦

Next up on Golden Retriever Monday, we were in Hebburn to see Scout, the Golden Retriever 🐾

Scout, like most Golden Retrievers, is a really, really nice dog – really friendly – but can react to other dogs.

We think this is frustration-based – he’s just too excited to see the dogs, and this shows when he tries to play with them. He gets a bit over the top.

Unfortunately, we got rained off in this session before I actually got to see this first-hand…

Instead, we all got absolutely drenched 🌧️

In the house, we introduced:

🎯 Marker cue
🎯 Focus Games

These will be used when Scout sees other dogs to bring his focus back onto his owners and gradually teach him to be calmer around other dogs – something we’ll work on next time.

We also looked at Scout and his obsession with stealing everything he can get his teeth on 🧻🧦

Things like socks, paper towels, tea towels – if he can steal it, he will eat it!

We chatted through:

✅ Appropriate alternative behaviours as an outlet
✅ Prevention methods
✅ Leaving cues and drop cues

All in all, Scout is doing really, really well 💛
He’s getting neutered this week – best of wishes to him!

We look forward to seeing Scout again soon 🐾

🐾 Golden Retriever Monday Continued – Meet Maisie the Golden Doodle 🐶Next up, we were in Gateshead on Golden Retriever M...
21/07/2025

🐾 Golden Retriever Monday Continued – Meet Maisie the Golden Doodle 🐶

Next up, we were in Gateshead on Golden Retriever Monday to see Maisie the Golden Doodle 🦴

Maisie is a really nice dog, but she’s quite anxious.

We’ve seen her a few times before, but haven’t seen her in a while – so this was a catch-up check-in to tighten a few things up ✅

We covered an awful lot in this session:

🐕 Getting her to settle when people come over
🐕 Dog-dog resource-guarding
🐕 When she resource-guards from other dogs
🐕 Avoiding people when she’s out, but trying to get behind them to learn about them
🐕 Barking at people when they pay attention to her when she’s out
🐕 Her behaviour in cafes
🐕 A whole host of other things!

Maisie is doing really well with all of these things 🙌
We just needed to refine and take some of this training to the next stage.

Well done to her owners 👏
Well done to Maisie 🐾
Everyone’s doing fantastic, and I’ll see you again soon!

It was a day of Golden Retrievers and Golden Retriever Mixers on Monday this week!First up was Magnolia, the Golden Retr...
20/07/2025

It was a day of Golden Retrievers and Golden Retriever Mixers on Monday this week!

First up was Magnolia, the Golden Retriever cross Newfoundland, in South Shields.
She’s about one year old – still very young – and she just wants to play with everyone and everything 🐾

On her walks, she’s really nice, but she can fixate on other dogs, really pull towards them, and be a bit much when she tries to play, especially given her size.

We’ve been working on getting her to check back in when she sees other dogs.
And she did this really, really well 🙌

✅ Sees a dog ➡️ looks back at her owner for a treat
✅ Starting to ignore dogs that aren’t paying her attention
✅ Reading all the right signals from other dogs
✅ Still needs a bit more practice – but she’s almost there

If a dog pays attention to her and tries to play, she still wants to pull towards them… but that isn’t too bad, because she’s responding well and reading things right.

Magnolia has done really, really well.
Her owner had done really, really well.
And I’ll be back to see her soon 💛

More puppy graduates from our South Shields venture. They all did amazing and we wish them well in there future.
19/07/2025

More puppy graduates from our South Shields venture. They all did amazing and we wish them well in there future.

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The Waggy Warehouse
South Shields
NE335TE

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+447893950688

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