Parker and Pooch - Dog Training & Solo Walks

05/08/2025

It was little and large dog training at its most extreme last week: first sessions for toy poodle Bobby and deerhound x greyhound Daisy ... size does matter but it also doesn't. Whatever size or shape dog, the most important thing for me is meeting them where they're at - whether that's a wee little puppy who's just starting to learn how the world works, or a teenage tearaway who’s finding that world a frustrating place to be right now - they both need to be heard, to be understood, and to be given the chance (and some help) to make good choices ❤️

[stock photos of toy poodle pup and deerhound lurcher, because I don’t ever think of taking photos during training sessions 🙈 - but believe me when I say that both of them are even cuter than these pics 😍]

01/08/2025

Today is one of my favourite days of the year: it's officially the end of nesting season up on the moors, which means dogs don't have to be on leads on open access moorland 🥳

Most of my walking doggos still won’t be roaming free though. Some of them can't be trusted 🙈 (you know who you are 🤣) And even for the ones that can, we often walk on sheepy land, as it's one of the best ways I know of avoiding other off-lead dogs.

Which means long line time… I love a long line - it gives a dog freedom to run, to explore, to choose which way to go, to just be a dog ❤️ While still keeping them and other living beings safe 🥰

They need to be handled with care though, and they're not right for all dogs in all situations - I was going to write a whole post about long lines, and then I remembered that awesome fellow local dog trainer, the lovely Gemma at Wutheringhounds, did just that the other week 🤩 So have a read of this for an excellent write-up of the pros and cons of long lines:

On last nights connection webinar we discussed the 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨. So I thought I’d do a post about it as some people may find it useful.

A long line is a long fixed ( not extendable ) lead. It should be used in conjunction with a harness. It allows your dog more freedom whilst you are training them to be responsive to your cues/commands outside. They are great tools but they have many downsides too, and it’s important to be aware of these should you have to use one or choose to put your dog on one whilst training.

𝙋𝙍𝙊𝙎

✅ It is a great tool when teaching recall. Some owners may be worried about letting their dog off the lead straight away, so a long line can provide a safety net and confidence whilst cues are being established and proofed to various distractions.

✅It can be great for preventing unwanted behaviours becoming established in young dogs- chasing behaviours, running over to other dogs and people etc.

✅ They can be used for older dogs who have learnt to bog off as soon as the lead is removed. Disconnecting as soon as the lead is removed is something we really don’t want, especially with working breeds who can learn that the environment is so reinforcing. If a dog has learnt that the environment is fun, a long line may be required to keep them close in order for training to happen. You can’t train a dog that is 3 fields away!

✅ They are great for safety. An out of control dog is not a safe one, so whilst behaviours are established a long lead can be helpful in some cases. A good example of when I used a long line for safety reasons whilst training my own dog…. Newt was frightened of traffic, I wanted to make the traffic less scary but food just wasn’t cutting it. There was a patch of grass near a quiet ish road near me. We went daily and played hunting games on that patch of grass. This built Newts confidence around traffic noises as hunting is her favourite thing to do and I paired the sound of traffic with something she loves. It simply wouldn’t have been safe to do this activity off lead when she was so young.

✅In instances where you cannot manage the environment as well as you’d like, a long line can be useful.

𝘾𝙊𝙉𝙎

✅ People can sometimes get complacent when their dog is attached to a long line. We know they are safe and they’re not going anywhere so we might rest on our laurels a bit and not be as engaging and interesting ( people generally try harder when their dog is free!). If you want to work towards a great connection and the end goal of the long line being removed it’s important that you train your dog that is attached to the line in the same manner you would if they were free!

✅ Environmental management is still so important even if your dog is attached to a long lead. As above, if your end goal is to work on getting a great connection and a good response to cues, you still need to work in an environment and around distractions that are conducive to your training goals.

✅ If you don’t manage your environment appropriately this can result in frustration. In a high distraction environment that your dog is not ready for, you will likely get frustration. As discussed in the webinar last night, with these working line gundogs we don’t want to constantly be the person who prevents them from doing the things that their genetics are telling them to do. The long line can work as that barrier that prevents these things if we don’t work at a level that our dogs can manage. This can be relationship damaging, and incredibly frustrating for both your dog, and you. Work with their genetics, not against them!

✅ Dogs can sometimes become what is known as long line savvy. This generally happens when owners sometimes put the long line on and sometimes don’t. Dogs can quickly learn that the same rules don’t apply when they are fully free. When using a long line with your dog it is best to keep the line on and be consistent until you worked through the issues you’re having. Dogs can be weaned off long lines gradually for those that have become savvy, but it prolongs the process compared to a dog that has had consistency.

✅ It can be difficult managing dogs on long lines properly in regards to entanglement and also risk of injury. You can go online and google correct long line management and you will find correct techniques that will minimise risk of injury to yourself or your dog. But it can be hard work having a busy dog that likes to dive into cover, or to train hunting whilst a line is attached, but sometimes the difficulty out weighs the negatives.

The end goal for the vast majority of dogs will be that the line is temporary whilst training is put in place. How long a long line may be required will be individual to each dog, and often depends on their life experiences and previous learning. Long lines are great tools, and are invaluable for management in some cases but there are things to be mindful of if you have to use one, or choose to use one as discussed above.

𝘿𝙄𝙎𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙄𝙈𝙀𝙍: I couldn’t find a long line picture, so here’s one of a young Badger with his lips stuck on his teefs 😬

29/07/2025

When I stopped walking the legend that is Layla Dog a few months ago, her lovely human Fran gave me a card with some very kind words inside and a very healthy looking houseplant.

(Side note: me and Fran are very much on the same wavelength... she sellotaped the card to the plant pot when she left them out for me. My overthinking brain was very appreciative of that, so I didn't have to worry about whether I was actually just stealing her favourite plant that happened to be sitting on the kitchen table propping up the envelope 🙈)

She said she hoped I like plants. And I told her I do, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm better with dogs.

My approach to caring for plants is one of feast and famine. Or rather famine and feast.

Step 1: Never remember to water for weeks. Possibly months.

Step 2: Realise it's a near-drought situation, but somehow still forget to get round to watering it.

Step 3: Finally action stations - water it every day for a week in desperate hope of keeping it alive but actually just nearly drown it instead. Sort of waterboarding for plants if you will. Kind of.

Step 4: Realise I've managed to near-simultaneously both under-water and over-water it. Arguably a skill in itself.

I know you're wondering how I can bring the topic of waterboarding back to dog training. But I can. And I will.

I never set my training clients tonnes of stuff to do between sessions. (And I try to stop myself from calling it homework, because who wants homework - except teachers and ex-teachers, who it turns out love the stuff 🤷‍♀️)

Because tonnes of stuff to do is over-watering. It's too much for the human and it's too much for the dog. It's too much for the soil and it's too much for the plant. The human gets bogged down in everything, just like the soil. And the dog wilts with the effort of it all. (Just let me know if I'm milking the analogy too much 🤣)

But nothing to do between sessions is just as bad in a different way: not practising skills is not the way to make progress. Just like not watering plants is not the way to keep them alive.

So as it turns out, the goldilocks formula for both watering plants and dog training is little and often.

Every day, grab 5 or 10 treats, practise something new or something that needs sharpening up. Done.

(And keep little pots of treats round the house and/or get yourself a treat pouch for walks, so you always have rewards to hand)

And meanwhile Fran, I promise I will do my best to salvage the plant situation 🙈 I did tell you I was better with dogs…

24/07/2025

If you could go back in time - what's one thing you wish you'd known when your dog first came into your life, or when you first started encountering issues?

I'll go first. I mean I can think of tonnes, but here's just one...

Back in the day, when Alice started growling at dogs that we walked past, rather than playing “Growl or No Growl” (true story… please don’t judge us 🙏) and gradually realising there was no point playing anymore as it was all Growls and no No Growls 🙈 - I wish I’d known that she was scared and felt trapped on the lead.

And I feel a bit stupid saying that. Because it seems so obvious to me now. But that's the point isn't it, you don't know what you don't know 🤷‍♀️ And that's ok. Maya Angelou may or may not have said it, but the point still stands: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, you do better.” 🥰

So how about you? What do you know now that you wish you'd known then?

[back in the day photo from 2018 - not much has changed: I had shorter hair, she’s still staring longingly off into the distance 🤣]

22/07/2025

Our little monster (affectionately known as, due to her mouse eating habit 🤮) is definitely slowing down these days, 9+ years with only three legs has well and truly caught up with her. Although not that you'd know it when she catches the scent of a deer / squirrel / rabbit / pheasant / hedgehog 🙈

And thinking on it has put me in a reflective mood.

I'm not going to lie, sometimes I get jealous when I hear how other people describe their relationship with their dog(s): they're excited to see them when they get home, they enjoy cuddling up with their humans, they comfort them when they're upset or not feeling 100%.

Whereas a lot of the time I don't feel that we have much of a connection at all with Alice, even after all these years.

She’s as independent as they come, she's always kept herself to herself (although some of that we know now was pain related).

Outside the house she is way too interested in sniffs and wildlife for anything like eye contact or interaction most of the time.

She'll still make a dart for an open doorway, the call of the wild is strong. We half joke that she'd be happiest if we released her up on the moors, where she could live out her days hunting little critters, without all the trappings of ‘pet ownership’.

And yet...

Sometimes she'll choose to lie with her nose or her head pressed into my leg. She doesn't want any more physical contact than that, she doesn't want to be stroked - but she wants to be near, just on her own terms.

I know her inside and out.

I know that a single cheek puff means she can just about cope with the dog coming towards us but really she'd like a little more space.

Or the briefest of glances up at me means she just needs a bit of verbal reassurance.

I can tell from her coat swirls and how she holds her ears as to whether her hind muscles are tight and if we need to take it easy for a couple of days.

And while I'm not 100% fluent in her howly growly chat, I can have a pretty good stab at what she's saying (mostly that it's tea time).

So we do have a bond, me and my beautiful girl.

Not in an overly obvious shout it from the rooftops kind of way. But instead a more subtle gentle connection, that in fact I think I'm all the luckier for ❤️

17/07/2025

When those cleverclogs invented the English language they didn’t consider the fact that when you spell out "T - E - A" in front of your dog, you’ve already said “tea” for the first letter did they? Not so clever now huh, cleverclogs 🤔

15/07/2025

Things People Say That Really Get My Goat #7

“Who's taking who for a walk?”

Usually said in a jovial tone, sometimes with no malice meant whatsoever, but sometimes in quite a judgy way. Either in response to seeing:

A) A dog pulling on the end of the lead, while the human is seemingly being dragged behind

B) A human waiting patiently while a dog sniffs, or maybe decides which way they'd like to walk

If it's scenario A, I can pretty much guarantee that the human is not enjoying the walk (I also imagine it's not an overly pleasant experience for the dog too). And the passerby pointing that out doesn't make it any more enjoyable or less frustrating for anyone.

And if it's scenario B? Well personally I take that as a compliment 🤩 I want a dog walk to be the dog's walk, not mine.

The thing I love most about doing solo dog walks? I get to make it exactly the walk the dog wants it to be.

(Within reason…

Mr B, you’re not allowed to pull me down the garden path because you’re so excited to see me ❤️

Tess, you're not allowed to keep choosing paths that lead away from the car so we go over our 30 minute time limit which means your little ol' legs will get achey and tired later on that day ❤️

I know I know, I’m so mean)

But you want to sniff the grass by the side of the car for ten minutes before we set off Annie, even though to anyone else that doesn’t seem like part of the walk? We’ll do that ❤️

You want to go up the hill, get halfway up, decide you want to come back to check out the men doing tree surgery at the bottom, then go around the pond but halfway round you want to turn back, then decide you want to get back in the car and walk somewhere else instead Willow? We’ll do all of that ❤️

You want to walk at half the speed you normally do because you want to sniff ALL the sniffs Juno? We’ll do that ❤️

You want to jump in the deepest boggiest pond you can find and bark at the water Tyra? We'll do that ❤️ (I mean I won't, but you absolutely can)

Dogs have so little choice in their lives - we decide when and what they eat, often where they sleep, when they can toilet, when they can go for a walk - I think the least we can do is give them a choice about what they do and where they go on their walks 🥰

(And maybe the least other people can do is not pass judgement on that 🤷‍♀️)

10/07/2025

Not everything you read on the internet is true.

And some of it is true, but not helpful.

(I absolutely do appreciate the irony that you're reading this on the internet.)

When we first brought Alice home and we were trying to work on her recall and her ability to not go nuts every time she saw some wildlife, I read a LOT of stuff on the internet.

Stuff like: “Give her a treat every time she checks in with you on a walk.”

Ok great.

We'd be out for an hour's walk. I'd be poised and ready with my tasty snacks…

60 minutes, not one check-in. Not one single glance in my direction. Not one f*ck given that I was even at the other end of the lead.

“Give her a treat every time she checks in with you on a walk” wasn't bad advice.

[In fact its great advice: Reward and therefore reinforce the behaviours you like, the more you'll get of them. And the more engagement and connection you get from your dog, the more chance you've got of them being able to disengage and disconnect from other things, whether that's wildlife, dogs, people, or anything else they're excited about or worried by.]

But it wasn't useful advice to me. Not at that time.

Not all the advice on the internet is wrong.

But it might not be right for you and your dog. Your individual dog: their breed type, their genetics, their age, their background and life experiences. Your situation: the environment you live in, the environments you walk your dog in.

Which is why working with a trainer - who can tailor their advice to your particular set of circumstances - is invaluable.

I mean I know I would say this, I'm a trainer 🤣 But it’s true.

Want to find out more about working with me? Head to my website (the link is at the top of my page) to book a free call, or send me a message on 07866 404866, and let’s get you started 🤩

08/07/2025

Turn the sound up for the best advert ever for my dog walks… a very contented post-walk Tess ❤️ I can't decide which is cuter, the breathing or the lip smacking 🤷‍♀️

03/07/2025

Growling is good.‌

I think the growl is one of the most easily recognisable but also most easily misunderstood forms of dog communication.‌

And I say “communication”, because that's all it is.‌

A dog growling brings out all sorts of emotions in us - much more so than barking and lunging I think. Fear, and worry, and a feeling that our dog definitely should not be growling. At anyone or anything. It’s aggressive, right?‌

But a growl is just a growl.

It truly is just a form of communication.‌

Alice has her teeny-tiny-very-polite-you-can-barely-hear-it growl: a very measured “please could you stop what you're doing I don't really like it”.‌

This might come out when I’m towelling her down when she’s wet and muddy and I’ve tried to be careful but I’ve moved her off balance and she feels vulnerable. Or she’s a bit sore somewhere and I hadn’t realised. It came out at the vets last week when the vet was manipulating her hind legs to check her muscle mass and she wasn’t very keen on that idea.‌

She knows she doesn’t need anything more than the teeny tiny growl, because it’s listened to. If she’s growling, it’s for a good reason. So I stop what I’m doing, and work out what’s going on, what it is that she’s trying to tell me.‌

Then she has her “f*ck the f*ck off” growl. The one you’re more likely to hear on tv animal documentaries… not so polite, not so measured 🙈🤣‌

Usually brought out in degrees of escalation when the teeny tiny growl is ignored. Or when she doesn’t get the chance to be polite, e.g. because an off-lead “friendly” dog has charged over and got right in her face.‌

Personally I wouldn’t call either of those growls aggressive. Aggression has many (sometimes contradictory) definitions, but at the heart of it, aggression is an intent to do harm.‌

Growls on the other hand, are generally designed to make things stop or go away. A dog growling is asking you to back off, so that they don’t have to resort to the next level of communication.‌

[note: there are also lots of other growls that have nothing to do with anything that you might consider to be aggression… body language and context are key: Alice for example also has a frustration growl, and a play growl, and of course her howly growly backchat growl when she wants her tea - see her photo below 😍]‌

If you ignore the growl and carry on, or worse still, punish the growl - you're not listening. And what does someone do when they're not listened to? They shout louder. And next time, the growl becomes an air snap, or even a bite.‌

No matter how disturbing you find it that your dog is growling - whether it’s at you or someone else - believe me it’s better than them NOT growling.‌

(And if your dog has moved from barking and lunging at other dogs, to just quietly growling at them? Celebrate that growl! 🥳 A dog that has progressed from feeling the need for a big showy demonstration of f*ck-off-ness, to just a little growl of displeasure - that is HUGE 🤩)‌

If your dog’s behaviour is worrying you - growl or no growl - then head to my website (the link is at the top of my page) to book a free call, or send me a message on 07866 404866, and let’s start to find out what’s really going on 🥰

01/07/2025

You can lead a horse to water...

26/06/2025

I was thinking about rainbows today. And wait, you guessed it - how they relate to reactive dogs.

Now you might be thinking this is because it’s Pride Month…. well I'd love to say that's true, but believe me when I say that my social media content is not that well planned or thought out. At all.

But, I was standing out in the rain this morning waiting for Alice to decide if she was going to actually go for a walk or not, and the sun was trying to battle its way through the cloud. And it got me thinking about rainbows.

[How are rainbows even just sitting there in the sky? Never mind the bonkersness of double rainbows. I know I could google it but who wants to spoil such things with actual science. I like to think there’s a little pixie in each raindrop, and they each hold up a little piece of red or orange or yellow (etc) glass, and it catches in the sunlight. I realise that would require a lot of organisation and coordination from said pixies, to get the whole rainbow effect shebang. But a girl can dream]

Anyhow. Rainbows. You can’t get rainbows without sun AND rain. Fact. I’m not 100% sure about the whole pixie thing, but I do know that much is true.

And how on earth does that relate to barky lungey dogs I hear you ask?

I’m so glad you did.

There’s lots of actual literal rain when you share your life with a barky lungey dog. All the wet weather walks that you learn to love because thank god the idiots with the “but he’s just friendly!” dogs never venture out in the torrential rain.

And there’s all the metaphorical rain too: the days, months, years of dreading walk times, of being out on walks wishing the ground would swallow you up when your dog kicks off. The wondering whether having a dog should be this hard, and the dawning realisation that unless something changes, it’s going to be this hard for a long long time. And you actually google how long do dogs live for, and then you feel really really guilty for even thinking it.

But. The glorious but. When you do find something or someone (hi 👋) that can help, and you start understanding why your dog is doing what they're doing, and you start learning how you can make life better for them, and you...?

Well then you're one step closer to that magical day. The satisfaction, the elation, the heartfelt joy that you experience - the first time that your dog DOESN’T react. That teeny tiny moment of pure gold, that no-one else even notices, and definitely doesn’t give a sh*t about? That is some proud dog-mama sunshine right there ❤️🌈