What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 9pm Tuesday 8am - 9pm Wednesday 8am - 9pm Thursday 8am - 9pm Friday 8am - 9pm Saturday 8am - 9pm Sunday 9am - 9pm

ABC Dogs NZ, Mosgiel (2026)

03/09/2026

We photograph the extraordinary bits.
The beach trip.
The hike where they somehow found every splodge of mud.
Their birthday.
The first day they came home.

Those are the days that make us take our phone out our pocket and pop that photo into our camera roll.
But they're actually such a tiny part of a dog's life.

Most of it is wonderfully, completely ordinary.

It's the same patch of warm sunshine they find on the floor every morning.
The same yawny stretch when they first get up off their favourite rug.
The same sniff around the garden they've done hundreds of times before.

It's hearing the fridge open from three rooms away and running through because there's the tiniest of possibilities it's "snack time"

Watching the world from their favourite spot.
Knowing roughly when someone is due home and the wiggle waggle dancing when they're right.

It's that ridiculous little bedtime routine that somehow became a routine without anyone thinking it was one.

The head appearing around the bathroom door.
The head pushing in between your knees for a bit of love.

Nothing "worthy" of getting the camera out for.
Except it is.

And maybe that's exactly why we underestimate it.
Because those ordinary, boring days aren't the gaps between the important ones.
They're most of the life we actually share with our dogs.

And for them?
Familiar people.
Familiar smells.
Their favourite sleeping spot.
A wander.
A sniff.
Dinner arriving approximately three minutes later than they believe it should

And another evening spent somewhere they're safe, loved and adored.

That doesn't sound like a day where nothing happened.

It sounds like a pretty good ordinary day.
"Extraordinary" in it's own way.

02/09/2026

You're trying but getting nowhere fast.
Reactivity. It gets attention.

Everything else?
Not so much.

Does that matter?
Absolutely it does.

You can be fighting a losing battle day in, day out if the "whole" isn't looked at.

Whether we want to see that bigger picture, that's another thing altogether.
Because it can be deeply uncomfortable to audit their life and our life with them.

And often we can't see that bigger picture because we're simply too close to it.

We think something doesn't matter.
That it has nothing to do with "the issue".
But it can absolutely fuel it.

Sometimes the things we dismiss are the very things that need to be addressed.

Training?
That's one part of working with a reactive dog.

Everything else?
Everything plays a part in a dog's life.

How can it not?

If the children are so active in your home that they're constantly turning your dog's "on switch"?
That matters.

If there is arguing and tension inside the home?
That matters.

If your dog spends every afternoon highly alert, watching the world go past the window?
That matters.

If there's tension between the dogs in the home that never quite becomes a fight, so it's dismissed as nothing?
It absolutely matters.
It all matters.

None of these things means we've suddenly found "the cause".
There won't necessarily be a "eureka" moment here.

But imagine trying to teach a dog to cope better with one difficult part of their life while ignoring all the other things making that life harder.

Maybe, just maybe, we are looking in all the wrong places for a solution.

02/09/2026

Where do we draw the line?
Abusive practices exist.

We don't live in a sugar coated world and we can't pretend they're not out there.

I've heard a lot of chatter from trainers who simply turn their backs and won't work with people when they see things they consider abusive.
I understand why, I really do.

But I've always struggled with that.

Because turning away can do nothing more than leave a dog in the exact same circumstances that made us want to turn away in the first place.
And those practices aren't always obvious to the person doing them either.

Some genuinely don't see that what they're doing is wrong.
Why?
Because nobody has ever shown them differently.

Maybe it's generational.

Maybe this is simply how dogs have always been treated in their family.
Perhaps they've been sucked down the rabbit hole of certain "trainers" who have convinced them this is exactly what their dog needs.
Maybe they've watched enough five-minute fixes to believe that's what dog training is supposed to look like.

Or maybe they simply know no better.

I don't walk away.

I know that's going to be particularly difficult for some people to hear.
But I can't.
Because what happens when I do?

More importantly
What happens to this dog?

The person doesn't necessarily stop doing those things.
They don't suddenly understand their dog's behaviour differently.

They just continue doing what they've always done.
With their dog.

A conversation recently sparked this post.
A client of mine is a phenomenal barrister, working in a particularly difficult area. We were talking about a family member of hers who was interested in getting into dog training because they love dogs and have a rather unique ability to understand them.

She said to me "Have you ever worked with people who abuse their dogs?"
Yes.
And we talked about how immensely difficult her family member would find that.

But I see working with these clients as something of a "duty".
Because the legal threshold between behaviour that makes us deeply uncomfortable and something that results in a dog actually being removed?

That's an enormous space.

And there are dogs living in that space.

So I work with the person.
I look at the struggles their dog is having.
I look at the struggles they're having.
And, as much as humanly possible, I try to get in there and change things.

But here's the difficult part.
I don't go in judging them.

Because if I walk through their door closed off, horrified and immediately start "correcting" everything they're doing?
There's a pretty good chance they won't invite me back.

Do I carefully drop things into the conversation throughout an assessment?
You betcha.

Do I show them what can happen when I interact differently with the dog they tell me "refuses to listen"?
Most times, yes.

And sometimes you can actually see the moment something shifts.
They see their dog respond differently.
They ask why.
They try it.

And eventually they have their own "aha" moment.

That's powerful stuff right there.

Because now I'm not just telling somebody they're doing it wrong.
They've seen that there can be another way.

Does everyone change?
Of course not.

And yes, I report welfare concerns when that becomes necessary.
But I've also seen where the system draws the line on what it considers actionable.

There are an awful lot of dogs on the other side of that line who still need things to change.

I know some people will find my position uncomfortable.
Maybe they're supposed to.

But I keep coming back to the same question.

If every person capable of showing them another way walks away, where exactly do we expect them to go?

And what happens to their dog when they do?

01/09/2026

People know this. But it doesn't "apply".
Not to their dog.

I'm more and more convinced this is an "I don't care" problem, rather than a lack of knowledge
Because surely, by now, people know.

There's information everywhere about dogs rushing up to other dogs.

About recall.
Giving dog's space
About what can happen when one dog simply won’t leave another alone.

So maybe lack of information isn’t always the problem.

They know that allowing their dog to charge up to a dog on lead isn’t fair.
They know that repeatedly calling a dog who is completely ignoring them, while reassuring everyone around that “they’re friendly!”, isn’t fair.
They know that when another dog is trying to move away and theirs keeps following, chasing or pushing back into their space, the interaction isn’t friendly.

Maybe I've become more hardened in my view on this.
Because I'm really over it.

So why does it keep happening?

Maybe that’s the question we should be asking.

Is it just complacency?

Is it because calling their dog away would interrupt what their dog is enjoying?
Maybe because nothing bad has happened before, so they assume nothing ever will?
Is it because dealing with it in the moment feels inconvenient?

Or is there still a good old dose of:
“My dog is fine. It’s your dog that has the problem.”

I’m becoming less and less convinced this is a knowledge gap.

What do you think is really behind the “they’re friendly” problem?

31/08/2026

We trust that word.
Ethical.

It’s reassuring.
It implies knowledge.
Credibility.
Standards and care.
It can make us feel like some of the questions have already been answered.

And over the past few weeks, I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking beyond that word.
Beyond the professional photos.
Beyond the puppies plodding in the sunshine.
And beyond the carefully written posts about health, temperament and doing everything “the right way”.

How does an “ethical and responsible” breeder deliberately breed a dam again just eight months after her previous litter?
No detective work required to find that out.
The information is sitting right there.
First litter.
Second litter.
Dates.
Photos.

What if the breeder has years of experience?
What if they have professional connections to the veterinary world?
Surely that adds credibility?

Maybe.

But what if even they have fallen back on the word without stopping to revisit what they're actually doing?

What if a dog is reactive, struggles significantly with regulation and has shown aggressive behaviour in certain circumstances?
Should that dog be bred simply because the person making that decision has experience and describes their breeding programme as ethical?

What about the sire whose movement or structure makes you stop and look twice?
The dog who can't comfortably sit without threading his back legs through his front.
Yet he's been bred from.
More than once.
There are years of breeding experience behind the decision.

And right beside all of that?

There's that word again.
Ethical.

I've met the offspring.
I've seen the photos.
I've read the posts.

And that's really what's bothered me in my bones lately.
That word.
Ethical.

Thrown around and worn like a badge.

Somehow “ethical” has become something we're increasingly being asked to accept as evidence of ethical breeding.
But it isn't evidence.

A breeder doesn't become ethical because they say they are.
A breeding programme doesn't become ethical because it looks professional.
Experience doesn't automatically make decisions good ones.
A connection to the veterinary world doesn't make every breeding decision defensible.
And years of doing something certainly doesn't prove it should have been done in the first place.

Perhaps we need to stop asking,
“Are they an ethical breeder?”

And start asking,
“What are they actually doing that tells me they ARE?”

30/08/2026

Stop "borrowing" the word you need tomorrow.
"It's just one time, it won't hurt"

One word. That's all.

But that word has a history attached to it.
And sometimes that history gets a little messy.

Small things we do without thinking causes those little words that used to work so well to just stop working.

We used them as a shortcut here.
Said them in a frustrated moment there.
Even tricked them because we "just wanted them to listen".

And then?

We want them to go back to how they used to respond.
Except we just changed the rules.

And changing it back can be very tricky indeed.

Maybe you normally have food in your closed hand when you call them to you
Your dog knows that hand.
They trust that hand.
But this time you really, really need them to come over, so you hold out the same closed fist.
They race over.
You open it.

Nothing but air.

And that's the problem with “just this once”.

It worked.
For us.

So we do it again.
And trickery can very quickly become the shortcut we reach for whenever we “need it to work”.
Until eventually?
That shortcut stops working too.

Because every time we borrow a trusted cue to get what we want right now, we risk changing what that cue means next time.

Then our frustration builds.
So we reach for another cue.
Another word they trust.
Another one we know “works”.

And before long, we're not dealing with one tainted cue.
We're creating a trail of them.

A poisoned cue usually starts with something that worked brilliantly.
Once.

29/08/2026

Why did you pay for one?
You can probably "reinvent" one at home.

We spend an extraordinary amount of money on items specifically designed for dogs. Sometimes all because they have "dog" written on the package.

But what happens when we look at those things and think about how we could "reinvent" them at home?
Because dogs?
They don't know whether something came fresh from a box at a pet store.
They don't care whether it was marketed as a dog enrichment toy, arrived in beautiful packaging or happens to be the latest "trend".

Sometimes the most ordinary, everyday household items can give them something fulfilling and interesting to do.
And we forget that.

We can become so focused on finding "dog things" that we stop looking at what we already have.
It doesn't have to be clever or perfect.
It doesn't have to take half an hour to prepare.
And it definitely doesn't have to cost a cent.

Sometimes it's just looking at something destined for the washing machine, recycling or the "spares" at the back of the cupboard and thinking,
Hmmm.
Hang on a minute.
Could my dog use this?
And HOW could they use it?

Putting my Safety Sam hat on for a minute, obviously not everything is suitable for every dog, particularly those who swallow, shred or guard things. Always supervise and pick things suitable for your dog.
But there's considerably more potential sitting around the house than we realise.

Ok, your turn - what's the most random "not a dog toy" thing YOUR dog has decided absolutely is one.

28/08/2026

Last week, a post made me shudder.

Someone was advertising a new dog daycare and overnight boarding service.
From their own home.

And on the surface?
It sounded great.

A warm home environment.
A fenced garden.
Someone who loves dogs.

A really good alternative when other daycare and boarding facilities are full.

People were supportive.
But my spidey senses were tingling.

One of the requirements was that every dog attending had to be friendly with the resident cat.
And that was the first moment I thought:
Oh heck no.

Because a dog living happily with their own cat does NOT tell you how they'll behave around an unfamiliar cat, in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar dogs.

Those are very, very different circumstances.

Then came some other questions from people.

Do you have insurance?
No.
They weren't really sure why they would need it.

Have you checked with the council that you can actually run dog daycare and overnight boarding from your property?
It didn't appear that had been considered either.

And by this point the whole thing was giving me very strong:
"I love dogs. I have a house. This could be a great way to make some money."

And actually?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving dogs.
There's nothing wrong with having a great idea.
Nothing wrong with starting a business or wanting to make money from it either.

And we absolutely do need good options for dogs, especially when established daycare and boarding facilities have wait lists.

But there's a REASON some of those places have those wait lists.

They know what they're doing.

They have systems in place.
Insurance.
Experience.
Policies.
These aren't just "I'll get around to it one day" thoughts.

Good, great, reputable places can read dogs well and spot problems before they escalate.
That's a SKILL.
And it's a skill that comes from experience with multiple dogs, different breeds, different temperaments and very different situations.

Emergency procedures?
Yep, they have those too.

Plans for illness and injury?
You better believe that's already been thought through.

Processes for deciding which dogs can safely be together.
Ways to separate dogs quickly if they need to.

And, incredibly importantly, the experience to recognise when a dog shouldn't be there at all!
Because taking somebody else's dog into your care isn't just having another dog over for the day.
It's not all rainbows, sunshine and playing the day away.
There is serious thought behind every decision.

And taking several people's dogs into your home at the same time is NEVER as simple as it sounds.
What happens when two dogs who were both described as "friendly" aren't friendly with each other?

What happens when somebody guards a bed?
A doorway?
Food?
A person?
What happens when a dog scales your fence?
When one becomes unwell?
When a fight breaks out?
When the dog who "lives with a cat at home" suddenly chases yours?
And worse, when other dogs join in that chase?

What happens when you need to get one dog to a vet while five others are still in your care?
What happens when something goes terribly wrong?
Because sometimes it does.
Not because somebody didn't care.
Not because they had no procedures.
And not because they lacked experience.

Sometimes things simply go wrong.
Even in the most experienced hands.

Home based dog care can be absolutely fantastic.
Smaller numbers and a home environment may be exactly what some dogs need.

But home based should describe the location.
It shouldn't describe the level of preparation behind the business.

Before you hand over the lead, ask those "boring" questions.

And if they aren't asking you the boring questions either?

Run

27/08/2026

The best choices? They last about two seconds.
Blink and they're over.
Worse still we miss them or dismiss them as "nothing".

They were going to rush through the door.
But paused.

They were watching something across the road.
Then looked back at you.

They were pacing around the house.
Then stopped, lay down and settled.

They were excited and jumping out of their skin to greet someone.
But those four paws stayed exactly where they were, on the ground.

Nothing dramatic happened. Except it did!
It really did.

There was no asking for it.
No big training moment.
Nobody necessarily even noticed.
But your dog just made a choice.
And a brilliant one at that.

And those tiny choices they make can be incredibly telling, especially if you've been working on some behaviour that isn't wanted.
Well guess what?
They just gave you the behaviour you’ve been looking for.
And it’s so easy to miss.

That spontaneous glance back at you?
Absolutely worth noticing.
The pause before rushing forward?
Worth noticing.
Choosing to settle when they could have carried on?
Yup, just look at what they did!

Oh that's some rewardable stuff right there, in action.

When something great happens naturally and we reinforce it, we can make that behaviour more likely to happen again, and again, and again.

And eventually those little tiny, easily missed choices can become choices your dog makes more often.
Not because you told them what to do.

And THAT is the "secret sauce" in action right there.

Have you started to see the secret sauce yet? What brilliant little choices has your dog started making?

26/08/2026

"But they used to love every dog"!😒
"What happened?"

When they were a squidgy pup, they were the puppy desperate to get to everyone.
Every single dog was interesting and new, fun and sometimes familiar.
Every person worth investigating too.

Along the way, things changed.
Perhaps their circle became smaller.
Maybe they became a bit more fussier about who they wanted close.
The dog park they once raced into? Well, that started to become somewhere they'd rather avoid.
Dogs they once desperately wanted to chase and run around with?
Now? They'd rather simply walk past.

What happened to my social dog?
But, hang on a min, the dog we see at six months isn't necessarily the social dog we'll have at three, seven or twelve.
Their experiences keep accumulating. One on top of another.
Their bodies change.
Their confidence can certainly change.
Their tolerance for others, yup that can change too.

And life itself changes around them.
New dogs arrive. Familiar dogs disappear. Homes change. routines change. Health changes.
One difficult experience may matter enormously, it can stick with them, while dozens of perfectly "ordinary" ones, well, they can shape what they expect next.

Their social world isn't something we establish in puppyhood and then lock into place.

It can expand.
It can contract.
And sometimes, it can expand again, or contract further.

Worth investigating?
For sure.

But sometimes it really is, what it is.
And that's 100% "normal" too.

So, what's your dog's social world and have you noticed any little changes that hint at "it's changing again".

ABC Dogs NZ

03/09/2026

02/09/2026

02/09/2026

01/09/2026

31/08/2026

30/08/2026

29/08/2026

28/08/2026

27/08/2026

26/08/2026

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request

Monday	8am - 9pm
Tuesday	8am - 9pm
Wednesday	8am - 9pm
Thursday	8am - 9pm
Friday	8am - 9pm
Saturday	8am - 9pm
Sunday	9am - 9pm