Road Dogs Rehab

08/30/2026

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?

08/30/2026

08/30/2026

“I’ve tried trainers before.”

I hear this ALL the time.

Usually followed by:

“It didn’t work.”
“They made him worse.”
“We spent thousands.”
“We’ve tried everything.”

And if that’s you, I want you to know something important:

Having already worked with trainers does not mean your dog is beyond help.

But, it might mean you need to stop looking for another person with another technique… and start looking at the bigger picture.

Because reactive behaviour is rarely solved by finding the magical exercise nobody has shown you yet.

Sometimes the previous training focused on obedience when the dog was frightened.

Sometimes everything revolved around keeping the dog under threshold, but nobody taught the owner what to do when real life inevitably went wrong.

Sometimes the dog learnt twenty different pattern games but still couldn’t disengage from another dog.

Sometimes behaviour was corrected without anyone asking WHY it was happening.

And sometimes, everybody was so focused on behaviour that nobody considered pain, health, genetics, breed, reinforcement history, frustration, predation or chronic arousal.

You can spend thousands and still be missing one crucial piece of the puzzle.

That’s why when I work with reactive dogs, I don’t just ask:

“How do we stop the barking?”

I want to know:

🚘 What is driving it?
🤔 What happens before it?
🥎 What reinforces it?
🫠 What does this dog find difficult?
🐕 What skills does the dog actually have?
🙋🏼‍♀️ What skills does the OWNER have?

And, what does everyday life look like outside of a training session?

Because you don’t need another collection of exercises.

You need to understand your dog well enough to know which exercises actually matter.

If you’ve worked with trainers before and you’re still struggling, that doesn’t automatically mean you failed.

It might simply mean nobody has put all of the pieces together yet.

08/30/2026

It's called trainING, not trainED.

Today was a new record since I started back at the gym a few months ago.

Warm-up 3x 185
Rest 3-5 minutes
1st set: 6x 185 quite shaky
Rest 3-5 mins
2nd set: didn't think I'd make 3... got 6!
Rest 3-5 mins
3rd set: had no clue, but I did feel I had 2 in me.
Got a very difficult 6

No spotter available today.

Now, go train with your dog!!!

Be consistent.
Shown up, regardless.
Just DO IT.

Congratulate yourself for your success.

Last week I hit 205 for 4 reps and was burned out.
But, lowering back to 185 i went from 3x 3@185 to 3x SIX TIMES @ 185.

Weight traiming is dog training cuz it is.
I increased the difficulty, FAILED
I lowered the difficulty, SUCCESS.
Practiced the reps until I got SOLID...
Then, upped the difficulty, and lowered the repetitions until I could get the NEW level solid.

And, EXPECT FAILURES when you level-up! It's how we all learn.

08/30/2026

That was quite epic.

08/30/2026

Oh, we sabotage this time and time again.

They've been moving, sniffing, watching, exploring. Maybe they've seen another dog, chased a ball, played with a friend or blasted around a field at warp speed factor 10.

Then we walk through the front door.

“Right, time for you to rest.”

But their body and brain may still be catching up with everything that just happened. And then we make it even harder.

We want them to rest, but we're still active.
We potter around.
Call back that friend.
Make something to eat.
Have a cuppa.
Read something or watch something.

Their eyes can be following our every move.

That true, restorative rest and sleep can be much harder to come by if we're plodding about, eating that sandwich or ringing that person.
Some dogs can be absolutely glued to our movements.

The next one is another biggie.

Where is their bed?

Why do we expect them to sleep, yet do everything around them that makes that pretty much impossible?

How much traffic goes past it?
Do the kids play three feet away?
Are they watching everything happening outside?
Does somebody pat them every time they walk past?
Is the cat always disturbing them?
Is the room simply too warm?

Good rest, real rest, doesn't need much.

But it's rarely about “just exercise”

What’s the one thing most likely to interrupt your dog’s rest?

08/30/2026

This!!!

I think it applies to dog training just as much as it applies to anything else.

You can want the well-trained dog.
You can want the reliability.

But do you actually want the lifestyle that creates it?

I also love recommending the Atomic habits book to clients is because of the idea of habit stacking.

I stack things all the time with my dogs, training doesn’t always need to be a separate event. It can be built into the things we already do every day.

The basic idea is:

Take a habit you already do automatically and attach a new habit to it.

The result is a byproduct of the lifestyle.

If you don’t want the process, you have to be honest about whether you really want the result.

08/30/2026

We are ridiculously tactile as a species.
We touch.
Pat.
Ruffle hair and floppy ears.
Sometimes almost automatically.

What we do notice is the dog who makes their feelings VERY clear.
The growl.
The snap.
The dog who whips their head around when a hand reaches towards them.

Crystal clear.
Do not touch.

But long before then, those feelings can still be communicated pretty clearly.
We’re just not always so good at noticing them.

Or maybe we do notice, but think, “It’s not that bad surely?”

And this is where humans can be a bit rubbish really.

A dog comes over and sits beside us? Pat.
They lie at our feet? Pat.
They squeeze onto the sofa? Obviously they’ve come for a cuddle.

Except, what are they actually doing?

That 45-degree lean away from you?
That faraway look that somehow doesn't look quite like their relaxed faraway look?

Maybe they stay right beside you, but everything about them seems to be edging away from the hands.

A dog can absolutely want to jump up on the sofa without wanting to be stroked.
They can come over to investigate what you're doing without asking for a pat.
They can enjoy being close to a person and still have moments when they'd just rather not be touched.

And their first answer may be incredibly subtle.
Because not every dog jumps up and leaves.

Sometimes there’s a whole lot more that comes before.

Time we noticed.

What’s the little giveaway you’ve learned to notice in your dog?

08/30/2026

Why would a dog stop?
They did something that worked, and it worked well!

There can be a specific cycle or pattern for many fear reactive dogs.

A dog spots something they're concerned about.

Their tension rises.

They bark. Lunge. Growl. Maybe they freeze on the spot or desperately try to get away.

And then?

The other dog walks past.
The person disappears around the corner.
The bike keeps going.

Their person turns around and moves them away.

Suddenly there's distance.

And with that distance comes relief.

From the dog's perspective, something incredibly important just happened.

That doesn't mean they're deliberately thinking, “Excellent, barking made that dog disappear. I'll do that again next Tuesday.”

But behaviour has consequences, and those consequences matter.

If reacting is repeatedly followed by the thing they're frightened of becoming further away? Well, that response can become very well practiced.

And sometimes it starts much earlier.

The dog who once reacted at five metres may begin reacting at ten.
The dog who waited until another dog was close may start responding the moment one appears.

This is also why simply giving a fearful dog lots and lots of exposure doesn't necessarily teach them that everything is okay.

If every encounter gives them another opportunity to practice that same old cycle, we're getting not much more than repetition.

Repetition can form some incredibly strong habits

When your dog is anxious, what’s their “go-to response?” Barking, lunging, freezing, retreating or something completely different?

08/30/2026

This MUST END

The collar vs. harness sh*tf**kery