Canine Dialogue Dynamics

11/05/2026

One of the most common things I hear from people living with separation anxiety is that they were advised to wait until their dog was distracted with a stuffed Kong or chew and then quietly leave the house without the dog noticing. On paper, I can completely understand why this advice sounds sensible. Keep departures calm, avoid emotional build-up, make leaving feel uneventful. The problem is that for many dogs, the distress does not happen whilst they are focused on the food. It happens afterwards, when the Kong has finished, the licking stops, and they suddenly realise they are alone.

Over the years, I’ve worked with so many dogs where this exact pattern plays out. The guardian leaves thinking things went smoothly because the dog stayed settled at first, but ten or fifteen minutes later the pacing starts, then the whining, then the barking, panting, destruction, or frantic searching around the house. In many cases, the Kong itself was never actually helping the dog emotionally cope with being alone. It was simply delaying the moment they fully processed that the person they rely on had disappeared.

The same thing can happen when people are told to “sneak out” whilst their dog is not paying attention. If we really stop and think about that experience from the dog’s perspective, it can actually feel incredibly unsettling. One moment their person is there, life feels predictable and safe, and the next they suddenly realise the house is empty with no understanding of where that person went, why they left, or when they are coming back. For dogs who are already sensitive, hyper-vigilant, deeply attached, or struggling with emotional regulation, that sudden realisation can create a huge wave of panic.

This is why I personally believe separation anxiety often runs far deeper than boredom or simply “not liking being alone”. In many dogs, we are looking at attachment patterns, nervous system dysregulation, emotional safety, predictability, previous experiences, confidence, resilience, and the dog’s overall ability to emotionally cope with separation and disconnection. Which is also why so many people end up feeling completely exhausted and heartbroken, because they are following all the conventional advice and still watching their dog struggle.

Within the CDD Method, we approach separation anxiety very differently. Rather than focusing purely on stopping visible behaviours, we look at the emotional experience underneath them. We look at how to help dogs gradually feel safer, more secure, more emotionally capable, and less overwhelmed by separation itself, whilst also helping guardians better understand what their dog is actually experiencing.

Starting June 2nd, we are running a brand new live event entirely focused on separation anxiety and independence building through the CDD lens. Across 3 weeks and 6 live lessons, we’ll be taking a deep dive into attachment, emotional regulation, nervous system support, communication, predictability, confidence building, practical day-to-day strategies, and how to help dogs genuinely feel safer being alone rather than simply suppressing symptoms.

The event includes:
• 6 live lessons
• live Q&As
• recordings included
• lifetime access
• full access to the future course version once completed

The early bird price is currently £55, rising to £95 afterwards, and the future full course will eventually be £195, meaning joining now saves up to £140 overall.

We currently only have 4 early bird spaces remaining.

I’d genuinely love to hear people’s experiences with this too, because I know how emotionally difficult separation anxiety can be to live with. Have you ever tried the “sneak out quietly” approach or relied heavily on food enrichment during departures? Did it genuinely help your dog feel safer, or did the anxiety begin once the distraction ended?

If you’d like the booking link, comment “LINK” below and I’ll send it over personally. Facebook tends to suppress posts with direct links, otherwise I’d just pop it in the comments 🙂

08/05/2026

Who is interested in learning about the Canine Dialogue Dynamics method? In short it's a different ethical way to teach dogs. Who has questions about it? Who would like to attend a FREE live class to learn more about it?

06/05/2026

Yes, I know it’s becoming popular to say easy yet empty statements to get likes and clicks, things like: “your dog needs strict rules”, “your dog is a tame wolf”, “your dog needs discipline”, “your dog doesn’t need comfort and cuddles, it’s killing them” and yada yada. Apparently if you don’t use an e-collar, prong, slip lead and all the rest of the barbaric tools, you’ll create a dangerous monster.

For whatever reason, people love hearing these statements. It’s “cool” to appear tough with dogs. It’s not cool to appear soft with dogs. We get it. We are a seriously uncool crowd. So uncool, in fact, that some people seem to think mocking one of us “soft” professionals somehow makes them the ultimate cool person.

But real experts didn’t get into this career path to be cool. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. We are literally geeks. We love to learn, not just act. We love exploring every aspect of dog behaviour, science, psychology, ethology and method, rather than stomping around demanding dogs do what we say.

We happily spend hours reading studies, analysing body language videos, observing dogs in real time, and dissecting case studies down to the tiniest detail because we actually care about understanding the dog in front of us. Yet somehow that makes us “armchair trainers”. Apparently all the time we spend studying the actual science means we don’t work with real dogs… even when we do both, because most of us work incredibly hard and long hours.

Meanwhile the “cool” trainers can rock up, intimidate a dog for an hour, call the job done, move on to the next case, then spend the rest of the day making snappy videos showing everyone how tough they are and how useless these “armchair behaviourists” supposedly are. Because obviously while we were busy researching, carefully analysing behaviour, and being “soft”, we could have mistreated seven dogs that day instead.

So yes, I’ll stick to being one of the uncool dog geeks.

Do I at least get a trophy for that?

01/05/2026

Ahhhh.... Facebook. Can we talk?!

We've been together a long time now.

You know I left Myspace for you way back in the day. I had a dalliance with some other platforms but they never really stuck. You know I had some concerns about your dodgy past - yes, even back in 2006 and the whole 'FaceMash' saga which we don't talk about much because I know you're sensitive about it.

What I loved about you was the way you helped me find my folk.

I found communities. I found groups. I got to share rescue dogs and find them homes. I even got to help people with their rescue dogs.

You reinforced us all for liking pages, didn't you?

I liked some weird stuff back in the day.

Some of those weird pages still pop up on my feed from time to time, though they're now just churning out AI 💩 to their dead audience and a bunch of bots giving them a 🙌 and a 👏

After likes, it was all about follows. To be honest, I'm still not sure of the difference.

You had us dancing to your tune when you favoured pages over groups. Then you had us dancing to your tune when you favoured groups over pages. I loved the groups bit, personally. That was the best of you. Bringing like-minded thinkers together in safe spaces. You could be SO good for making friends if you'd just let go of your darker urges.

Only you weren't happy creating groups for us all to hang out in. You stopped showing all the posts in a group, only going to "highlights". And no way we could pay to promote posts either. Then we had to @ everyone in our groups in the hopes some would see it. Over time, that power diminished. We get lucky when we @ everyone these days. I get it. You hate groups now. Idk. Maybe you think we're all bitching about you behind your back or something?

It's a shame, because you were really good at it. Look at G**gle getting all giggity with R*ddit these days. We can't even say names out loud because you kill those posts. All that jealousy... yikes! We understand you hate it if we leave you. But honestly, we were staying for the chat and the laughs and the groups. We were always here for that.

Since November, we've all been noticing what you're up to, like a cheeky little wizard behind the curtain, tweaking your algorithms.

It still feels weird, to be honest, like you've not quite worked it out yet.

We all know that ragebait and controversial content is king. You love those. We get it. But you know me. You also know I've steered clear of that. I'm a child of multiple divorces - I can't stand dispute and raised voices. Sure, I know I could have 100k followers by now if I just tried to go with the hate-filled, fear-filled negative content. Even my website tries to tell me to do more negative, fear-filled headlines. I don't listen to them, either.

I was happy chatting to my lovely community of people who genuinely believed that the world could be lighter and brighter for our dogs. I made actual friends. I have so many lovely folk that are part of my life because you brought us together. I guess you weren't happy doing that though.

I get it. You don't want our love, guv, you just want our money.

Sure, I didn't appreciate those 18 months where you refused to let anyone else see me and when I started muttering about highway robbery.

But what you've been doing recently... can I just say I've got really mixed feelings?!

Let's look at the metrics you're so keen on. I love a man who likes numbers. So I noticed on one of my last posts, you only shared it to a third of the people who have chosen to follow me. The people who, one might think, would like to read or watch the stuff I post. This is a bit of a trend.... failing to show me to the people who've chosen to follow me unless I cough up.

But then you've massively shared me with people who *don't* follow me.

And it doesn't seem to compute as to why you're sharing it with them. Like maybe you're not as good at this algorithm business as you think? I don't know. I'm not au fait with the stuff you're fidgeting with behind that there curtain. All I've had recently is a bunch of angry messages from people asking why I'm in their feed.

I had one from a very disgruntled person at 3.42am this morning saying 'WHY ARE YOU SHARING THIS WITH ME?'

ALL caps.

I get it. Yesterday, I logged on and you'd even put some additional adverts in a sidebar as well as in my feed. I've not seen my friends' posts since about 2018. I got recommended a bunch of s**t groups I have no desire to be in, and even if I joined, you'd never share updates from it anyway. I forget I'm even in most groups, even the ones I'm in charge of. Five of the first six posts were either "sponsored" adverts for stuff I really don't want or the weirdest suggestions you think I'd enjoy following.

I know that we're the product and our attention is the currency.

I'm still here, naive, hoping I can turn you around a little.

But even so, on three of my last ten posts, I've had to limit who posts, because you're sticking my content in front of a bunch of people who:

a) don't follow me
b) don't want to follow me
c) hate everything about me
d) are aggrieved as much as I am that they keep logging in to get served a s**t ton of stuff that pi**es them off
e) have no internet etiquette anymore
f) feel no compunction whatsoever not to start fights with the lovely people who have actually followed me and whom I adore
g) have no impulse control
h) can't scroll past without leaving a little vitriol
i) seem to have a CAPS LOCK button which got switched on and is now awol
j) are really pi**ed off just because I exist

And even where I've set posts so that comments can only come from the small handful of my actual followers, I'm now waking up to an angry litany of rage in my message box.

I'm also having to tell everyone who I am and what I do in every single post. I'm sick of having to explain that a) Lidy is my dog and b) yes, that's her name and c) who I am and d) what I do and e) write as if you're going to show me to a bunch of people who don't know who I am and need a 60-second elevator pitch.

I hate this because it irritates the 💩 out of me.

I dare say it also irritates the remaining followers I do have.

It's like having a conversation with a person with anterograde amnesia where you're constantly having to repeat what you just said or did, but you're also in a room full of people who perfectly functional memories and are now wondering why you keep repeating yourself over and over again. It must feel like those conversations with my Nana in her final months where every single time, she told me how she made apple pie crusts with lard. You've really got to love a person to hear the same thing hundreds of times. I'm worried my actual followers will think I've got memory issues as well.

Now don't get me wrong: I love it that you're sharing me in random feeds. Perhaps some of you reading this have discovered me this way. I appreciate having a wider audience again, especially after you put me on an 18-month lockdown when I was lucky to get 300 views.

I would, however, love it more if you'd share me with the people who actually clicked a button at some point in the last four years to say they actually wanted to see posts from me.

I'd also love it if we didn't all have to post links in the first comments. I mean you absolutely know we're doing it and you kill the posts anyway. I understand that you feel people will leave you and cheat elsewhere, but, dude, it's not the way to hang on to people you want to keep by your side.

To be honest, FB, I'm kind of tired.

I'm an old lady now, not the shiny, magnificent 30-something I was back when we first hooked up.

I've also had a schooling. Call me cynical, these days. I see your games. When we first met, I didn't think you were so much of a game player. Now all it seems you're interested in is manipulation. It's pretty ugly.

Now I know I've talked about a break up with you before. And do you know what? I like to think you listened - if only with half an ear. I'm also half-angry because I know you made me dance to your tune then as well. I did what I was supposed to do. I posted the reels, the photos, the stories, the comments, the shares, the group posts, the half-hearted fear-mongering once or twice, even though it turned my stomach.

But waking up to a bunch of angry rants in my inbox from some bloke who hasn't yet understood what you're up to and doesn't know how to scroll, well it's kind of a buzzkill, my friend.

Not only that, your constant 'boost' and 'pay to share' demands ... it's also pretty ugly. It feels pretty icky when I'm here slogging my guts out to produce good content for you - pretty content for you - and to dance to your tune, and there you are with your billionnaire tech bros telling us all that, no, sorry, you can't do anything about online safety or protecting women or reducing violence when every single one of us knows that you remove illicit football content and streaming immediately and without a heartbeat elapsing between it hitting a feed and being removed.

So....

Sort your act out.

And if you have had the misfortune to stumble across this post when you're now mad as f*ck about the 💩 that lives out there and you didn't want to see a dog trainer rambling about social media, can I apologise on behalf of the platform? It feels like it's asleep at the wheel, to be honest. But thanks for not spamming me with repeated AI-produced comments to tell me how wrong I am about everything and to ask WHAT IS THIS TO DO WITH ME AND WHY IS IT NOT ABOUT DOGS IF YOUR CALLED LIGHTEN UP DOG TRAINING?

I was *trying* to write about dogs, promise.

Urgh. I'm not ready for 2026, am I? PS I just got really sad about some humanoid robots who fell over in a race. I'm extra-unready for this life.

PS if you are new here and you arrived because FB showed you a post, you're *very* welcome! I'd love it if you said hi and what brought you here!

27/04/2026

There is so much more an animal needs than perfect cue–response training.

An instantaneous recall can be an important safety behavior. But imagine if the dog wasn’t strongly motivated to run off in the first place.

A precise heel can help navigate difficult environments. But imagine if the dog didn’t become overwhelmed by those environments to begin with.

A settle on a mat can be useful when guests arrive. But what if the dog could regulate their own excitement and emotional state?

Cue–response training is valuable—and I’m not suggesting we remove it.
But it’s not enough on its own.

Other skills may play an equally important—if not larger—role in long-term outcomes. For example:

• Impulse control
• Emotional regulation
• Problem-solving

It’s time to go beyond simply-cue response training and think about how we are supporting the development of important emotional and cognitive skills in our animals.

22/04/2026

I am so pleased to part of this lovely new ethical network ♥️

✨ A Very Warm Welcome to Bethany Bell ✨

We’re so pleased to welcome Bethany Bell to The Ethical Dog Trainers Network 🐾

Bethany is degree qualified in Animal Behaviour and Welfare, and it’s immediately clear that her work is rooted in genuine compassion, understanding, and a deep respect for every dog she supports.

She offers:
🐶 Puppy Training
🐕 Adolescent Dog Training
🎓 1-to-1 Training Sessions
🧠 Behaviour Consultations
💻 Online / Virtual Consultations

With a special passion for:
✨ Supporting reactive dogs with patience and understanding
✨ Building confidence in nervous or worried dogs
✨ Helping rescue dogs adjust and thrive in their new lives
✨ Supporting dogs struggling with noise sensitivities

What truly stands out about Bethany is her unwavering belief that the dog always comes first. Her approach is thoughtful, ethical, and deeply dog-centred—ensuring that every step forward feels safe, supported, and achievable for both dog and owner.

For so many owners navigating challenging behaviours, having someone calm, knowledgeable, and kind by your side can make all the difference… and that’s exactly what Bethany offers 💛

We’re incredibly proud to have you as part of the network, Bethany.

If you’re looking for support and want to work with a trainer who leads with empathy and understanding, you can fill in our enquiry form and we’ll carefully match you with the right trainer for you.

Bethany Bell

⸻