Partners-in-Canine

20/07/2026

I took Rollo over for a walk with Zara the Great Dane the other day.

Rollo's not a fan of her stop and sniff, but it's good for him to be the smaller weaker dog once in a while.

20/07/2026

I happened to walk past the "dog obedience school" I took Rollo to as a young dog at the weekend. A pointless waste of time, by the way. They were having a group class, about 15 to 20 dogs.

I had Rollo with me, and we walked over to the field and pavilion (it's at a cricket pitch) and walked around the building. We got barked at by several dogs, some in the class and some not involved up at the pavilion.

Rollo wasn't bothered at all. I could see the people in the field all starting to do the "look at me dammit!" exercises: take a step or two, do a direction change, shove a treat down to the dog for looking at you, yadda yadda. One dog wasn't playing ball. I saw the owners shoulders slump.

It's truly sad to watch what was going on, the entire concept of distracting a dog from looking at something it is trying to figure out is a direct attack on the normal instinctive function of the mammal brain. It's trying to shrink the world down from the vastness that it is, to the owner and the bribe of a treat in their hand.

You didn't learn to navigate the world around you by watching your parents every 4 steps, or by having chocolate offered to you every time you looked at them of your own accord. You learned to navigate the world around you by getting involved with it.

Sometimes that hurt, lesson learned. Sometimes you needed the courage of a friend to do something scary before you could do it by yourself. That's how you bonded with your friends, even through the parental telling off together when you got caught.

Our dogs are the same. Bonds form in the same way, fears are overcome in the same way. Lessons are learned the same way.

If your dog doesn't pay attention to you, there's nothing wrong with your dog, it doesn't need training, it doesn't need bribing, the relationship you have isn't right, that is what needs to be fixed. You need to become the most important thing in your dog's life just because of who you are, the person, not anything else.

Here's an old photo of me at that obedience school with Rollo.

17/07/2026

I believe this is what is referred to as "a bitch slap".

Tora is letting Roadie know she's actually rather accomplished at playing, and he should probably tone things down a notch.

This is all normal communication and interaction and I left Tora to get on with it, she has my total trust.

13/07/2026

Here's a controversial one for you.

You don't believe what you say you believe. What you believe is what you act out. Actions speak louder than words, much louder it turns out. The truth about all of us can be determined by watching how we act.

What? This page is about dogs.

Yes, yes it is. But it's also about people. Your dog is your mirror after all. So where am I going with this?

Do you understand the motives for the things you do, the positive and negative? I'd wager a large swathe of the population go through life without questioning and understanding their motives.

Eh?

Let me explain....

So what is your motivation with respect to your dog? Or perhaps it makes more sense to ask "what do you want from your dog?”

Most of us will immediately say something along the lines of "I want man's best friend" or some form of companion that we can love and be loved in return.

So do your actions match the words?

I'll be the first to admit that at first mine didn't. I was seduced by the idea of needing to control two very large dogs. I deliberately sought out methods and tools that would provide me with that control. And in honesty I enjoyed the way it looked when my two dogs walked perfectly to heel simultaneously. The problem is that came with a cost to the relationship.

What I mean by that is because I actually sought control first, everything else second, my dogs offered me the mirror of what a relationship based on forced physical compliance looks like. It was plain ugly at times with the reactivity, and their refusal to spend much free time anywhere near me.

I, you, we, cannot have man's best friend if control is what we primarily seek through our actions. It's just not possible. You cannot train your way into a relationship either. No amount of practicing a behaviour or chain of behaviours in a million different places can ever come close to offering what can be had through true connection.

Don't think for a second your dog cannot understand what you are up to. They can see through any mask you try to wear, and they know when the offer of connection with them is real and genuine and honest, individual to individual, with respect at the core.

If there are behavioural problems, the question to ask is "why is my dog doing this?” Your dog is showing you how it feels, it can't lie to you. Fixing problems requires you to understand that there is another sentient being right there with you, and above all else it wants to connect with you, but through mutual trust and respect, not one way obedience, or forced compliance.

Your dog isn't there to do your bidding, or to make your ego feel better about how amazing you are because it does as you command, it should not be a self serving relationship, the goal is a truly shared existence.

Your dog will change you, if you can humble yourself enough to stop talking and start listening. Yes it's us who have to change first.

You want trust and respect? Start offering it. You want to be the leader? Start acting like one. Begin by throwing away the (aversive) tools and treats. Leaders do not lead by inflicting pain or by waving food & toys under our noses for compliance.

Dogs remind us that loyalty is earned, trust goes both ways, and connection runs far deeper than words; your mirror shows the world what you really believe; You tell a story about yourself; your dog tells us the truth.

13/07/2026

Bringing a new dog into the family

There are three ways this happens;

1) A family with a dog gets a puppy
2) A family with a dog rescues a dog
3) Two families with dogs merge into one family

The first question that needs to really be asked is "why?” what is the reason a 2nd or 3rd dog is wanted? There are plenty of good reasons for doing this, but there are also plenty of not so good reasons. In the case of families merging, well that's pretty obvious.

Most dogs are perfectly happy in single dog homes. On the other end of the scale, there are breeds that are well known to struggle as the only dog in the home. Be honest with yourself about what you've got.

Before people proceed with bringing in a new dog, they need to think very carefully about how their daily routines are going to be affected, because they will be. If you don't think they will be, you are missing something.

The next step is how to go about introductions. My biggest bit of advice here is to always do the first introductions somewhere neutral, we want all the territorial instincts turned off. With tiny puppies, there's some leeway here, but that's dependent on your specific dog.

In the case of merging families, the more times the dogs have met and interacted together, the better. Ideally they will have played together a few times, this is important because dogs will sort out their pecking order through play. It's worth noting that dog play is best thought of as human professional contact sports like wrestling or points based martial arts; it's competitive and bond building, but it's also working out who's top dog.

When new dogs are then brought into the home, there will have to be careful management to begin with around things like food (and toys, if you have them) because we don't want to cause any squabbling.

Where a strong relationship does not exist between the dogs, anticipate some level of resource guarding and blunt communication between the dogs for a while. It's normal, our role there is to enforce space, not try and stop the guarding. Puppies will probably be given more forgiveness than adult dogs would. The resource guarding will naturally subside as the relationships grow stronger.

Our job is to minimise the potential issues by understanding how what we've done to the dogs interacts with their instincts as pack animals; unrelated dogs formed into a pack will naturally sort themselves out in terms of hierarchy. That's just unavoidable, but it doesn't mean it has to get nasty.

It's our responsibility to ensure we are meeting the needs of the dogs in terms of exercise, and, with one on one time with each dog, as well as all together. In effect we need to set the optimum conditions for bonding between all parties to occur and to keep in mind how we would feel about being thrust into someone else's home without a say in the matter.

09/07/2026

I saw this comment on someone else's post and thought it worth addressing.

Their theory: Dogs do not have the capacity for experiencing love, empathy, guilt or compassion, you can read the other accusations yourself.

Here is my reply:

The research Dr Gregory Berns did under the decade long "The Dog Project" came to the conclusion that dogs do have the capability of feeling love in a similar manner to humans. He also posited that they have a theory of mind, within that he explains which emotions dogs experience based on his experiments. His book "How Dogs Love Us" is the layman's explanation, there's a whole bunch of scientific papers that he and his colleagues & students published that underpin the book.

There are a few documentaries I've seen that show both male lions and Alpha pair wolves enforcing cubs getting first access to a fresh kill over the other members.

Humans are also very easy to manipulate, most have no idea how easy it is, that's a rabbit hole all by itself.

The concept of emotions and instincts being almost interchangeable has its roots in neuroscience, specifically Jaak Panksepp and William McDougall. More recent neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Lisa F. Barrett have put a little bit of daylight between emotions and instincts but still consider them inextricably linked and for primary drivers, the same thing. With that in mind it remains accurate to say that behaviour cannot be explained without reference to emotions in all cases.

08/07/2026

Should you let your dog on the couch?

This is a topic that crops up a lot and is full of misunderstandings. The most common reason I come across for denying dogs access to furniture is to place boundaries onto the dogs in an attempt by the human to claim the leadership role, usually because the dog is causing problems or has behavioural problems.

People are told that if you enforce strict boundaries on what is yours and what is the dogs, your actions make you top dog and that will be acknowledged by the dog.

The problem with that is it entirely misunderstands what being the leader is. In my experience, people who think like this are in effect trying to overcompensate for not being respected or treated as the leader by their dog, and such a boundary enforcement is almost revenge for that.

In fact, seeking to control something as yours exclusively with force is resource guarding. Yep. If you demand the couch is yours and yours alone and you enforce that, you are resource guarding against your dog.

So the concept of the couch being off limits is treating the symptom; you have a relationship problem, that problem is how your dog perceives you. It means something about who you are, is not, or does not, elicit respect from your dog. That's what needs fixing. Not denying access to the couch. That's you stroking your bruised ego.

The solution is to become a little more humble and work on ourselves and become someone worthy of being given respect and trust.

Your dog will offer that willingly to you when you become that person.

06/07/2026

This is a beautiful illustration of the end result of a transactional relationship learned from operant conditioning.

If all you can offer your dog is "payment" for doing or not doing something, do not be surprised when your dog manipulates the environment to get what it wants from you.

Do you want your dog to love and respect you, or to perform for the food in your treat pouch? Choose wisely.

02/07/2026

"Why does my dog ignore me when we're in busy places?” This is a common question.

Allow me to introduce you to one my articles on this subject. It's a bit of a deeper dive into causes and fixes than is suitable for a Facebook post, but if this is something you are struggling with, this is well worth a few minutes of your time:

"I’ve titled this one “Look at me, dammit” because that’s what every owner who ever took a puppy or a dog to a training school said multiple times whilst waving a treat around in front of the dog’s face frustrated that the dog is doing everything but paying attention to them. It’s also something I see so many frustrated dog owners saying as their dog is paying attention to everything else around them except the food being shoved in front of their face as a distraction.

I am going to take a harsh tone in this one because this topic annoys me. If you’re wanting or expecting rainbows and unicorns, jog on. If you want to understand why the things we’ve been told to do to train our dogs are the opposite of what we should be doing, and don’t mind some good old fashioned mudslinging, read on.

My particular mood with respect to this one is because I got conned. I fell for the absolute garbage that passes for dog training, and wondered why my dogs weren’t affectionate, and why they didn’t trust me and why Tora was reactive. I failed to critically examine what I was being told, I failed to think for myself, and just did what I was told, by alleged experts. I found out the hard way that doubling down on a bad idea makes things worse. When I reflect on that, years later, I’m still angry and it is why you’ll probably have heard me saying, on more than one occasion, dog training needs to die in a ditch. It does.

Let’s get into it.

Here are some statements that I would expect you’ve come across before from dog training schools you’ve attended, books you’ve read, trainers you’ve hired, and online (big name) trainers you’ve watched: Attention. Focus. Teaching your dog to look at you. The dog should adopt eye contact without cue or command.

I’ll use some illustrations to make my points as I go, visuals are always helpful in this regard.

Why do we want our dogs to look at us? There are a number of reasons; far too many to list, but they all boil down to this: so we can communicate with them. I will say eye contact with your dog is a good thing. What is more important is the reason that your dog does or does not look at you.

So why am I railing against dog training and its insistence that our dogs look at us on demand having said that eye contact is a good thing? Because the demand for attention on command coming from the humans is an attempt at short-cutting to get something that occurs naturally when you have a solid relationship based on mutual trust and respect with the dog."

The rest is here:

I’ve titled this one “Look at me, dammit” because that’s what every owner who ever took a puppy or a dog to a training school said multiple times whilst waving a treat around in front of the dog’s face frustrated that the dog is doing everything but paying attention to them. I am going to ...

29/06/2026

Reactivity. What is it?

This is another one of those topics with lots of variation under one heading. There are many prefixes to the word "reactivity" that make sense, but weirdly none of them require a wildly different approach to solve.

The two that are the furthest apart in terms of their psychology are anxious or fearful reactivity versus frustration reactivity.

The fearful spectrum of reactivity comes from a dog not knowing how to cope with situations, think of it as the brain's danger signals flashing red and so conscious thought gets shut down and fight or flight survival instincts take over. This is often a direct result of a breakdown in trust between owner and dog.

The frustrated reactivity generally comes from the dog not being able to get its own way, most commonly associated with a leash restraining the dog. There are nice versions of this (dog just wants to meet other dogs or people) and not nice versions of this (dog has intent to harm but is being held back). There's a reason police & military dogs are held back by handlers before they are released to chase suspects, the frustration really winds them up.

I'll concentrate on fearful reactivity as it's a bigger problem. What fear reactivity is at its core is the dog taking control of a situation and making a threat display because the dog does feels very uncomfortable, well more than that, it feels that it's in danger of being hurt, or worse, and when those feelings arise, all the dog cares about is getting back to feeling safe and calm, the fastest route to that is often to try and make the trigger go away by barking and lunging at it.

The other angle I want you to look at this through is trust. A dog that has total trust in its owner will not be reactive. It will look to its owner for guidance and assurance rather than taking control. This can be a bit of a heart wrenching gut punch to owners, but it has to be acknowledged before you can move on. Do not mistake this for a lack of love or caring, it is not. Your dog does love you.

So given the two previous paragraphs, the question changes to this: How do I gain my dog's trust?

The most attractive thing to a distressed human is a calm confident person that can navigate them through the problem safely. The most repulsive thing is an angry shouting human telling them to just get over it or they'll slap them, or drag them through the problem.

We call that calm confident person a leader. It naturally establishes trust. We call that angry shouty person threatening violence a (insert your favourite insult here), nobody likes this person. It is the same for our dogs.

In short, the answer is to work on ourselves until we can be a calm rock for our dogs to lean on. In practical terms that will often mean standing there doing nothing but managing your emotions towards calm whilst you allow your dog to process theirs at the end of the leash before moving on.

For the frustrated reactivity people, it's the same, but when your dog gets calm, give them what they want. That's the only difference.