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Reactive Dog Training

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Reactive Dog Training

🐕 Claire Lawrence: Head Trainer for Reactive Dogs
❤️ Recover your dog owning confidence
📲 DM me to learn more
⬇️ Apply to work with me

We’re not here to play it safe. We’re here to break the silence around reactive dogs, challenge outdated industry standards, and build a movement — through music, merch, and message — that turns judgement into understanding and shame into strength.

07/09/2026

Rewriting dog predications

Your dog isn’t always reacting to what they’re seeing.

They’re reacting to what they think is about to happen…

If every dog they’ve ever met has ended badly or been overwhelming for them, they stop waiting for the outcome.

Instead. They start to predict it.

That’s why they start barking from fifty metres away.

Your job now isn’t just to change behaviour. It’s to rewrite the prediction their brain keeps making.

06/09/2026

There’s a version of your life where your dog doesn’t dictate every decision you make.

Where you don’t check out of the window before opening the front door.

Where you don’t plan your walks around avoiding everyone else.

Where seeing another dog in the distance doesn’t immediately make your stomach drop.

Where you can go places. Do things. Enjoy your dog.

And, I think sometimes we become so accustomed to managing the life we have that we forget we’re allowed to want something different.

You don’t need to have everything figured out before you start.

You don’t need to feel completely confident.

And, you definitely don’t need to wait until things get worse before you decide something needs to change.

Because time is going to pass anyway.

The question is what you want life with your dog to look like when it does?

04/09/2026

Will he chase the pigeon…. 👀

03/09/2026

This is something people often misunderstand about dogs who redirect.

These two dogs want to get to Skye. But there’s a barrier in the way, there’s excitement, frustration is building, and they’re very close to one another.

And, that combination matters.

Because when a dog can’t access the thing they’re focused on, all of that arousal has to go somewhere. And sometimes, it gets redirected onto the dog standing right next to them.

So rather than simply opening the barrier and hoping for the best, we’re teaching them what to do with that arousal first.

Can you disengage?
Can you respond to your handler?
Can you move away?
Can you bring yourself back down when you don’t immediately get what you want?

And importantly, calm behaviour is what starts to create access.

We’re not trying to remove their desire to greet Sky. We’re teaching them that being excited doesn’t mean losing control of their behaviour.

Because the goal isn’t just getting these dogs through this barrier safely today.

It’s giving them skills they can use the next time frustration builds, without turning that frustration onto each other.

02/09/2026

POV: you’re trying to watch a film with a working dog who apparently never got the memo that evenings are for relaxing. 😂

If I sat down, she found a job.

Pacing. Bringing me things. Staring at me. Checking the windows. Inventing problems that absolutely do not exist.

And, this is something we actively worked on, right back from when she first arrived

Because settling isn’t always something a dog just knows how to do — especially a high-drive working dog who hasn’t previously learned that doing absolutely nothing is also an option.

So while I’m trying to watch the film… she’s learning the highly advanced skill of being boring.

She’s much better at it now 🥰

01/09/2026

There’s never been a time in dog ownership where having your dog under control, both off and on the lead is paramount

With the dangerous dogs act and all the issues we see on the news and out and about, your dog scaring someone is enough to get them into trouble

Therefore, it’s really important that your dog remains connected to you wherever you go

I’ll be teaching this in more depth to the challenge members this month and whilst we’ve already started, you can still join us this week and get started with your own dog too.

Drop me a message and I can send over the details.

There’s really no better time to start than now.

31/08/2026

Here’s why your dog won’t take food near triggers

30/08/2026

“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.

29/08/2026

Hi, I’m Claire 👋

I specialise in reactive, aggressive and complex dogs, and a huge part of my work is helping the human at the other end of the lead too.

I got into this work because I became fascinated by the dogs that don’t fit neatly into the traditional training box and I’ve walked the same emotional paths you probably are right now

The dogs who bark.
Lunge.
Growl.
Freeze.
Guard.
Chase.
Struggle with visitors.
Can’t cope around other dogs.
Or leave their owners feeling like every walk has become a military operation.

My approach is heavily reinforcement-based. I want dogs to WANT to work with us. I use food, play, movement, environmental rewards, choice and relationship-building wherever possible.

But, there’s something I want to clarify because I’m frequently described as a “force-free trainer”.

However, I don’t personally identify with that or any label really

I think they’re damaging and put people into boxes too.

Not because I want to hurt, frighten or intimidate dogs. I absolutely don’t.

But, because I don’t believe good training means a dog should never experience a consequence, boundary, frustration or restriction.

Sometimes I stop a dog from doing something.

Sometimes access to something they want disappears.

Sometimes I use a lead to prevent an undesirable behaviour.

Sometimes the answer is simply “no, you can’t do that”.

And, I think pretending those things don’t exist can make conversations about dog training unnecessarily black and white.

My aim is always to use the least intrusive, most constructive option I reasonably can.

I want to understand WHY the behaviour is happening.

I want to teach the dog what to do instead.

I want to build skills rather than simply suppress behaviour.

And, I want owners to have dogs they can actually live with… safely, confidently and happily.

I’m interested in behaviour, learning, health, genetics, emotion, environment and the relationship between dog and owner.

Not labels.

So, if you’ve got one of the complicated ones…

You’re very much in the right place and if you want support, check my bio or page for more details. 🐾

If you’re kind, aware, empathetic and on the same journey, you’re welcomed here

If you’ve popped bye, say hi below 👋🏻

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