Ricochet Dog Training

31/08/2026

For fun... If your recall cue has become a bit loaded with baggage and your dog is less responsive. Why not change up the cue word?

In this short part one video I teach Callisto the word "Monkey" means rush back to me for a reward (a recall).

Link in comments

28/08/2026

If you have been looking for pet gundog training locally, you might have noticed there is not much of it around here.

So, I am bringing it to GL11.

Fun Pet Gundog Training is for people who love living with gundog breeds but would quite like some of those instincts to work with them occasionally.

We will explore retrieving, hunting, recall, steadiness and focus, with plenty of attention on how those skills transfer into normal life. Because your dog does not need to work for their gundog brain to be very much switched on.

And this is proper gundog training, adapted for pet dogs. I work my own gundog and bring that practical experience into class, alongside my professional qualifications.

I am an ABTC Registered Animal Training Instructor and hold the Gundog Trainers Academy GTA AD qualification. I can also offer Gundog Grades for anyone who fancies working towards something as they progress.

Classes are deliberately small, with a maximum of four dogs. That means plenty of individual help and no expectation that every dog should be doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

You do not need any previous experience. You do not need to work or shoot over your dog. And you definitely do not need to travel an hour plus to find gundog training.

You can join a small group class, or if classes are not your thing, 1:1 pet gundog training is also available.

Pet focused gundog training, right here in GL11 and surrounding areas.

If your dog has the instincts, come and learn what you can do with them.

https://ricochetdogtraining.as.me/gundog

11/08/2026

Pet gundog training is back, and there are just 3 places left on the next 6 week course.

This isn't about preparing your dog for a shoot. It's about taking all the things they already love doing, retrieving, hunting, sniffing and generally disappearing into vegetation with great purpose, and giving those instincts some direction.

We'll work on recall, retrieving, hunting, steadiness and learning to work together, with plenty that transfers into everyday life too.

And despite the name, your dog doesn't actually have to a be a gundog. You don't need any previous experience either. Tweed remains entirely optional.

6 weeks
75 minute sessions
Sunday mornings Ace secure dog field 10:15
Maximum 4 dogs
£240

3 places remaining. If you've been meaning to give gundog training a try, this is a good place to start.

Booking link below:
https://ricochetdogtraining.as.me/gundog

Photo credit Lee Pullen Photography

Dates are
6th September
27th September
4th October
25th October
1st November
22nd November

08/08/2026

I've spent the last few weeks rebuilding the Ricochet website, which has involved far more discussion about fonts, spacing and whether that box should move slightly to the left than I ever expected when I became a dog trainer. But it is finally done. Or done enough that I'm prepared to let other people look at it, which is probably a more accurate description.

The old website had served me well, but Ricochet has changed quite a lot since I built it. The way I train has developed, I've learnt a lot, and I've become much clearer about what I actually want people to get from working with me. The website hadn't really kept up. It told you what I offered, but not much about why I do things the way I do.

So the new one feels much more like Ricochet now. You'll still find puppy training, group classes, pet gundog training and one to one support, but there's much more about the thinking behind it all. I'm less interested in whether your dog can perform a perfect sit and much more interested in whether the two of you can actually enjoy living together.

It's about understanding the dog you've got, rather than the one you thought you were getting. It's about building skills that are useful in real life, giving dogs appropriate outlets for the things they naturally want to do and recognising that sometimes changing how a dog feels matters far more than teaching another cue.

Have a look around and see what you think. And if you find a button that takes you somewhere completely unexpected, a sentence that makes absolutely no sense or something I've clearly broken, feel free to tell me. I've stared at this thing for so long now that I could probably look directly at a photograph of a llama on the puppy page and not notice.

Have a nose around the new Ricochet Dog Training

Dog training in Gloucestershire with reward based classes, pet dog training and owner suppport. Practical training for everyday life.

06/08/2026

Making a splash with Ricochet Dog Training!

06/08/2026

My website is under going renovations and will be back in action tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience.

02/08/2026

Labels like force free, balanced or positive are supposed to tell you what you're signing up for with a trainer. I've discovered they don't always tell you very much.

I've spent years studying, invested thousands into my education and deliberately looked for trainers whose websites and qualifications aligned with my own values. I thought I knew what I was looking for. I was wrong. More than £70 later I found myself being shown slip lead corrections high behind the ears, told to strip the house of toys, keep the dog crated unless they were eating or toileting and tightly control access to just about everything. None of that was on the website.

Social media has the same problem, just faster. Two hours, one video, dog cured. What you don't see is everything that happened before the camera started rolling. A dog that stops reacting in a editted clip isn't calm. It's often shut down, flooded past the point of coping, or worn out from repeated exposure the video never shows. Suppressing a growl doesn't remove the reason for it. It just removes your warning system.

If I can still get caught out by marketing after years in this field, what chance has someone with their first puppy got. They're not comparing learning theory. They're looking at qualifications, reviews, nice photos and a video that promises results in an hour.

So I've stopped putting much stock in labels or clipped footage. I'd rather know what a trainer does when the dog gets it wrong, what happens when the dog is frightened, and how long it actually took to get that reaction on camera. Because the dog doesn't experience the label on your website or the edit on your video. It experiences your training.

27/07/2026

Thank you to Nessa's lovely mum for the brilliant review xx

25/07/2026

Every dog in a 2024 study on electric collars yelped when they got shocked. The researchers called it presumably pain-induced, then still concluded there wasn't much evidence of stress.

Read that twice. That's the study people point to when they say shock collars are backed by science.

What was actually being compared. What the welfare measures could and couldn't pick up. What the dogs likely learnt versus what the researchers wanted them to learn.

Shock collars can stop a dog chasing. So can a choke chain, and so could the electrified lead patented back in 1935. None of that has ever been the actual question. The question is whether causing pain was ever necessary, and it wasn't.

Full piece is up on the site, link below.

The most important welfare finding is also the one easiest to lose among the statistical language. Every dog in the electric-collar group yelped during the intervention. The researchers described these vocalisations as presumably pain-induced, yet still concluded they'd observed little other evidenc

16/07/2026

Our friend the wonderful Lee Pullen Photography at our most recent Scent of A Murder day.