Ethical Dog Training

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Ethical Dog Training Changing the lives of dogs and the people who love them. Behaviour specialist and family dog consultant.
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One to one consultations, training sessions, education, tips, videos and blogs on dog training covering all dog behaviour issues. Promoting a co-operative relationship between people and their dogs based on kindness, mutual respect and positive, science based protocols.

Meet Plin. 🤎This beautiful young Italian Greyhound is very quick to react to other dogs.Sight → lunge, bark, snap, aggre...
06/10/2026

Meet Plin. 🤎

This beautiful young Italian Greyhound is very quick to react to other dogs.

Sight → lunge, bark, snap, aggress.

Understandably, his person had learned to anticipate and manage those moments carefully: distract him, lure him away, avoid certain dogs, shield him, keep him moving.

(All look like sensible strategies when you’re trying to prevent an explosion, or are being shamed by people who don’t care to understand, or simply move on.)

Today, instead of - “how do we stop Plin reacting?” we began with:

“What does Plin need to be able to feel and do here?”

The first answer was surprisingly simple: Look.

With the right set up, handling and feedback - he showed us he could actually gather information.

He looked.
He watched.
He assessed.

And then — so beautifully — when he was finished, he turned back to his person by himself.

No lure.
No distraction.
No battle for his attention.
No “firm hand” or using the lead against him

We repeated it...

Dog after dog, we began to see something different: not a dog being controlled around his triggers, but a dog connected to his person whilst beginning to self regulate in their presence.

The distinction matters enormously, not just to me, but to Plin.

There is more work to do, and one great session doesn’t erase a history of difficult feelings around dogs.

But today we found a doorway - and sometimes behaviour that looks like “I can’t cope with that” has inadvertently been surrounded by strategies that see humans communicate: “Yeah - You’re right - that is a problem.”

My work isn’t simply to make the lunging and barking stop, it’s to help Plin notice another dog, take in the information he needs, make good choices — and discover that he can cope, communicate, play, or simply move on depending on the moment.

Today, he started doing exactly that.

Look. Assess. Decide. Disengage.

On a soft lead, with his person partnered beside him.

That is where the really interesting work begins. Well done today team.

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

If your dog is reactive, anxious or struggling to cope around other dogs, I work with dogs and their people across Glasgow and surrounding areas.

Get in touch to tell me about your dog, and see how we can help them together.

For five years, she was “Crazy Maisie.”She couldn’t take food outside.She couldn’t slow down. She would spin, bark, boun...
13/09/2026

For five years, she was “Crazy Maisie.”

She couldn’t take food outside.

She couldn’t slow down. She would spin, bark, bounce and sprint — sometimes for hours — most often with a toy clamped in her mouth.

Ziva — my beautiful Malinois client found her really difficult. She would muzzle-punch, pin, block and snap at Maisie outside. Her family were understandably worried that one day it might escalate into a bite for this little springer, and Ziva had been muzzled when they were out together.

Inside they’re fine. Outside? Two dogs with very different needs and nervous systems, repeatedly colliding.

So today we stopped trying to make either dog behave like the other.

No toy/pacifier for Maisie.
No requirement to contain all that intensity through obedience.
No asking Ziva to tolerate behaviour she found overwhelming.

We set the environment up differently, worked with what was driving each individual dog, and gave both of them enough space to make good decisions.

Within literally 90 seconds, after five years of this previous behaviour- everything changed.

Maisie walked. She sniffed. She investigated.

She didn’t bark once.

No spinning. No frantic running. No bouncing.

And this dog who reportedly could not take food outside started eating — and repeatedly came back to ask for more.

Meanwhile Ziva is off lead, no muzzle and beautifully self-managing for more than 90% of the session.

She didn’t need to police Maisie. Because Maisie wasn’t behaving in a way that she felt compelled to police.

They walked with us. Drifted apart. Came back together. Investigated the world in their own different ways.

No fight.
No drama.
No big behaviour.

Just two dogs suddenly able to happily exist outside alongside one another.

Their humans spent much of the session filming in disbelief — and phoned Maisie’s parents as soon as we finished. 😂❤️

Because “crazy” isn’t a behavioural diagnosis.

Neither is “naughty”, “stubborn”, “dominant” or “too much”.

Sometimes the dog in front of us has spent years showing us that something about the situation simply isn’t working for them.

My job isn’t always to exert more control, sometimes it’s to get curious enough to change the question.

Today, for the first time in five years, Crazy Maisie showed her family what she looks like when the world makes a little more sense.

This morning she’s just Maisie, and she’s a little darling. ❤️

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

What does dog training actually look like?Quite often, it looks like this.Not standing in a field or a retail unit askin...
12/09/2026

What does dog training actually look like?

Quite often, it looks like this.

Not standing in a field or a retail unit asking your dog to perform behaviours for me.

Not taking the lead from their person and showing them how beautifully I can handle their dog.

My work is usually much less theatrical than that.

I watch.
We talk.
We notice the tiny things together.

We change distance, pace, pressure, expectations — and sometimes surprisingly small details (small to you, not to them) at the human end of the lead.

Behaviour is information. Before we decide what to do about it, I want to understand what the dog in front of us is actually telling us. Then, we move.

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

…we take those skills out into the world where they’re actually needed. In your real life.

Dogs don’t live in training sessions.

They live amongst traffic, cafés, other dogs, people, smells, surprises and all the unpredictable messiness of ordinary life.

They’re not machines.

We can’t control everything they encounter — nor should we need to. Stop making your lives smaller, it’s a one way ticket.

Rather shrinking your life, creating a dog who can only cope when the environment has been carefully arranged for them, we’re trying to build something much more useful:

Understanding.
Communication.
Context.
Resilience.
Recovery.

A dog increasingly able to think and make good choices — and a human client who knows how to help when things get difficult.

THE POINT OF IT ALL

Ultimately, I don’t need your dog to become brilliant at working with me, I leave you after session.

I want you to become brilliant at understanding each other.

That’s the point. I need to upskill you, and help you build a relationship where you can recognise what your dog needs, respond before whispers become shouts, and help them navigate a world neither of you can completely control. I them to understand what you need from them too, and be able to offer that.

That’s why so much of my work happens in parks, streets, cafés, shops — wherever your real life happens.

If life with your dog has become smaller, harder or more stressful than you expected, you don’t have to wait until things reach crisis point to ask for help.

1:1 behaviour & training | Glasgow & surrounding areas

You’re welcome to send me a message or enquire through the website.

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual. 🐾

This beautiful boy came into my professional life well before the incident that would later place his future in very ser...
11/09/2026

This beautiful boy came into my professional life well before the incident that would later place his future in very serious jeopardy.

His owner had already recognised that his breed needed thoughtful support. She engaged me, learned about him, worked diligently with him and invested in building the skills he would need to navigate the world safely - and through no fault of his own - something still went badly wrong.

I think there is an important conversation in that.

Folks, Dogs are not automatons.

However excellent your training is, you do not “programme a dog” and then possess a guarantee about everything that dog will ever do. Any trainer who tells you differently is not being honest with you.

They are living, thinking animals with agency. They make choices. They have emotional responses. They can be frightened, surprised, overwhelmed or put into situations we would never have chosen for them.

And perhaps most importantly:

*we cannot control the world around them*

We cannot guarantee that another person won’t behave terribly or unpredictably. That somebody won’t ignore our instructions. That a dog won’t suddenly appear around a corner. That a gate won’t be left open. That life won’t occasionally hand our dog something much harder than the arranged situations in which we taught them skills.

So genuinely good behaviour work cannot simply be about controlling behaviour.

It has to be about building the dog who will be standing there when the difficult moment arrives.

A dog who can recover.

Who can disengage.

Who has practised moving away rather than escalating.

Who knows how to seek information and support from their person.

Who has experienced being listened to when they communicate quietly, rather than learning that only shouting works.

Who has enough behavioural flexibility and emotional resilience to cope when the world doesn’t behave as we’d hoped.

That was the work this boy and his owner had already been doing.

And when a serious incident subsequently happened, it did not mean that work had failed.

One event did not erase hundreds of good decisions, repetitions, conversations and pieces of learning that came before it.

Those foundations remained — and we have continued building on them.

Munro has since demonstrated, again and again, just how much is there.

In busy environments. Around people. Around dogs. Through difficult moments and ordinary ones. He’s been in busy exam and lecture halls with me, libraries, vets, dog parks, restaurants.

He notices. He thinks. He checks in. He responds. He disengages. He recovers.

He is *remarkably* settled, safe and responsive.

His history isn’t ignored and his future isn’t left to chance. Good management remains part of loving him responsibly.

But his entire identity is not reduced to the worst few seconds of his life, at someone else’s hands either.

At one point, the consequences of that incident could have included Munro losing his life.

Instead, here he is.

September sunshine on his face after a very busy session. Relaxed enough to lean into some affection. Happy. Safe. Still learning. Still living the life he deserves.

And beside him is an elite owner whose diligence before the incident mattered enormously — and whose commitment afterwards never stopped.

Perhaps that’s one of the most important things his story can teach us.

We cannot prepare our dogs for every situation they will ever encounter.

But we can spend our time building dogs who are increasingly well equipped to meet the situations we couldn’t prepare for.

That’s a very different ambition from obedience.

And, for me, it’s a much more important one. ❤️

If you’re worried about your dog’s behaviour — particularly aggression, reactivity, or a situation that feels as though it’s becoming serious — please don’t wait for things to go badly wrong before asking for help.

Early, skilled support gives us more options. It gives us time to understand the dog in front of us, build useful skills, support the humans around them, and create a dog who is better equipped when real life inevitably gets difficult.

Munro’s story could have had a very different ending.

If you’d like help with your dog, you can get in touch via ethicaldogtraining.com or send me a message here.

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

Rare sighting of me. 😂I’m usually quietly watching, coaching, tweaking things at the other end of the lead — (my human c...
04/09/2026

Rare sighting of me. 😂

I’m usually quietly watching, coaching, tweaking things at the other end of the lead — (my human client) and I had no idea I was in this shot - I rather love it.

These two little dachshund girls came to me because the world could feel like a lot; they were easily surprised, dysregulated and reactive around other dogs - as can happen when two dogs live together, one could quickly set the other off.

🖤 Their people have done such lovely work with them 🖤

We don’t demand that they behave. We didn’t start by correcting the barking, we needed to help them feel safer, and spot the earlier, quieter signs that things were becoming difficult. By changing what happened around them, giving them better options, and building their confidence and ability to cope.

Today was a catch-up session on busy Byres Road.

Traffic, roadworks, people, unexpected things — and lots of dogs.

We walked in and out of shops. Dogs appeared ahead of us, behind us and across the road. We passed some at remarkably close range.

And these two just… got on with being dogs.

They noticed things, processed them. They moved on.

Their people described so much change outwith sessions too, calmer, softer, happier. That last word matters enormously to me.

The goal of our behaviour work isn’t to create dogs who perform perfectly while we carefully control the world around them.

It’s to help a dog become increasingly able to encounter the world, cope with its surprises, recover when something is difficult — and feel safe enough that they don’t need those old behaviours anymore.

Enormous behavioural change often looks remarkably unremarkable.

Last session of my day today and it was two little dogs, walking down a Glasgow street in the autumn sunshine - what a life. 🍂

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

GlasgowDogs GlasgowDogTrainer

This month I’ve had several dogs who couldn’t “do nothing”They could train.They could retrieve, walk beautifully, recall...
01/09/2026

This month I’ve had several dogs who couldn’t “do nothing”

They could train.
They could retrieve, walk beautifully, recall.
They could follow instructions.
They could engage beautifully with their people.

The human clients are bright, kind, well motivated people who’ve put a huge amount of time, thought and training into their dogs. Three are dog trainers themselves. (All shared with permission)

Somewhere along the way this month, an interesting pattern showed itself.

These dogs had become very good at looking to their humans for the next thing. (And the next…)

“What are we doing?!”
“What do you want?”
“What’s the task?”
“What happens now?”

Downtime becomes another situation in which they are waiting for more information.

So ironically part of our work is not _teaching more_

It is creating enough space for these teams to discover that sometimes there genuinely wasn’t anything they *needed* to do.

No cue/command.
No exercise.
No constant conversation.
No need to perform “calm” (the good ol’ “go to bed”)

Just… being a dog. Enjoying that.

This is one of the reasons I’m cautious about assuming that a dog who struggles to settle simply needs more exercise, more enrichment or more training.

Sometimes those things are absolutely useful - but - sometimes more input becomes part of the pattern and the problem.

With dogs like these, I’m interested in finding the fine edge between too little and too much: enough movement, sniffing, play, learning and connection to meet the dog in front of us — without accidentally making human-directed activity the only state they know how to inhabit.

And then we watch the tiny things.

The exhale.

The body softening.

The attention drifting away from the human.

Choosing to sniff rather than check in.

Lying down without being asked.

Not because we’ve successfully trained a settle —

but because, in that moment, there was genuinely nothing else they needed or wanted to do.

Especially for our high energy/“high drive”/working dogs, that’s a skill worth making room for.

My clients will often hear me say I’m not interested in simply making behaviour disappear.Angus was “dog reactive” when ...
24/08/2026

My clients will often hear me say I’m not interested in simply making behaviour disappear.

Angus was “dog reactive” when his person got in touch, so we got to work teaching them both what to do around other dogs (of course).

The bigger, more interesting job was changing how those encounters felt to him.

Because there’s a difference between a dog who has learned/been made to hold it together…

…and a dog who genuinely isn’t worried anymore.

These days, his mum sends me frequent videos and updates of Angus calmly navigating the world - sometimes with hundreds of dogs around him, without the reactions that once made those situations so difficult for everyone involved.

He’s evolving into a truly magnificent adult dog who in turn is able to robustly weather other dog’s rudeness or reactivity, becoming a teacher in those moments for them too.

That’s the bit I care about.

A dog whose emotional experience has changed enough that he simply doesn’t need to react in the same way anymore.

More freedom, more places they can go together, and far less of Lauren’s life spent scanning the horizon for the next dog.

Behaviour matters.

But the dog underneath the behaviour matters more.

Evidence based. Ethical. Individual; they deserve nothing less.

Kobi had bitten another dog before I met him.This gorgeous boy was big, powerful, dog reactive — and his world was becom...
18/08/2026

Kobi had bitten another dog before I met him.

This gorgeous boy was big, powerful, dog reactive — and his world was becoming smaller because encounters with other dogs were so difficult to navigate safely.

It would have been very easy to define Kobi by that behaviour.

We didn’t.

We worked on understanding what was happening for him around other dogs, helped him feel safer, and built the skills he and his humans needed to make good choices together.

*we didn’t measure success by expecting Kobi to suddenly love every dog he met.

We let _him_ show us what was possible.

These days?

Kobi has friends.

Actual, meet-up-for-a-puppaccino dog friends. ☕️🐾

He’s now preparing for his first dog-friendly holiday — including travelling by ferry (!!) alongside other dogs.

That’s quite a journey for a dog whose world once had to be organised around avoiding them.

A bite history matters - We take it seriously, in more ways than one.

But it only tells us what a dog did in a particular set of circumstances.

It doesn’t, by itself, tell us everything that dog is capable of becoming.

And Kobi, apparently, is capable of becoming a gentleman who does coffee dates. Love you big boy 🐾🫶🏾

Ethical Dog Training
Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

ethicaldogtraining.com

This photograph doesn’t look remarkable.For Callie, it is.Callie’s family love being outdoors. Campervan trips, hiking, ...
16/08/2026

This photograph doesn’t look remarkable.

For Callie, it is.

Callie’s family love being outdoors. Campervan trips, hiking, stopping for coffee, being near water — and the ordinary pleasures of taking your dog with you.

But Callie was struggling.

Her anxiety outside could manifest as screaming, barking and crying. Settling was incredibly difficult (not possible). Being off lead was difficult. Stopping the van was difficult.

Their world was getting smaller - and importantly, Callie wasn’t enjoying it either.

So our work wasn’t about teaching Callie to be quiet.

It was about understanding why she couldn’t be.

We worked on helping Callie feel safer, giving her family the skills to understand what she was communicating, and changing her experience of the world around her.

✨ this is Callie now ✨

Lying on the grass beside the camper.

Sniffing.

Exploring freely off lead.

Settling.

Going for coffee.

Her mums sent me this update:

“I can’t believe she’s actually lying down and on the grass! Massive improvements!”

Sometimes successful dog training doesn’t look impressive at all.

Sometimes it looks like a little dog lying peacefully in the grass, enjoying life on life’s terms.

…and a whole family getting their life back.

Ethical Dog Training
Evidence based. Ethical. Individual.

anxiousdog

Maple 🍁 These family clients have such a special place in my heart - for years they have shown nothing but diligence, co...
14/08/2026

Maple 🍁

These family clients have such a special place in my heart - for years they have shown nothing but diligence, commitment, openness to learning and love in their work with their dogs.

They’ve built attachment and skill in their dogs, provided robust and elite care in their daily lives and are serious about giving their animals quality of life.

Maple is:

🤎 High drive = quick to learn
🤍 Sensitive = responsive
🤎 Big energy = happy and interested

Today we watched her sprint around the park, and recall immediately with Exocet level speed and accuracy, regardless of the excitement or distraction available to her.

Maple’s joy is evident.
Alex and Matt’s results are so well deserved.


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