Instinct Method

07/10/2026

September was busy, a little chaotic, and somehow gone in a blink. 😅

We were all adjusting to the colder days again, darker evenings creeping in, and that very obvious feeling that winter is coming. 😂

A lot happened, but that’s exactly why I like keeping these little monthly recaps.

06/10/2026

Dog training world has been getting a little too serious lately, so today I bring you:

Absolutely nothing of educational value. 😂

No context. No explanation. Just whatever the hell this is. 😅

03/09/2026

Another month flew by in a blink of an eye.. 👀 This one was full of birthday celebrations and seemingly last catches of nice summer weather. We are so ready for the most beautiful and most colourful time of the year now. Are you already dreaming of that spooky season like we are? 👀🤣🥰

03/09/2026

July was a short month for Instinct Method as it was time for me to recharge those batteries. But once we came back we did it with extra pizazz. 😊 Extra love from all the dogs just once more proved that it is mutual love after all. 🥰

25/08/2026

Body language isn’t a dictionary.

A lip lick means stress.
A yawn means anxiety.
Panting means the dog is uncomfortable.
A wagging tail means they’re happy.

Except… not necessarily.

Individual behaviours can give us useful information, but they rarely come with one fixed translation.

A dog might pant because they’re hot, physically exerted, excited, highly aroused, stressed — or because they’re recovering after activity.

A lip lick might occur during uncertainty or social conflict, but it can also appear around food, anticipation, physical movement, or simply as part of a behavioural sequence that makes much more sense when you see what happened before and afterwards.

That’s why interpreting dogs well requires more than spotting individual “signals.”

Look at the whole dog.
Look at the environment.
Look at distance and movement.
Look at what happened immediately before.
And perhaps most importantly — look at what happens next.

Body language gives us clues.

Context gives those clues meaning.

The goal isn’t to memorise a canine dictionary.

It’s to become a better observer.

24/08/2026

18/08/2026

New brain-imaging research gives us another glimpse into how much information dogs may be taking from the humans around them.

Researchers showed awake pet dogs human faces displaying happiness, anger, fear and sadness while monitoring their brain activity. The dogs showed different neural patterns for some of those expressions — including patterns that distinguished fear from anger and sadness. Importantly, the study doesn’t show that dogs understand human emotions in the same way we do, or that they can somehow read our minds.

But there’s a useful training reminder here.

We tend to think about communication as:

I say a cue → the dog responds.

The dog experiences considerably more than the word itself.

Where you are.
How you move.
What you do next.
Your gestures.
Your timing.
What has happened in similar situations before.

A verbal cue is only one piece of that interaction.

That doesn’t mean analysing every eyebrow twitch or assuming your dog knows exactly what you’re feeling. It means recognising that we are part of the environment our dogs are learning from.

So when a dog responds differently than expected, it can be worth looking beyond:

“But I gave the same command.”

Did the whole picture stay the same?

Because while you’re reading your dog, your dog is gathering information about you too.

Source: Hernández-Pérez R., Co**ha L., Andics A., Bernal-Gamboa R. & Cuaya L.V. (2026), Dog brain representations of human facial expressions: Encoding happiness and differentiating specific negative expressions, iScience. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.116900.

゚viralシ

11/08/2026

A temperature reading on its own can’t tell you whether an activity is appropriate for the dog in front of you.

Shade, direct sun, humidity, airflow and the surface all change the environment. The individual dog matters too — their size, build, coat, fitness, health, acclimatisation and current condition all influence how they cope.

Then add the activity itself.

A dog resting in the shade and a dog running, training or highly aroused at the exact same air temperature are dealing with very different thermal demands.

That’s why heat safety needs context.

Dog + environment + activity = actual risk.

Use the forecast as information, not as a substitute for judgement. Watch the dog, adjust the workload, change the environment where possible, and reassess as conditions change.

There is no single number that can do that thinking for you.

25/07/2026

Can a dog become too obsessed with a toy?

A recent exploratory study found that some highly play-motivated dogs showed addiction-like behaviours around toys, including intense fixation, reduced responsiveness to other rewards and difficulty disengaging. That does not mean balls are bad—or that every enthusiastic fetch dog has a problem.

The more useful question is this:

Does the toy bring your dog into the interaction—or make everything else disappear?

Play can build communication, cooperation and a stronger relationship. But when the person becomes little more than a ball launcher, shared play can turn into repetitive object fixation.

This is the beginning of Beyond Fetch: a series about using play with more intention.

Connection first. Object second.

Source: Mazzini, A., Senn, K. & Riemer, S. (2025), Addictive-like behavioural traits in pet dogs with extreme motivation for toy play, Scientific Reports.

13/07/2026

Sorry for the monotone in my voice. I am still getting used to doing voice overs ( training dogs is easier 😅 ). This was not a planned session, but just a part of the walks that I do as they include working on behavioural issues alongside having fun with the dog in my care. This was taken as a regular update for the owners, but it is a good lesson for other dog owners as well because I see how often people just rush away with their dogs from these uncomfortable situations just making it worse for their dogs in the long run. Hope this helps and as always if you need more help do not hesitate to get in touch with us. We are here to help. ❤️