AB K9 Training

AB K9 Training Alice Berwick
Qualified Dog trainer & Behaviourist
Based in Central London
Training that puts the dog first

06/09/2026

You bought a dog with a ton of work drive, but now you’re stuck with a ticking time bomb bouncing off the walls and reacting to things outside.

Sound familiar?

If so, ask yourself one question:

Are you actually channeling your dog’s drive, or are you just trying to suppress it?

This dog is the highest-drive Vizsla I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with A LOT of them.

She’s incredibly intelligent, super sensitive, and has endless energy.

Sounds great, right?

Well… without the right outlet and control, those same qualities can create a very difficult dog to live with. Dogs like this can easily become frustrated, reactive and completely overwhelmed by the world around them.

So rather than trying to suppress that incredible work drive, we channel it and learn how to control it.

Through games.
Through training.
Through teaching impulse control.
Through giving her appropriate outlets for the things she was bred to do.

The goal isn’t to switch the drive off.

It’s to teach the dog how to use it and then how to control it.

A high-drive dog isn’t a problem to be fixed. They’re a dog who needs to learn where to put all that drive and how to control it.

04/09/2026

One thing I work on a LOT is dogs with no control around prey.

Bertie, the dog in this video, had absolutely no recall or control around prey. In fact, he would simply run off in the park the second he got the sense that there was squirrels around

One of the biggest issues I see with these high prey drive dogs is that they can be brilliant when there’s nothing going on… and completely out of control the moment prey appears.

So what do people often do? They practise recall, impulse control and general obedience in low-distraction environments, and then hope it holds up when a squirrel suddenly appears.

But that’s a huge gap to bridge.

We need to deliberately create distractions and build drills that mimic chasing, overexcitement and arousal, so we can teach the dog how to listen to us even when they have some adrenaline pumping through their system.

Of course, nothing truly compares to a squirrel, and you’ll still need to do a lot of other pre-drive exercises, but creating these controlled challenges is a way of gradually filling the gap between no distraction and the ultimate distraction. It’s one piece of skill set we use to get perfect control around prey.

03/09/2026

WEEKLY DEMO✨
A super easy and fun one this week…Spin! (and switch!)
For all the steps in this video make sure you do it both clockwise and anticlockwise.

02/09/2026

The answer is, it totally depends on the dog. What would your dog find harder?

01/09/2026

What’s the hardest moment to recall a Dog?
It’s that second just before they reach what they were running to! If you want a bulletproof recall in real life, you need to make sure you mimic that moment in your recall exercises!

31/08/2026

This weeks demo video is a follow on from the last demo video where we take our hold cue and use it to teach our dog how to bring us things. I hope you enjoy! Drop me a comment if there’s anything specific you’d like to see a demo of.

31/08/2026

I might get a lot of hate for this one, but from my experience, high prey drive dogs and I mean dogs who have a serious hunting drive, not just dogs who are chasing for fun, if you don’t want to use an e-collar on them, you’re going to have to let them sometimes hunt.
I never use E-collars and I still manage to get countless high prey drive dogs off lead, but I do so by ALLOWING them an outlets

See the dog in this video? I know she looks like a Lab, but she’s actually an Argentinian street dog, and she’s killed so many things back in Argentina and when she was working on horse yards.

So the idea that I can take that drive, years of killing things, and just do nothing with it, or replace it with a flirt pole, is naive.

But I can allow her to hunt, get her hunting with me and on cue, and then teach her when she can and can’t hunt.

For me, the goal isn’t to suppress the drive. It’s to put it under control.

30/08/2026

Most people can do middle, but have you ever tried doing it this way instead?
Let me know how you get on in the comments!

29/08/2026

What do I really specialise in?
I work on a lot of different things; puppies, obedience, prey drive, fearful dogs, reactivity, aggression.
But when I really think about it, what matters most to me is this:
Helping dogs who are “stuck” on a lead learn the skills they need to safely enjoy off lead freedom.
Most dogs need to run. They need outlets. They need the chance to be dogs without you holding onto them and limiting where they go. And while there are many reasons why a dog might not be able to come off lead, making that possible is always one of my biggest goals.
All of these dogs in the video were stuck on a longline, not able to go off lead for different reasons. Some of the dogs in this video had seen multiple trainers before. Some owners had been told it wasn’t possible. Some had almost given up hope. Yet here they are safely off lead, running free.
I’m aware this post may upset people who feel their dogs must always be on a long line. I understand that every dog’s journey is different and this is not a criticism of those who would rather keep their dog on a lead. It just simply is and always will be one of my biggest goals in dog training.

29/08/2026

This week’s weekly demo is Go Around

(I know I mentioned doing Down from a distance for my demo this week, but I’m afraid that will have to wait until next week)

For this week’s demo I have my client Lieke and her dog Louis demonstrating!

We have already taught Louis this command, so you can see it’s already very fluid in this video.

Have a go at these different steps and let me know how you get on!

If you watch to the end of the video, you’ll see Margot the Vizsla, and she does the ultimate Go Around, around the entire Albert Memorial!

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