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🐾 Helping dogs feel calmer by meeting their needs.
🎓 ABTC Accredited Dog Training Instructor (ATI)
🐶 Puppy Classes • 1-1 Training • Behaviour Support
📍Sidcup, New Eltham, Bexley, Bromley & surrounding areas
🌐 aspiredogtraining.co.uk

🐶 **Puppy Foundations at High Elms — starting Saturday 14 November**Have you recently welcomed a puppy and found that li...
16/10/2026

🐶 **Puppy Foundations at High Elms — starting Saturday 14 November**

Have you recently welcomed a puppy and found that life now involves rather more biting, jumping, pulling and general chaos than you expected?

My next five-week Puppy Foundations course starts at High Elms:

📍 High Elms
📅 Saturday 14 November
🕘 9:00am
🐾 Maximum of just four puppies
💷 £165 for the full five-week course

The small class size means you and your puppy receive plenty of individual guidance in a calm, supportive environment.

We’ll build practical foundations for everyday life, including:

🐾 Engagement and focus
🐾 Recall
🐾 Comfortable lead walking
🐾 Appropriate greetings
🐾 Handling and cooperative care
🐾 Settling and making good choices

This isn’t simply about teaching cues. You’ll learn how to understand your puppy’s behaviour and support their individual needs as they grow.

Classes are force-free, reward-based and led by John Monksfield, an ABTC-registered Animal Training Instructor and owner of Aspire Dog Training.

To ask a question or reserve a place please send me a message, you can also book directly through our website.

Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

10/10/2026

Sometimes the best dog training happens before your dog even gets distracted. 🐾

During a recent Puppy Foundations class at High Elms, we were outside practising some real-world skills.

Other dogs were approaching along the main path, so rather than waiting for our puppies to get excited, start pulling towards them or become frustrated that they couldn't say hello, we did something very simple.

We moved further away from the path.

Then we used a little game called 1-2-3, where the puppies could predict when a reward was coming and had something familiar and enjoyable to focus on.

The result?

Other dogs walked past, and our puppies remained happily engaged with their owners.

No barking, lunging or frantic attempts to get over and say hello.

And here's the important bit.

That wasn't because we'd taught these young puppies incredible self-control.

It was because we'd set them up to succeed.

We gave them enough distance, made the situation manageable and rewarded the behaviour we wanted to see.

As their confidence and skills develop, we can gradually make things more challenging.

But we don't have to start with the hardest version.

Good dog training isn't about constantly testing whether your dog can cope. It's about creating the conditions in which they can learn.

🐾 Aspire Dog Training

Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

04/10/2026

A different walk can sometimes offer more than a longer walk. 🐾

Today I've brought Woody somewhere we've never explored before — the Devil's Kneading Trough near Wye.

And from his perspective, pretty much everything here is new information.
Different scents.
Different terrain.
Different wildlife.
Different sounds.
Different places to investigate.

We often judge a dog's walk by distance or duration. Did they get an hour? Did we do three miles? Did we tire them out?
But that's only one way of looking at it.

Allowing a dog to sniff, explore and process a novel environment can provide something another lap of the same familiar route simply can't.

And you don't need spectacular countryside or a big day out to do it.

Take a different turning. Explore a footpath you've always walked past. Reverse your normal route. Drive five minutes and start your walk somewhere else.

Novelty doesn't have to mean more exercise. It means giving your dog something new to experience.

For me, that's what enrichment is really about — not simply keeping dogs busy, but giving them meaningful opportunities to use their brains, bodies and natural behaviours.

Sometimes the question isn't:
“How can I tire my dog out?”
It's:
“How can I make their world a little more interesting?”

💫🐾 Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

High Elms September Puppy Graduates! 😍Congratulations to Teddy, Bow, Monty and Penny who were all amazing over the last ...
03/10/2026

High Elms September Puppy Graduates! 😍

Congratulations to Teddy, Bow, Monty and Penny who were all amazing over the last 5 weeks. 🎓💫

Last session today all outside in the paddock and they smashed their recall, loose lead walking, leave it and calm greetings in the most distracting of environments.

Proud of all the pups! 🐕💪🏼

02/10/2026

Learning in a quiet training space is important — but puppies also need help taking those skills out into the real world.

Last weekend we took our Puppy Foundations group outside to work on loose lead walking and ‘leave it’.

Suddenly there are smells to investigate, things moving around, other dogs, people and a whole environment competing for their attention.

And that's the point.

We don't expect perfection.

We make things achievable, help each puppy succeed and gradually build their skills around the distractions they'll encounter in everyday life.

Because ultimately, I don't just want a puppy who can do something when we're standing in a training room with a treat in our hand.

I want to help owners build skills they can actually use when life is happening around them.

🐶 Small groups — maximum 4 puppies
🌳 Indoor and outdoor training at High Elms
🐾 Force-free, reward-based training
💙 Plenty of individual support

If you've recently welcomed a puppy and would like to join a future Puppy Foundations at High Elms course, you can find upcoming dates and book through the Aspire Dog Training website.

Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

01/10/2026

Is saying “no” or “uh-uh” to your dog really aversive? 🤔

I’m a force-free, reward-based trainer — but I think this is an interesting conversation.

This morning my dog was about to roll in fox poo. I called “uh-uh”, he stopped, looked at me and came running back. I rewarded him.

So had I used an aversive?

For me, context matters.

Dogs don’t speak English. “No” or “uh-uh” has no inherent meaning to a dog — its meaning comes from what we teach them and what happens around it.

That’s very different from deliberately pairing a cue with something unpleasant, painful or frightening in order to suppress behaviour.

And that's where I think these conversations sometimes become more complicated than simply deciding certain words are “good” or “bad”.

I’m interested to know where other owners and trainers draw the line.

Do you consider saying “no” or “uh-uh” to a dog aversive?


01/10/2026

When is a recall actually finished?

When your dog turns towards you?

When they start running back?

When they get somewhere vaguely near you?

For me, none of those are quite enough.

I like my recalls to have a clear finish — and I use a hand touch.

The clip with Woody is a perfect example of why.

He'd been chasing a squirrel. I blew my recall whistle and he responded, turned and started coming back.

Great recall… except halfway back he hit an interesting scent in the long grass and wandered off to investigate it.

It would have been very easy at that point to think, “Well, he came back when I called…”

But he hadn't actually completed the recall.

So I waited. I made the hand target really obvious to help him out, and he came right in and touched my hand.

Now the recall was finished.

That little detail matters.

Without a clearly defined endpoint, it's very easy for “come back to me” to gradually become “come somewhere in my general direction and then do whatever you fancy.”

A hand touch gives my dog something really clear to aim for:

Come all the way back. Touch my hand. Get rewarded. Then you're released again.

And importantly, Woody getting distracted doesn't make this a bad training example.

It makes it a real one.

Dogs aren't robots. He'd just disengaged from chasing a squirrel and then encountered another competing scent. I simply helped him complete the behaviour I had asked for.

That's how we protect our recall rather than allowing it to slowly become optional.

🐾 Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

28/09/2026

Want a better recall? Start rewarding your puppy before you even call them.

One of the things I tell puppy owners is to look for check-ins.

You’re out walking. Your puppy is sniffing and exploring… and then, completely by choice, they look back at you or wander back towards you.

That moment matters.

Mark it. Reward it. Make coming back to you worthwhile.

Because every time your puppy chooses to check in, they’re practising something we desperately want later:

“Even when I’m exploring the world, keeping track of my human is worth doing.”

And the more they practise it, the more likely they are to do it again.

Recall isn’t just about shouting a word and hoping your dog comes back.

It starts much earlier — by building a dog who chooses to stay connected with you.

So on your next walk, try this:

Don’t call them.

Just watch.

And when they choose to check in with you — reward it. 🐾

Fulfilment First — informed by breed, shaped by the individual.

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Sidcup

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 9pm
Tuesday 9am - 9pm
Wednesday 9am - 9pm
Thursday 9am - 9pm
Friday 9am - 9pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 9am - 5pm

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