15/08/2026
Thank you Sarahs Dog Training & Behaviour for the great write up about the training and healthcare that has been going on for Ted!
This week Sarah and our vet Jack have been teaming up to help Ted learn to cope with stressful situations and improve his long-term welfare, and Sarah has been doing great work with Ted over the last few years.
If your pet would also benefit from an at-home vet visit, get in touch to book an appointment!
-Your Vet in a Van
🐾🛻
When did “stress” become such a dirty word in dog training? 🤔
Today we went to see Ted, a five-year-old German Shepherd who I’ve known for years. We walk him every week and, at this point, he’s almost like one of our own dogs. ❤️
Ted is relatively under-socialised and finds veterinary handling very difficult. We have all decided, with veterinary involvement, to trial chemical castration to see whether reducing testosterone has any effect on some of his hormone-driven behaviours.
Knowing how Ted feels about the vets, we arranged for Jack at the amazing Garvey Vets - Mobile Veterinary Service to come to his home rather than putting him through a trip to the surgery.
The first attempt? Ted said absolutely not. 😂
Rather than escalating things and turning it into an ongoing wrestling match, we stopped and made another plan. Jack prescribed medication for him to have beforehand and we returned a couple of days later.
Today, Ted was a little bit d***y from his doggy space cakes 😂(joking!), but he still wasn’t exactly thrilled to see what we had planned.
Was the procedure stress-free? No.
Did Ted find it difficult? Absolutely.
But with the right equipment, preparation, medication, people he knew around him and sensible handling, we got it done. Afterwards, he recovered quickly, happily ate treats and came back over for cuddles, with a few suspicious side eyes at Jack.
🥰
Stress isn’t automatically a bad thing.
Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve started treating any sign of stress, frustration or discomfort in our dogs as something that must immediately be avoided.
But stress is a normal biological response to challenge. Neither dogs nor humans can go through life without experiencing it.
Our job isn’t necessarily to create a life in which our dogs never feel stressed. It’s to help them develop the skills and resilience to cope when life inevitably is stressful.
Of course, that doesn’t mean deliberately overwhelming dogs, ignoring their communication or forcing them repeatedly through frightening situations in the name of “resilience”. Too much stress can absolutely impair learning and sensitise a dog further.
But the opposite extreme can cause problems too. If we constantly remove every frustration, challenge, unfamiliar experience or moment of discomfort, we aren’t necessarily creating a more confident dog. Sometimes we’re creating a dog who has had very little opportunity to practise coping when things don’t go exactly as they’d like, leading to frustration, poor problem-solving and a very small world.
Ideally, we prepare dogs gradually for things like handling, restraint, vets, grooming, unfamiliar people and new environments. We expose them thoughtfully, give them appropriate choices and build difficulty at a level they can manage.
But real life isn’t a controlled training session and this doesn’t happen in every case.
Sometimes your dog will be stressed. Sometimes the vet needs to examine the painful leg. Sometimes the groomer needs to remove the mat. Sometimes medication needs administering. You can’t simply opt out of the real world.
For me, good dog training sits somewhere between two extremes:
🫧Don’t bubble-wrap them.
🐂Don’t bulldoze them either.
Prepare them. Support them. Challenge them appropriately. Listen when they’re struggling. Step in when you need to. And gradually teach them that difficult things can happen… and they can come out the other side absolutely fine.
A little stress can be part of learning. Too much stress can prevent learning. The skill is knowing the difference, and that’s where we come in.
Ted had a difficult few minutes today. Nobody is pretending otherwise. But we made it as manageable as we reasonably could, achieved something important for his longer-term welfare, and afterwards he was very happy to forgive us in exchange for snacks and cuddles. 😂❤️
