From the 1st of May until 31st July Richmond and Bushy Parks both become all dogs on leads. This is to protect the deer who are giving birth and the fawns. It’s also worth remembering the female deer are vert aggressive in their protections of fawns. They often leave their fawns safely hidden while they …

Way back in November I wrote a blog post about Canine Body Language – it’s taken me much longer than I’d intended to write part 2. On current form I guess part 3 will land around September, I do intend to write it sooner though.Time will tell if that will happen or not. What is …

You’re picking up your new puppy and bubbling over with excitement. It’s such a great feeling. But how do you introduce them to your older established dog? Its a problem many of us are lucky enough to face. Most dogs will cut a new puppy some slack, simply by virtue of their age, but it’s …

Without a doubt ensuring proper socialisation is the single most important thing you can do for your dog & you haven’t got that long to do it. By the time they’re 16 weeks old you’ve left it too late. A puppy’s brain is a little sponge. It soaks up as much information as you and …

It’s an exciting time. A new puppy home for the first time. I can’t think of much better. But as well as exciting remember that, for them, it’s overwhelming and often a little scary. If we understand the reasons why that is then we can help them to settle in. As big a day was …

Every dog needs bombproof recall. There’s little more frustrating then a dog who chases uncontrollably while you want to go home, its dangerous if they do it near a road (for example) and often, if our pet gun dog has gone self employed and is making their own entertainment they’ll often do so by not …

Seasons greetings to everybody I’ve had the utter pleasure of working with this year and if I haven’t met you yet then thats something to look forward to next year. A happy new year as well and may it be filled with dogs..what could be better?

Placeboards. Some trainers love them, others not so much. I think they’re a brilliant way of teaching your dog exactly where you’d like them to start a task from and return to at the end of a task. As well as being an excellent place to start and deliver a retrieve to they’re also a …

A warning: most of this post is theoretical. Its mostly my thoughts and should be given weight as such. I think of myself as a positive trainer and I always give the advice to anyone who’ll listen that’s better to walk away and go for a good walk then to get frustrated with training, that …

Thats a really big topic and something we could (or at least I could) talk about for far longer than we have time just here. So I’ll try to cover the really really important bits below but there is far more to this topic than just whats covered here. Body language is really important to …