You've learned EVERYTHING about dogs … so why isn't it working?

You’ve hunted all over the internet

You’ve read all the books

You’ve watched the whole of Youtube

You’ve learned ALL the things.

But whenever you try to do any of the things, it just doesn’t seem to work for you.

There is nothing wrong with you!

This is 100% normal.

And the answer is NOT to watch another video, read another facebook post, follow the latest meme.

I get that you may be trying to save money by only getting the free stuff. But what is it actually costing you in terms of the quality of your life with your dog? The level of your anxiety? Your embarrassment when your dog “misbehaves”?

There is more to life than saving a few shillings. After all, as my grandmother used to say,  

There are no pockets in shrouds!

If your car broke down, would you rely on the internet to try to piece together all the conflicting advice and find out what to do, or would you take yourself off to a car mechanic?

The missing link

You have everything available to you. Really, you do.

You KNOW what you want to do with your dog … you just don’t seem to be able to get it going. Doubts and other things are always getting in the way. Whenever you try to copy what you see, it just doesn’t work. Your dog is not getting any better, and you are getting frustrated!

Perhaps you doubt your own ability to help your dog, and consider rehoming him or sending him away to someone else to “fix”. Read this post before you entertain that thought for another moment.

Thing is, you can gather information till the cows come home, but unless you have the support you need, you’re unlikely to get it working for you!

 You see, there’s one thing in all this that you’re missing.

💚 You need someone who can answer your questions.

💚 You need someone who’ll push you to do the hard stuff.

💚 You need someone who can coach you in your particular situation!

What high-flyer doesn’t have a coach? Which dog trainer didn’t work with a top dog trainer? They know they can’t do it by themselves! Even the greatest of them! In fact, the greater they are, the more they know they need a coach.

Stuck?

So if you’re feeling bogged down, stuck, unable to move forward to what you truly want your life with your dog to be, take a look at this free Workshop, which shows you what to do, how to do it, and how to get the personal help you need - all of it structured in the right order so you don’t flit from pillar to post trying to mesh impossible systems together - and inevitably fail.

And if you’ve spent hours watching videos and you’re wondering how on earth you can reach your dream of starting your own dog training business, start here.

Once you have someone working WITH you - life becomes so much easier!

Thanks massively to this course and the input of the trainers, we are making progress. CP, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

My dog and I have completed the program now and I feel so much more confident that we can progress. We are enjoying our ‘no pull’ walks so much more than the previous routine. I was really starting to think of rehoming her after being pulled off my feet on several occasions. I now put much more effort into understanding her and not so much about ‘controlling’ her.” JF, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

I felt completely lost at the point you're at and didn't find this Community until much later. You're definitely in the right place for help and support! VP, encouraging another student in our lovely private Community

I am only in Module 3 but I can tell you I feel more relaxed while out walking Jack. I appreciate the emails from Beverley Courtney and feel as though I have a therapist as well as a trainer! Your understanding of human behavior and how I'm reacting is just as important and I love the emphasis on the relationship I'm building with Jack. The emphasis doesn't seem to be on "fixing" the Growlies but on deepening the relationship we have with him and I love that. ND, student in From Growly Dog to Confident Dog

Thanks for your reply and advice. It’s so nice to hear about all the nuances that I would miss as a novice. It’s the very reason I joined Brilliant Family Dog. Thank you so much and for your prompt reply. JT, student in the Brilliant Family Dog Academy

The only constant is change

2,500 years ago, Heraclitus said “The only constant is change”.

And he wasn’t wrong!

Things change all round us. The seasons change. Things that were growing die. Things that appeared dead, grow. People age. Babies are born. Our dogs grow older. New puppies appear.

Scientific and technical advances mean that daily life is always changing - our grandparents had no smartphones!

And as we’ve discovered this year, our whole way of life can change - very quickly. What we took as normal is now exceptional. What was outlandish is now standard.

So how do you stop your head spinning in all this? How do you hold on to your place in the world?

Let go of control!

The first thing to know is that the more you try and control the world around you, the less control you will have. It will lead only to frustration, anger, resentment.

It’s an impossible task! Like trying to hold on to water!

And this isn’t confined to the world around us . . .

You may know by this stage of your life that trying to control the people around you is doomed to failure. And you should also know by now that trying to control your dog is equally doomed. The only way you can possibly exert this level of control - of bending another to your will - is by extreme force, captivity, limitation, abuse.

And we don’t want to go that way.

So in this world of shifting shapes and shifting times, how are we to hold on to reality?

Start with yourself

The fact is that the only thing you can control is . . . what you think.

Yep. That’s it. That’s the extent of what you can control.

Death camp survivor Viktor Frankl knew a thing or two about control and being controlled. Amidst all the horror he held on to his mind by holding on to this thought:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

But it’s often the last thing people resort to! They think it’s easier to control everyone and everything else, that they themselves are right, so everyone else must be wrong

Once you can shake this daft way of thinking out of your head, the path is open to you to truly control by influencing, by showing the way, by shining the light.

It is empowering when we recognise that we’re part of a changing universe, that the only thing that stays the same is the fluctuation.

King Canute is famous for attempting to turn the tide and failing. He is often misrepresented as stupid. In fact he was on the side of sense - he was demonstrating to his fawning courtiers that even a king could not affect the fundamental nature of our universe - that of change.

Canute worked this out a thousand years ago. It seems we have to work it out for ourselves anew!

Our dog’s behaviour

I see this frequently in new students, and in emails from readers. Their dog’s previously predictable behaviour changes. So their knee-jerk reaction is to control the dog, to stop the behaviour, to enforce change. (I say “new students” advisedly! Students who’ve been around me for a while know that this is not the way forward.)

If instead of seeing this as open rebellion - the start of a slippery slope, the dog getting out of hand, taking over, “dominating” - if instead the dog’s owner sees it as a simple change, then it becomes so much easier to guide the dog into choices that align with how you’d like him to be.

Control not necessary!

Think of how much energy you’ll save by moving into an accepting state of mind, instead of one of continual resistance and confrontation!

It’s not what happens in life: it’s how you deal with it

But I know this can be hard - especially in the heat of the moment. We’ve been conditioned all our life to defend our territory, to regard any encroachment as a dangerous act. Just knowing that this river of life is flowing around you, and the way to enjoy the experience is to flow with it, can be an ideal you may struggle to reach!

If this is you, I think I may be able to help you. I would love the opportunity to see how this thinking is affecting you, and what the best way forward would be for you. Drop me a line and maybe we can get on a call together and see where this leads you.

New Puppies Everywhere!

There are puppies everywhere! As people went into Lockdown they thought it was time to bring a dog into their life. And now they’re enjoying their puppy . . . or perhaps not so much.

Now we know that many puppy purchases are made on the spur of the moment. That is sad, because it means no planning will have been done - no research on breed suitability for their home, no knowledge of breed/type proclivities, no idea what to feed or how to turn this new scrap into the companion dog they want. (Search in our extensive blog to find the answers to these important questions.) So it’s only a matter of time till it all comes apart.

Here’s a great starting place to get your new puppy to become your Brilliant Family Dog!

And there are those who think deeply, plan ahead, prepare, acknowledge that they don’t know it all, ask all the right questions (I love these people!) . . . but they still get stuck!

My inbox is always full of questions, and at the moment the questions are mostly about puppies. I’m happy to help, and that often includes pointing them to one of the multitude of free resources here at Brilliant Family Dog.

There is SO much information available to us on a daily basis. We are under a continual barrage of knowledge! They say that there is more information published in two days now than from the dawn of time up to our century. It’s impossible to keep up with it.

What you need to do is find someone who suits you and your style of interacting with the world, and stick to that person. That doesn’t, of course, have to be me. While I have masses to offer you - hundreds of articles, nine books, two premium courses, and a plethora of free classes, workshops, courses and guides - it’s for you to choose who YOU think works best for you.

If your inbox is crammed daily with missives and sales letters from all the people you’ve followed in the past, the time has come to take the axe and unsubscribe from most of them.

They’re confusing you!

And what do we do when we’re confused? N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

If you take the axe to me as well, so be it. You need to be selective who you listen to. It’s your life, with your dog, so don’t expose yourself to all that information without strong filters!

So how does this affect your puppy?

Many of these emails have come about from confusion. “I read that you shouldn’t do xyz,” “I’ve been told not to do this or that,” “I’ve been following your suggestions, but when I add in [fashionable new thing] it all goes wrong.”

This is what happens when you try to grab information from everywhere you see it! And so often it’s from inappropriate sources.

Unless she’s qualified in canine behaviour, the woman next door (however nice she may be) can’t help you. And unless she’s qualified in canine behaviour, neither can your vet (however brilliant she is at operations and broken bones). You wouldn’t ask your postman how to craft a business letter just because he carries them! And you wouldn’t ask me how to treat pyometra just because I know about dog behaviour . . .

Horses for courses!

These folk who email me are keen to do their best for their puppy. But their continual trawling through the internet is confusing them so that they muddle up all the suggestions and end up confusing their dog as much as themselves! This is always made worse when they are beguiled by “balanced trainers”, tv personalities, and people who routinely use punishment and intimidation in their so-called “training”.

A what trainer?

I know it can be hard to spot these people when you’re not an expert yourself. One give-away is if they use anything other than a soft collar, a long lead, and a harness, on their dog. No need for chains, spikes, electronics - all those extra gadgets are there to make money for someone!

But often what they say gives it away. “Show him who’s boss,” “Be the leader,” “Be the alpha,” “Lead the pack,” “Keep him in his place,” “Eat and go through doors before your dog, to push him down the pecking order,” and so on.

Still not sure?

So ask yourself, would you adopt any of these ideas with your family?

No?

Of course you wouldn’t!

You do know, deep down, what’s right!

So no need to do it with your dog either, your little puppy, who you have chosen to become your friend and companion down the years.

Check out our free Workshop right now - you can be watching it within minutes ...

My dog is a **@%*$ and so am I

It always makes me sad when I see someone who thinks they’ve reached the limit of their potential.

It saddens me because they have put these limits on themselves. They may have got the idea from other people that they should stay in their box, keep quiet, not rock the boat. Or they have more pernicious beliefs to keep themselves under wraps - like “Who do you think you are?” “Who asked you anyway?” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

If people say these things to you enough times you can actually come to believe them! It may have been the throwaway comment of an exasperated teacher - but it burrowed deep into your soul and has festered there for a lifetime.

It can happen so easily to us. A casual remark, a quick snipe, a condemnation born of frustration . . . and it has this desperate and lasting effect on our confidence.

What’s this got to do with dogs?

So how about your dog? Was there a time when you cursed him? (You’d be unusual if you’ve never wanted to!) Was there a time when you spoke dismissively of him? Have you ever called him insulting names, even apparently in jest? A nickname which was expressed in the moment and has somehow stuck? 

You see, I find that people who refer to their dog by rude names, even fairly mild ones, colour their own perception of their dog. They may not realise they’re doing this, but it’s a pernicious drip-drip of scorn and derision that is damaging for everyone concerned.

What we call something matters because it shapes how we think of it. Karen Overall

It’s essential to clean up your thinking!

These thoughts you may be having - of insufficiency, guilt, shame, or your dog’s hopelessness - will all become embedded in your mind, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

What you focus on is what you get.

What you think about most becomes your reality.

Whether this be “I’m useless,” or “My dog is stupid,” think about it hard enough and it will come to pass.

All change!

But it doesn’t have to be like this! You can start monitoring your own thoughts and the words you use in relation to your dog. Stop yourself when you’re talking to or about her, and check whether what you said was actually helpful, will help you move forward.

But the deep ingrained beliefs we have about ourselves may need a bit more digging to get the change you want. To be able to spread your wings and achieve what you know you really can in life. To do all those things you wanted to do - but just never felt ready for.

What dreams have you been stifling?

I’d love to help you with this, as I have helped others in the same predicament! Contact me and let’s open a conversation about how you can change things and have a brighter future - whether for your dog or for that very important person: yourself.

Dogs love the familiar

And by that, I don’t mean they love witch’s cats (though they may …)!

I mean that dogs love what they know. They love familiar walks, familiar houses, familiar foods, familiar people. To keep things familiar may mean restricting the size of their world. But the pay-off in terms of a relaxed dog can be well worth it.

Dogs love to know what’s happening next. This is why they make such great stock-herders. They know that when a ewe twitches her ear or looks away from the flock, she’s about to leg it! So the dog anticipates this movement and flies into action to thwart the sheepy escape plan.

You know the flurry of activity that ensues when you put on your coat or shoes and head towards the place where the leads are kept? Same thing.

Dogs are expert at stringing events together so that they immediately know that the first event in a series means that the rest is likely to follow. This anticipation can land the clever performance dog in trouble, when he tries to perform his whole dance or obedience routine at once!

BUT … the clever dog-owner uses this knowledge to his or her advantage!

Here I explain it in more detail, so you can come away from this free Masterclass Workshop working with a new skill

What does this mean for the family dog?

It means that you can set up your own series of events which you want your dog to follow.

Each thing you do is a predictor of the next thing - all culminating in something really good!

For instance, your sequence may be

1. Say dog’s name

2. Dog looks at you

3. Give dog a reward

If you teach this unwaveringly, you will guarantee an ever faster response from your dog to his name! You’re pleased, he’s pleased, happiness all round!

In the same way, if your sequence is

1. Say dog’s name

2. Dog looks at you

3. Ignore dog,

how long is it going to be before your dog stops bothering to look at you when you say his name? You are effectively teaching him that this particular sequence is not worth following. The inherent reward (be it a food treat or racing to cut off the sheep) is not there.

This is at the basis of everything I teach, and nowhere is it more important than with the Growly Dog.

So what does this mean for the Growly Dog?

Your Growly Dog (your reactive, shy, anxious, aggressive, dog) has set up a load of event sequences in his mind.

It may be that if you go for a walk he thinks he should be on edge because other dogs are going to appear in front of him. It happens every time, so it’s bound to happen again, in your dog’s mind. So he has to take the action he has found works to keep these dogs at a distance - bark and lunge and generally look ferocious.

It may be that when visitors come to the home things are not following the script. He feels he needs to act to keep these people out, because they don’t belong here.

And for some, the growliness is focussed on cars, or children, or cyclists.

Barking and lunging temporarily gives relief from the tensions and anxieties your dog is feeling. So it becomes his go-to response. This is now his sequence! So this is where we need to change things.

The very first thing is to remove the trigger entirely - the thing that kicks off the sequence in the first place. Once your dog can experience life without the upsetting thing at all, you can monkey with his sequence and change it so that the presence of another dog / visitor / cyclist actually predicts good things!

While you teach this, keep in mind that the familiar includes your local, regular walks. Save the outings to busy places and new territories for special occasions. The comfort of the familiar will help your dog relax.

There are many articles on this site that will get you started with this major change in your life. You can make that start here.

Better still, watch our free Masterclass and learn new strategies and techniques and start using them today!

Back to the Family Dog again

One of my favourite practices is to teach all my dogs matwork from very early on. They learn to lie on their mat whenever it appears, and relax.

Their sequence becomes

1. Mat appears

2. Lie on mat

3. Do nothing

Can you imagine how useful this is?! It translates easily to any other parking place you want to put your dog - a bed, a chair, a step - and your dog knows the sequence.

Puppies can learn this from a very early age like young Bailey here, on Week 3 of our Puppy training. And any dog can learn it fast.

You’ll wonder how you ever managed without this skill! The ultimate off-switch for your dog!

You’ll find the whole program laid out, step by predictive step in Calm Down!

Your dog and hot weather

It’s not that hot in England right now. But it is June, which means there is the possibility of a hot day. And the trouble is, we’re not that used to the heat.

Friends in the US and the Far East and Australia tell me that their heat is frequently up in the 90s, so they’re adept at managing their homes and their lives to accommodate this.

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But it can be very easy to think that how you experience the heat is how your dog will experience it! How wrong can we be?

You’ve met young Coco Poodle … well, he hasn’t time to stay still and rest. And he certainly doesn’t have time to think in the moment! So if Cricket the Whippet, with her thin coat, huge heart and lungs, and lean form specially adapted to losing heat as fast as possible takes off after a rabbit, Coco will hurtle off with her!

He’s very, very fast - which is why so many miniature poodles do well in agility competitions - but he can’t clock 35 mph like Cricket can without something going amiss.

A cautionary tale

Recently - on a pleasant, sunny but not particularly hot, day - this is just what happened. They took off after a rabbit.

They both came back soon enough - a quick chase is what they enjoyed. (Don’t worry! They don’t do anything with the rabbit when they overtake it, they just leave and come back, knowing the fun is over.)

Cricket panted lightly for a minute or two, but Coco was panting heavily, his tongue a large spoon shape that showed just how much heat his body was trying to lose. Back on lead again I expected him to recover quickly as usual.

But this day, over the next few minutes, he gradually got worse.

As we headed homeward I was looking out for waterways without blue-green algae, and which were accessible.

Coco started to hang back and plod.

I hunted more urgently.

Coco’s legs started to splay, he was gasping, and he became unable to walk.

So I had no choice but to scoop him up and race to clean water as quickly as possible. Once I found some we could scramble down to, I attached 10 feet of lead to his harness and lowered him in at the edge. The water was over his ankles, the harness holding him upright.

Gradually I moved him further into the water, in stages. I knew it was important not to rush this bit.

Eventually the water reached his ribs. After standing him shoulder deep in the water for about 5 minutes, he became perkier, slowed his panting and took a drink.

He was able to do the last part of our walk back to the car on his own four feet.

Phew! What a relief!

The cooling episode could have been speeded up a bit if I’d been able to reach him and splash some water on his head and back, to accelerate heat loss through evaporation. But slowly does it is the way to go.

Is your dog like Coco?

It’s important to know how to manage your individual dog. While Cricket recovered with absolute ease from her burst of speed - this is, after all, what Whippets are brilliantly designed for, and also why they feel the cold so much - Coco naturally has a warm tightly-curled coat. I keep it short most of the year, and take care to shear him more frequently in the summer months.

The other two dogs who hadn’t taken off chasing were fine. In fact they’re older and more sensible than Coco and can manage their body-heat pretty well.

But Coco … aaahhh … Coco! He’s in too much of a hurry to think a lot of the time. So I have to manage things for him. Now that I’m aware of how easily he can get beyond himself heatwise, I can ensure it doesn’t happen again. As my students know well, one of my maxims is “If you don’t want something to happen, don’t let it happen!”

So if it’s warm or close and there are rabbits about, young Coco stays on lead till it’s safe. Though I always stay aware of where we can find water, just in case!

What to do?

There are some useful suggestions here to help you manage your dog in hot weather.

Always remember that what seems ok for us may absolutely NOT be ok for your dog! Err on the side of caution. Things can go wrong fast.

The answer lies in prevention, management, and knowing what to do.

Of course, as that article shows, heat can also affect your dog’s mood. Learn how to access and influence your dog’s state of mind easily in our free Workshop

Watch our free Workshop and learn how to communicate effectively with your dog or your new puppy, right from the start!