Anxiety

Food guarding in dogs

Food guarding in dogs is a big problem. At best you’ll be on alert much of the time, and at worst it can be dangerous to you, and your dog. But where does it come from, and how can you…

Using Predictors to Reduce your Dogs Anxiety

Dogs are very good at noticing behaviour sequences. Once they spot one, all the steps in that sequence will become predictors of the trigger. If you can figure out the sequence, or create your own, you can often use these…

Is there such a thing as a dominant dog?

a white husky type dog on a snowy forest background. the dog is preparing to howl

The short answer is yes, there are dominant dog, but also no! Yes, because the word dominant actually refers to a role within a relationship. But, no, because I suspect the reason for asking is because the word dominant has…

Why Dogs Guard

black and white collie dog standing against a wall barking. photo is black and white

There are lots of reason why dogs guard, but they all boil down to the fact that the dog believes something they value highly is at risk of being taken away from them. Whether it’s their favourite person, their security,…

Can dogs experience loneliness?

Dogs are sociable creatures, just like us. So it stands to reason that a dog might experience loneliness, just like we do. But what does that mean and how might it look?

Canine Trauma Rehabilitation

Canine trauma rehabilitation is not quite so straight forward as just desensitising a dog to a trigger. Experiencing trauma (PTSD) will affect the dogs overall mental health. It puts a dogs brain into a higher state of alert making them…

Frustrated dog behaviour!

We all know dogs can get anxious and excited, but did you know they can also get frustrated? In the olden days frustrated dog behaviour might have been labelled as dominant behaviour. That never really sat well with me, mostly…

The effects of food and diet on your dogs behaviour

Lots of things can affect your dogs behaviour and mood, and diet is definitely an underrated one. If your dog gets easily frustrated, hyper, anxious, can be unpredictable, or even defensive, you might consider the effects of food and diet…

Emotion stacking in dogs

Emotion stacking happens when your dog doesn’t fully recover from one trigger before experiencing the next. This means that he will add the effect of the next trigger to the result of the last one. This is very common and…

5 Signs your dog needs more sleep

None of us are at our best when we’ve had a poor nights sleep, and our dogs are no different. The average dog needs around 16-18 hours of good quality rest a day. This is not just good for him…

Could my dog have separation anxiety?

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a big rise in separation anxiety cases with families who have only just discovered their dog has a problem. These aren’t necessarily puppies! Many of these are older dogs, so why are they…