I specialize in working with “difficult dogs”. Dogs who bark a lot. Or who lunge and bite. Or who dig up the garden, or chase cats, or toilet in the house. I work with families who have dogs that most people would find difficult to live with. I also work with dogs who are anxious and fearful, or who really don’t have very good self control or resilience.

A professional dog trainer sees a lot of stupid mistakes over the years, but probably the most common one is the mismatch of dogs and people.  On a friend’s Facebook page recently, I got into a discussion with a rescuer who insisted that any dog slated to die was a better option than a well thought out, carefully placed and carefully researched puppy. 

It would seem that we are the proud owners of our very own, nine week old dragon.  At least that is the joke in our house.  She is endearingly sweet, fluffy, and wickedly smart, but she is a dragon none the less. 

One of the most frequent questions I am asked at social functions is “How do I choose a really smart dog when I am looking for a puppy?”  This is a loaded question that really reflects how little people understand what they are looking for in a dog. 

I just got an email from a lady who described her 4 year old dog as a puppy, and she wondered if he was old enough to start coming to school because he was driving her crazy.  The problem is that her dog is not a puppy.  The term puppy is roughly equivalent to the human term infant or baby. 

Just what do people mean by active when they talk about active dogs?  Everyone seems to want to be more active these days. If you are an athlete, you want to reach that level of fitness just beyond your current ability and you push yourself to do that.

With our new puppy program we have been hearing from more and more puppy owners and a surprising number of them are bring home their pups at six weeks of age, often without their first set of shots.  Puppies from pet stores may be older when you meet them, but may have been taken from mom as early as four weeks of age. 

Probably the toughest question you get as a dog behaviour consultant is “why does my dog have this problem”.  Regardless of the problem, aggression, anxiety, fears and phobias, separation anxiety, everyone wants to know why THEIR dog has a behaviour problem. 

Last time I talked about talking to my dogs. This time I want to talk about listening and more importantly hearing what they have to say. Dogs are non verbal species. This means that they can only tell us things by their behaviour.

People have a variety of reasons for holding off on getting their pups, and most often we hear that they don’t want to go through the early puppy training. 

Puppies change dramatically between 8 weeks when we get them, and 10 weeks when we start taking them into the wider world and 12 weeks when they are most like what people think a puppy will be like.

I have been reflecting a lot on how people choose the dogs they live with. At Dogs in the Park, I see all kinds of dogs

I am starting a new section on the blog where I am going to feature people I know who breed dogs carefully and thoughtfully to help people to learn a little more about who breeders are. 

One of the reasons that people have dogs is as a living alarm.  Our dogs tell us when the mailman is at the door, when a guest has arrived and sometimes when the birds land on the birdfeeder. 

I am not actually going to list all 10,000 ways not buy puppy, but I would like to share a few of the common mistakes I have seen people make when purchasing a puppy. 

Periodically, we run a guest blog that we call “Featured Breeder”, featuring breeders we have met who breed dogs we have met who really impressed us!