I've been there too! I saw a dog who is coming to me, being all cute and affectionate and I believed he is happy to see me. As long as it can be the case, there are times when dogs affection can mean "I'm not a threat to you, I won't harm you, I love you, please don't hurt me!". Watch out for the little signs and help your dog get more confidence around people with positive training.

Fear in dogs is not always easy to recognise and many people misinterpret it. Dogs don’t come with the manual and it’s normal we don’t know everything. Learning to recognise the signs, sometimes very subtle can help you understand your dog better and give him a happier life. To see a change from a fearful dog to a confident companion, to me, is the most beautiful thing to observe.

There are no animals that cannot be trained or make significant progress with training. Seeing progress they make is the best feeling and reward for all the time originally put in training. It makes it all worth it!

See the video of fish doing tricks. I hope it will inspire you to start/continue with training!

Contemplating taking a new dog or puppy home? Let’s talk about adopting from a shelter, fostering or finding a good breeder - all worth considering.

The second part of the blog with 5 more tips on what to do to avoid mistakes and set your new puppy up for success.

Pups need a lot of attention and the more time you put into developing good habits in them, helping them get confidence in navigating in the world, the more likely they will be to grow into nicely behaved adults. In part 1 read first 5 tips on what to do to avoid mistakes and set your new puppy up for success.

I'm not afraid of allowing the dog to briefly do things I might later want to change. I know how shaping works and how small a start of a behaviour can be. And when I have a starting point I will continue to micro-shape it until I see the behaviour that is acceptable for everyone (including the dog).

Behaviour is behaviour and you can find the consequences that drive it for every species you encounter.

Is stress-free life about creating a life for dogs or people that will keep them in a bubble without any stress? Or is it about building skills ahead of time so when the stressful situation happens, they are equipped to cope with it?

We can have a training plan in mind but it's the dog who will tell us if the plan is good or not. Don’t be afraid to move back a few steps in your training plan and ask for less at any point. Work with whatever you have in front of you. Looking back at the video you've made, you might realise whose mistake that really was.

Labels can be very useful in day-to-day life to communicate with each other faster. It might get tricky once the label becomes a force that we tend to blame for certain behaviours. I would like to encourage you to start unpacking the labels to find solutions. We and our animals are not doomed to our current circumstances. We can make progress, we can learn and we can change our current behaviours.

Instead of trying to develop an impulse control inside the animal, I much rather prefer to focus on teaching the essential skills that my dog needs. When you teach all of the skills step by step, you teach by adding successes not by eliminating errors.