In the UK, Ireland, Canada, America and Australia, the dog training industry is heavily unregulated. Sadly I’m sure there are a lot more countries to add to that list.

Being unregulated means anyone can call themselves a dog trainer. Joe Bloggs down the street can set up a Facebook business page showing before and after transformation videos of a previously distressed dog whining, barking and pacing when left alone then what appears to be an amazing, miraculous after video of a dog laying sleeping with very little context on how they got to that point.

The problem is, Joe Bloggs doesn’t say what methods they use or what qualifications they have.

The focus is on the results.

Here’s another example. A video of a dog barking, lunging and spinning on the lead at the sight of another dog. The next video shows the dog walking alongside their person or the trainer. Another amazing transformation.

Obviously this dog trainer knows what they are doing, right? After all, the proof is in the videos, and if they call themselves a dog trainer, then they must be a dog trainer, right? And for those with dogs who struggle it can feel like an answer to all their problems.

Then you find another dog trainer with 20 years experience, surely they must know what they’re doing. They use “balanced” dog training which sounds fair and gentle. They don’t say what qualifications they have either.

Balanced simply means using positive reinforcement with rewards such as food or praise whilst also using aversive methods such as jerking the dog by the collar. They may use an e-collar or a prong collar to name a few.

These methods can have long lasting psychological and physical effects on the dog. They can cause an increase in fear, learned helplessness and increase the risk of biting or snapping. Jerking the lead can cause damage to the spine and throat. Shock collars can cause burns, prong collars can tear the skin.

During a class I attended with one of my clients, the trainer was discussing aversive methods and the effects they have on dogs. She passed around a prong collar so we could see what one actually looked and felt like. I tried it on my arm. The surface of my skin ripped and I was left with red indented marks for a couple of days. And that was me trying it out once, briefly. Imagine the damage that can cause to a dog’s neck every day, multiple times a day.

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Many of us have or have had a dog who is sensitive, who goes to us for comfort when they are feeling scared or unsure about something, one who would never snap or bite. One who also comes to us when they sense we are upset or stressed. Imagine putting a prong collar on such a dog or jerking the lead if they pulled.

Or a happy go lucky, excitable dog to suddenly experience punishment. Or one that gets stressed and uncomfortable on walks and a dog trainer decides to even add more stress on top of that by forcing them to walk past what makes them uncomfortable and any sign of them showing stress or discomfort through barking or lunging is met with a jerk or shock.

Another method is treat free, or training without treats believing that training shouldn’t be “transactional”. Each dog is different and has their own preferences, for some dogs play is an amazing reward, others are happy with praise whilst others prefer food as a reward

Then you have ones that appear to have done a complete U-turn in their methods, going from using aversives to force free yet in their description it is still very vague and they also fail to acknowledge their change in methods. It’s almost like a click of a finger and they’re suddenly a different person. There is a lack of transparency and accountability.

I call bullshit.

If you change your teaching methods, just say so, explain why, take accountability.

Many of us who have dogs love them and want what’s best for them. Many of us believe that if someone calls themselves a dog trainer then they know what they are doing and have our dog’s best interests at heart.

This is 2026, not 1960.

We have unlimited access to knowledge so in this day and age, for a dog trainer to use force, fear, control over kindness and compassion is nothing but a bully who cares nothing for the dog at the other end of the lead or for the person who loves that dog dearly. As long as they line their pockets, get their ego fed and get enough views and likes on social media then that’s all that matters.

So what should you look out for?

Check the videos and photos, do the dogs have a harness on? Is it a slip lead, a lead attached to the collar and what is the trainer doing with them?

How does the dog appear, are they panting, do they look like they’re having fun?

How does the dog trainer communicate with the dog? Can you see a slight jerk of the lead, are there any signs of treats? How long is the lead, does the dog have much freedom of movement, or are they close by the trainer’s side on a short lead?

How does the environment look? For example, in a reactivity transformation video, how close are the other dogs? Are they walking right by the dog?

Check their “About” section, what methods do they use, are they clear and transparent about it and what qualifications do they have? If they don’t have any, what qualifications are they working towards and do they undertake CPD (continued professional development) and are their methods rooted in ethics, compassion and positive reinforcement?

If there is something outside of a dog trainer’s area of expertise, a good one will be upfront about it, tell you they aren’t sure but they will find out and be able to recommend someone reputable.

An ethical dog trainer will also ask about your dog’s health and advise you to seek veterinary advice for any sudden changes in behaviour.

An ethical dog trainer will also want to know about your dog’s preferences, what their favourite food is, what motivates your dog, what your dog finds rewarding.

An ethical dog trainer will never put your dog in a situation they don’t feel comfortable being in nor will they set up a situation to see your dog react.

An ethical dog trainer will take into account your dog’s comfort levels and your comfort levels.

Everyone has to start somewhere, for example, the first dog trainer I met was at a puppy class, he was just starting out and had completed a course in dog training and behaviour. He was amazing, he was incredibly patient and only used positive reinforcement, Luna loved those classes. I would go to someone like that any day over someone with 20 years experience using aversive methods or dubious transformation videos.

Dog training and behaviour is a continuous learning experience that is constantly evolving. Many trainers who have been in the profession for decades have probably in the past used some aversive methods and as their learning and understanding grew, they gradually moved towards positive reinforcement, methods backed by science. There’s a difference between them and those today who are unscrupulous and lack transparency.

Just because someone calls themselves a dog trainer, doesn’t mean they are a dog trainer.

If you don’t feel comfortable about something don’t be afraid to speak up, if you wouldn’t like it done to yourself or a child then that gives you all the information you need.

You and your dog deserve to be treated with respect and compassion.

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A few days ago I was out walking a dog in my care. When we turned a corner I saw an off-lead dog. As soon as I saw him, I turned while saying “this way”. However, the dog came running up to us with his hackles raised, tail stiff and slowly wagging. The man yelled over, “don’t worry, he’s friendly!”. I replied while pointing to my dog, “he’s growling”. I was shocked at what he said next about his own dog, “he needs to know who’s boss” followed by, “he needs to learn”. I said to him, “excuse me, but it’s not fair on your dog or anyone else’s dog to be put in a situation like that”. He said nothing and walked on.

If I had £ everytime someone said “don’t worry, he/she’s friendly”, unfortunately, I would be quite wealthy.

It wasn’t the first time this year. A month before that, a different man, a different dog, same routine, and I’d said something similar, that it’s not fair on the dog, it’s not his job to “teach” anything. Same result. He walked off too.

Both times I walked on furious and ranting to the dog beside me about how stupid people can be, then bent down and made a fuss of him (which he loved), and apologised to him for how inconsiderate people can be.

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These occasions always sit with me, because it’s not just about one bad interaction on one bad walk. It’s a pattern with very little logic behind it yet can carry serious consequences.

Here’s what almost happened, and what does happen, often enough, to dogs less lucky than the one I was walking that day. An off-lead dog spots a dog on a lead and runs over. The person, somewhere behind, calls out the same four words: he’s friendly, don’t worry.

Sometimes that’s true. Often the dog approaching has its hackles up, a stiff tail, a hard stare, exactly what I saw that day. None of that is friendly. It’s a dog in an aroused, uncertain state, and their own person hasn’t clocked it.

The dog on the lead reads it correctly, even if the humans involved haven’t. They growl. That growl is a warning, and warnings exist for a reason: to stop things escalating before they need to.

If the off lead dog understands that warning, pays heed and backs off, that’s the end of it.If the off-lead dog doesn’t back away, whether because they don’t understand the warning or because no one intervenes, the on-lead dog has nothing left to say. The next thing available to it is a snap. Then a bite. Then a fight.

This is the part that gets missed every time this plays out: if that off-lead dog really was friendly and confident before this happened, they might not be afterwards. A single bad encounter, entirely avoidable, can be enough to turn a sociable dog into one that’s frightened of other dogs for the rest of their life. Reactivity isn’t always something a dog is born with. Sometimes it’s something that gets built into them, in a few seconds, by someone else’s carelessness.

All of it, every step of that chain, was preventable at the cheapest possible point. Put the dog on the lead when you see another dog on a lead. That’s the entire ask.

There’s a second phrase that tends to turn up, usually said about their own dog rather than someone else’s: “he needs to know who’s boss”.

It’s worth asking what that actually means, because I don’t think most people who say it have thought it through. Because by that logic, are you fine with your dog getting bitten? Is it ok for another dog to feel so uncomfortable that the only option they feel they have is to bite?

It shifts the responsibility away from the person who allowed the situation to happen in the first place and onto the other dog. Instead of stepping in and preventing the interaction, they're expecting someone else's dog to teach their own a lesson. But it isn't any dog's job to do that. A growl is communication, not a training exercise. It's a warning that the interaction needs to stop, not an invitation to see what happens next.

Even when a dog genuinely is friendly, there’s something that gets left out of the reassurance every time it’s offered. A dog on a lead has had its options taken away. They can’t move off, can’t circle round, can’t do any of the things a dog would normally do to put distance between themselves and something they are unsure of.

That means the temperament of the approaching dog was never really the point. Even a completely benign dog running up on a leashed one can trigger fear, because the leashed dog has lost the one thing that usually keeps a meeting calm: the ability to choose whether it happens at all.

That’s why, whether an off-lead dog is close or a long way off, I turn and walk the other way. Not because I think every dog out there is dangerous. Because I have no way of knowing, from a distance, whether they are friendly or not and even if they are, the dog in my care may not feel comfortable with an approaching dog.

Unwanted greetings aren’t the only risk that comes with treating every walk as though a lead is optional.

There’s a man I see regularly on the Cavehill Road, near the Waterworks. His dog has no collar, no harness, nothing. He carries a slip lead in his hand as they walk down a road that’s often busy with traffic. At the top of that same road, another man walks his Spaniel off lead, even when they’re crossing. On the Woodvale Road, a man and woman walk their Collie off lead too, right along the edge of the traffic.

Granted, they are brilliant off lead and wait with their person at the traffic lights. But what’s to say one day something out of the ordinary happens? What if a not so friendly dog escapes their garden and makes a bee line for one of those dog, or early one afternoon in the summer kids let off fireworks? Most dogs at some point in their life will get spooked by something… and when that happens?

Just because something has never happened, doesn’t mean it never will.

None of this is really about any one dog’s temperament. It’s about a set of small, individual choices, repeated often enough, that have slowly changed what it means to walk a dog in this city.

The Woodvale Park used to be a great spot for dog walking. Ten years ago, when Luna was a puppy, it was somewhere you could actually walk a dog. Now it’s a free-for-all. Dogs off lead everywhere, their people with earphones in, dogs with no recall at all. I stopped going years ago and I haven’t been back since.

Nobody decided, in one moment, to ruin that park. It happened slowly, one person at a time, each one deciding their own dog’s freedom mattered more than the safety or comfort of whoever else happened to be there. Small choices, repeated by enough people, add up to a place nobody with an on-lead dog can safely use anymore.

It comes down to the same thing every time, whether it’s one interaction or an entire park. Someone’s comfort, someone’s convenience, being put ahead of someone else’s ability to say no. A dog can’t consent to being approached. A dog on a lead can’t even leave. The least the rest of us can do is not force that choice onto them, or onto whoever’s holding the other end of the lead.

It doesn’t take much, as soon as you see an on lead dog, put yours on the lead. If you see someone suddenly take a U-turn as soon as they see you and your dog, there’s a reason, hold back and wait until there’s enough distance between you and the other person with their dog then continue walking.

It’s no dog’s job to teach another dog anything, it’s our job to keep our dog safe and help keep other people’s dogs safe.

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Touch, also known as hand targeting, is where your dog deliberately touches your hand with their nose. It may seem like a simple behaviour, but it’s one of the most useful skills you can teach and forms the foundation for many aspects of training.

The benefits of teaching touch

Teaching your dog to touch your hand gives them something active and positive to focus on. Instead of simply asking them not to do something, you’re giving them a clear behaviour they can do.

For shy or nervous dogs, touch can help build confidence as they learn to choose to interact with your hand at their own pace. It can also help dogs become more comfortable with human hands approaching them, which has practical benefits throughout their lives, from everyday handling to grooming and veterinary care.

Touch can also strengthen communication between you and your dog. As your dog learns that responding to your hand is rewarding and predictable, it gives you another positive way to guide and interact with them. Over time, this shared understanding can help build trust and strengthen your relationship.

Touch is also a useful way to move your dog away from situations they may find uncomfortable without needing to pull on the lead or physically move them.

And if your dog enjoys the game, hand targeting becomes the foundation for all sorts of fun behaviours and tricks, from pushing a ball across the floor to closing a cupboard door.

Touch in everyday life

When I first met one of the dogs I now walk, he was very uncomfortable around strangers. For our meet and greet, his guardian and I met outside and went for a walk together. Rather than trying to interact with him straight away, I focused on chatting with his guardian and ignored him, allowing him to observe me at his own pace.

I kept my arms relaxed by my sides so that, if he wanted to, he had the opportunity to investigate my hands without me reaching towards him or putting any pressure on him to interact.

As we walked, I remember feeling a gentle nudge against my hand. He had chosen to come over and investigate me. I continued to ignore him and let him set the pace, but inside I was delighted. His guardian was really pleased too because it was his decision to make that first move.

His guardian had already taught him touch before I ever met him, and over the years it’s become such a natural part of our walks that I jokingly call him my “wee nudger”. He’ll often come over and gently bump my hand with his nose whenever he fancies a treat. Of course I always give him one. He’s definitely trained me well!

How to teach touch

Step 1 — Present your hand

Hold your flat palm out at your dog’s nose height, a couple of inches away. Say nothing. Wait for your dog’s curiosity to do the work. Many will naturally move toward your hand to investigate. The instant their nose makes contact, mark it (clicker or “yes”) and reward.

Remember, your dog’s movement toward your hand should always be voluntary, never push your hand toward their nose.

If your dog seems uncomfortable approaching your hand, don’t try to lure them with food. While they may move towards your hand to get the treat, they may still feel uneasy about the hand itself. In that case, you’re rewarding them for overriding their discomfort rather than helping them feel genuinely comfortable.

Instead, take a step back. Give them more space, present your hand from further away or at a different angle, and let them approach only when they feel ready. The goal is for your dog to choose to interact with your hand because they feel safe and confident, not because the food is pulling them into a situation they’re unsure about.

If your dog simply seems hesitant and needs a little encouragement, try tossing a treat away from you onto the floor. This acts as a reset, giving your dog the opportunity to move away, collect the treat and then choose whether they want to come back and engage again. By allowing your dog to move away first, you’re keeping the interaction voluntary.

Step 2 — Repeat and build the association

Repeat several times until your dog is confidently and consistently nosing your palm every time it comes out.

Keep sessions short, a few minutes maximum, five at most.

If your dog struggles at any stage, don’t keep pushing forward. Simply go back to the previous stage where they were successful and rebuild from there. Once they’re confident again, you can progress.

End every session on a success, then finish with a game.

Step 3 — Add the word

Once the behaviour is solid, say “touch” just before you present your hand. Repeat until the word itself becomes meaningful.

Step 4 — Add distance

Once your dog is reliably associating the word with the behaviour, gradually increase the distance between your hand and their nose so they have to take a step or two to reach you.

Build this incrementally.

Once your dog is confidently touching your hand from different distances, begin varying how you present it. Practise with both your left and right hand, present your hand at different heights and angles, and while you’re standing, sitting or walking. This helps your dog understand that “touch” means touching your hand, regardless of how it’s presented.

If your dog struggles, simply return to the previous stage where they were successful before progressing again.

Step 5 — Proof in different environments

Start in a quiet space, once solid, take it to different rooms in your house, then progress to the garden, on walks and into busier places.

Dogs don’t automatically generalise behaviours, so each time you move to a more challenging environment, make the exercise easier again by presenting your hand closer and rewarding generously before gradually building back up.

If your dog struggles in a new environment, go back to the previous stage and help them succeed before increasing the difficulty again.

Remember

Every dog learns at their own pace, and it’s completely normal to revisit earlier stages. Some dogs may learn this quickly whilst others may take longer. By keeping sessions short, ending on a success and allowing your dog to make choices throughout the process, you’ll build a behaviour that’s not only reliable but enjoyable for both of you.

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A couple of weeks ago there was unrest on my street. I watched it happen, the way you watch something you can’t quite believe is happening outside your own front door. Afterwards, I found myself thinking about my cat.

Pandora is thirteen. She’s lived through police sirens, helicopters, parades, all the ordinary chaos of a city. None of it usually bothers her. But for about a week after that night, she went quiet. The cat who normally has an opinion about everything spent her days under the duvet and barely made a sound.

Animals don’t argue about causes or politics or who started what. They just live with whatever we build around them.

That’s roughly where this roughly started; a quiet cat and a question I keep coming back to: we call ourselves a nation of animal lovers. What does that actually mean? Not what we say about ourselves. What our everyday choices say.

I don’t think you get to that answer by asking it outright. It’s like trying to find something buried, you don’t start at the bottom, you start at the surface and work your way down through whatever’s sitting on top of it.

Start with the obvious. Walk into almost any pet shop and somewhere near the leads and the treats, you’ll find products whose entire purpose is to startle, scare or hurt a dog out of doing something we find inconvenient. Citronella sprays. Shock collars, still legal in England. Prong collars. All of it sold as “training,” all of it openly available, all of it sitting on the same shelf as the toys and the dental chews, like there’s nothing strange about that at all.

Imagine the equivalent for a child. A toddler throws herself on the supermarket floor, screaming, and you reach for a small device that gives her a fright or a shock until she stops. Nobody would call that parenting. Most people would call the police. But the feeling underneath it, embarrassment, inconvenience, make it stop, now, is exactly the same feeling that sends a dog owner to that shelf. We’ve just decided one version of that impulse is abuse and the other is a Tuesday afternoon at Pets at Home.

That’s the easiest thing to point a finger at. It’s a product, on a shelf, with a barcode. It’s the easiest thing, in theory, to ban. Wales banned electronic training collars back in 2010. England still hasn’t.

Pull that back and you find something subtle, and in some ways more telling, because it doesn’t look like cruelty at all. It looks like tidiness.

Fake grass. Tarmac over what used to be a lawn. And, the one that really gets me: dandelions, pulled up on sight, every spring, by people who’d never think of themselves as anti-nature.

A dandelion is one of the first food sources available to bees after winter. The bee doesn’t see a weed. It sees food, at a point in the year when there’s almost nothing else. Without bees, the whole chain that feeds us collapses with them. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s just what pollination does. And yet “how do I get rid of dandelions” is one of the most searched gardening questions every April.

Some of us who are pulling them might have a bee house hanging two feet away. Many of us care about bees. But we don’t want the slightly messy lawn that caring actually requires. It’s not malice, it’s habit, and habit dressed up as responsibility is much harder to see, let alone shift.

Keep going and you get to the part that has always annoyed me. On paper, UK animal welfare law recognises that animals need more than food, water and shelter. In practice, though, the threshold for what many people consider acceptable remains remarkably low.

A dog can spend most of its life alone in a yard. It can receive little stimulation, little companionship and little opportunity to do the things that make a dog’s life meaningful. As long as it’s fed, watered, sheltered and not obviously suffering, most people will look at that situation and see a dog that is being cared for.

That’s the part I find difficult.

Being alive is not the same thing as having a good life.

The appearance of welfare and the experience of welfare are not always the same thing. A dog can have all of its basic physical needs met and still be living a life that most of us would never choose for ourselves.

And on top of all of it, still, we broadcast dominance-based dog training as entertainment. The alpha rolls, the “calm assertive energy,” the dog visibly resisting before it’s “fixed” in twenty-two minutes. Most of it discredited by behavioural science for years. Still airing and still shaping what a huge number of people think training is supposed to look like.

Broadcasters aren’t filtering that content for what’s good for the dog. They’re filtering it for what makes good television, and a dog being slowly counter-conditioned over six undramatic weeks doesn’t make good television. A dog being dominated into submission in one episode does. Watch any of those programmes closely and you’ll see the moment it happens. The dog that was barking, lunging, pulling, suddenly goes still and quiet. The camera treats it as a breakthrough. Any behaviourist watching knows it’s not compliance, it’s shutdown and withdrawal, the dog has learned that whatever they do doesn’t work.

So the version of “training” most people actually see isn’t the one any reputable behaviourist would recommend. It’s the one that was the most watchable.

Keep going past all of that and you get to something that isn’t really about animals at all.

Most of us are up at 6 or 7am. We go out, we work eight hours to keep a roof over our heads, we come home, we do it again the next day. That’s not a small amount of structure imposed on a life. The alarm decides when you wake. Work decides where you are for most of your day. Bills determine how much freedom you have to step away from any of it. Routine isn’t unusual anymore; for many people it’s the framework their entire lives sit inside.

So when people get home, or step into the garden, or spend time with their dog, I often find myself wondering why we bring that same need for structure into those spaces too.

The dandelion is removed because the lawn should look a certain way. The dog is corrected because it should behave a certain way. The garden is redesigned because nature should stay within the boundaries we’ve decided for it.

Yet those are some of the few parts of life that don’t have to operate according to schedules, deadlines or expectations.

A dog doesn’t need to achieve anything. A cat doesn’t need to justify the hours it spends asleep. A garden doesn’t need to be productive. A dandelion doesn’t need to explain why it’s there.

Sometimes I wonder whether, in lives already filled with routines, obligations and expectations, we have forgotten how to simply let something be what it is.

Underneath all of it, the same logic. Convenience. What’s easiest for us, not what’s best for them. A shelf product that’s easiest. A lawn that’s easiest to maintain. A law that asks the least it can get away with. A television show that’s easiest to sit through. And underneath the convenience, the control — the thing that makes “easiest” feel like the only acceptable outcome in the first place.

Which is maybe why I keep thinking about Pandora, and not just the week she went quiet.

She is, on a normal week, one of the least convenient things in my life. She gets litter everywhere, no matter how often I vacuum. She insists on eating in my bedroom and somehow spreads food across the floor and onto the radiator. She sleeps under the duvet through the day, and I’ll put fresh sheets on and by evening there’s cat hair worked into them anyway. Once she had diarrhoea and tracked it across the floor, onto the bed, onto a notepad, and I remember standing there exhausted, close to tears, wondering if it was ever going to end.

It hasn’t once crossed my mind to give her away.

That’s the part the convenience logic doesn’t explain. If ease were really what decided things, she wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight. But the inconvenience was never the question. I wanted a clean house. I wanted to sit down without finding something on the sofa I’d rather not. What I never wanted, not for a second, was a life without her in it. So the mess stayed, and so did she, because some things matter more than whether they’re easy.

I don’t think you solve any of this by going straight at it and demanding people confront it head-on. People don’t move that way, and they definitely don’t move that way about something this buried. You start where it’s visible — ban the spray, ban the collar, that’s a product, that’s legislatable, that’s a fight that’s already half-won elsewhere in the UK. Then you work down, through the garden, the law, the television, the control underneath all of it. Each one harder to shift than the one before it, because each one is a little better disguised, a little further from looking like what it actually is.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the phrase “nation of animal lovers.”

Loving animals is easy when they’re convenient. It’s easy when they’re healthy, well-behaved and fit neatly around our lives. The harder test comes when they don’t.

It comes when the dog is reactive. When the horse is expensive. When the garden is messy. When the dandelions appear. When the cat has covered your house in diarrhoea and you’re standing there wondering how one small animal could possibly have created this much work for another human being.

That’s where the question becomes more interesting.

Not whether we like animals or nature. Most people do.

The question is what we’re willing to tolerate, sacrifice or change for them once they stop being convenient. Perhaps that’s where the difference lies between enjoying animals and truly caring about them.

I’m still not sure we’re a nation of animal lovers.

But I am sure that the answer isn’t found in what we say about ourselves.

It’s found in the choices we make when another living creature asks us to be a little less comfortable than we’d like to be.

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My sister said something to me recently that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. She told me that before farming, humans didn’t really understand how babies were made. Not in the way we do now. They knew about sex but the connection between sex and pregnancy was genuinely unclear to many people. Think about it. Nine months is a long time between cause and effect. In nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, with no biology education and often multiple partners, pinning one specific act to one specific pregnancy nearly a year later was far harder than we give it credit for. Anthropologists have documented traditional societies, even into the 20th century, that made no clear connection between sex and conception at all.

It was farming that changed things. Once humans began domesticating animals, they could observe and control the process, keep a ram from the ewes, no lambs. Let them mate, lambs arrive months later. A repeatable experiment, right in front of them. And when men understood, really understood that they specifically and directly caused pregnancy, the research suggests it triggered one of the most significant power shifts in all of human history.

I went down that rabbit hole for three days. And the more I sat with it, the more I kept thinking. If so much of what we know about history, about women, about children, about animals, was recorded and shaped by men with a specific set of interests, then surely it doesn’t stop at women. Surely it’s all connected. And that’s when I started thinking about dogs.

Once men understood their role in reproduction, something shifted. For the first time in human history, paternity mattered because farming had also created something else entirely new: property, land, livestock and grain stores. Wealth that could be passed down. And if you’re going to pass wealth to your children, you need to be certain those children are actually yours.

That certainty required control. It required knowing who a woman had been with, when, and with whom. It required her sexuality to be managed, monitored, and owned. Historians trace this as the point where women’s status (which the archaeological evidence suggests, was relatively equal in hunter-gatherer societies) began to collapse. It happened gradually, then institutionally. It got written into the first legal codes in Mesopotamia. It got built into religion. It got given a philosophical framework by Aristotle, who declared women to be biologically defective, passive vessels for the male seed, incapable of reason, suited only for domestic life.

Those ideas weren’t fringe. They dominated Western thought for fifteen centuries. The human egg wasn’t discovered until 1827. The moment of fertilisation wasn’t observed until 1876. For the entire span of recorded human history, the intellectual and legal framework treating women as lesser was built on biology that was simply, provably wrong.

But here is the part that stayed with me most. The control came first and the justification came after. Aristotle didn’t discover female inferiority and conclude women should be controlled. Men were already controlling women, and Aristotle built a system to make that look like nature rather than power. The oppression preceded the explanation. The explanation just made it harder to question.

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That shows up again and again and it can be seen in dog training.

But before we get there, something needs to be said that often gets left out of this conversation.

Before farming, there was no patriarch ruling his family. There were no rigid roles, no one person in charge, no system of control. Hunter-gatherer bands were, in the words of the anthropologists who have studied them, fiercely egalitarian. Men contributed. Women contributed. Leadership fell to whoever was wisest in a given moment, regardless of sex. Anyone who started acting like they were above others was actively brought back down by the group. A man’s status came from his generosity; how much he shared, how much he gave, not from how much he owned or controlled.

The male role, in its oldest form, wasn’t ruler or patriarch in any recognisable modern sense. It was closer to the person who faces outward danger so others don’t have to. Who brings back what is needed and shares it without condition. Service rather than dominion.

And women, in that same world, weren’t submissive. They hunted, decided, and held knowledge. Their voices shaped the group.

Neither was performing a role handed to them by a system built to serve someone else’s interests. They were just people who contributed what they could. Protecting those who needed it and living as they actually were.

What farming created: property, paternity, control, wasn’t a distortion of some pre-existing patriarchy. It built patriarchy from scratch, by turning contribution into ownership. The moment a man could say this land is mine, this harvest is mine, these children are mine, the entire relational logic of human society changed.

And it changed for men too. Because the system that told men they must dominate, control, and never show weakness didn’t free them. It caged them inside a performance of strength that had nothing to do with who they actually were. Boys told not to cry. Men who cannot ask for help. Fathers who never learned to be present because presence wasn’t part of the role they were assigned. The research is unambiguous, men living under the rigid expectations of patriarchal masculinity suffer enormously. Mentally, emotionally, relationally.

Is anyone in this picture living as they truly are?

What’s perhaps most striking is that none of this was natural. It was artificial. It was constructed through laws women had no vote in passing, religions women had no voice in shaping, philosophies written entirely without them, and science conducted by people who had already decided what they were going to find. It was installed into women’s sense of themselves so early and so completely that many stopped experiencing it as something external that had been done to them. They experienced it as simply who they were.

That is not nature. That is one of the most sophisticated acts of power in human history. To make the people you are controlling believe that the control is coming from inside themselves.

And it didn’t stop at women. It was installed into men too before they could understand why, into the emotional suppression that research shows is silently destroying male mental health. It was installed into how we see children and into how we see our dogs.

None of us chose this framework. But somebody built it and understanding that it was built deliberately, over thousands of years, by people with specific interests in its existence is the first step toward being able to see it clearly enough to question it.

The scold’s bridle is a device most people have seen in a museum without thinking too much about it. An iron cage locked around a woman’s head, with a metal spike inserted into the mouth to prevent the tongue from moving. It was used from the 16th to the 19th century across Britain on women deemed to be speaking too much, too freely, or too critically. A woman who spoke her mind publicly could be legally classified as a scold — and the bridle was the correction.

Not for violence or theft but for just speaking.

The point was not just to punish the individual woman but to terrorise other women into silence. Communication itself was the crime. The natural expression of a being with something to say is silenced, physically, with metal and pain.

Now think about the shock collar.

A device that delivers an electric shock to a dog the moment it vocalises or does something they “shouldn’t”. A dog barks because it is frightened, or bored, or alerting, or in pain, or simply because it is a dog and barking is part of how dogs move through the world. The shock doesn’t ask why, it responds only to the fact of the sound. That communication is the problem and silence is the goal.

The logic is identical. Centuries apart. Different bodies. The same impulse.

Women should be seen and not heard. Children should be seen and not heard. Dogs should be seen and not heard.

In every case the question never gets asked. Not why is she speaking, why is this child overwhelmed, why is this dog barking. Just, how do we make them stop?

The dominance theory of dog training didn’t create the idea that dogs needed to be controlled. That was already there, already deeply embedded in how most people related to them, long before any study confirmed it. Dogs had been expected to comply, to submit, to fit around human convenience because it had never occurred to most people to question it. Control felt natural. It felt like common sense.

And then in 1947 a scientist named Rudolph Schenkel published a study of unrelated,captive wolves. They fought, as stressed animals in an artificial situation will. Schenkel interpreted this as evidence of a natural dominance hierarchy. He was wrong. Wolves in the wild live in family units, led cooperatively, not by an alpha enforcing submission through intimidation.

The oppression of dogs preceded the explanation. Just as it had with women and Aristotle centuries before.

Schenkel, like Aristotle, wasn’t necessarily a villain. He was a man who looked at the world through a lens ground by the culture he was born into. A culture already organised around control and produced work that confirmed what that culture needed to believe. The conclusion felt true because everything around him had been built to make it feel true.

Ask yourself why that theory spread so fast and faced so little scrutiny. It wasn’t because the science was rigorous. It was because it arrived pre-validated. It told people who were already controlling their dogs that they had been right all along. It gave an existing practice a scientific vocabulary and a biological justification.

New ideas have to argue for themselves. But a study that confirms what people already believe and already do gets waved through without examination. It doesn’t feel like ideology. It feels like proof.

This lives somewhere much closer to home than history books or training theories.

It lives in the child told they are too much. Too energetic, too loud, too imaginative, too present. Not that the environment isn’t meeting them. Not that they need more space or stimulation or understanding. Just: too much. The problem gets placed inside the child rather than in the gap between what the child needs and what the situation is offering.

It lives in the same moment with dogs. The dog is labelled difficult, badly behaved, a problem because they bark, pull, jumps, because they do all the things dogs do when they are trying to communicate something. The goal becomes silence, stillness and compliance.

And compliance delivered through suppression can look a lot like calm from the outside. But there is a difference, one that anyone who has spent real time with dogs already knows, between a dog that is settled and a dog that has learned it is not safe to try. One is a dog that is coping. The other is a dog that has shut down. From the outside they can look identical.

The good news is that things are changing. Slowly, with resistance but changing.

Dog behaviour science has moved decisively away from dominance and toward relationship, communication, and the question of what a dog is actually trying to say. That shift mirrors what is happening in how we understand children’s emotional needs, and what the research on governance consistently shows, that the more voices are genuinely included in decision making, the better the outcomes for everyone.

Every time humans have asked what if we listened rather than controlled, the answer has come back better.

That is not a coincidence.

Because underneath all of this; the farming and the property and the paternity and the five thousand years of accumulated control, there is something much simpler. Something the research keeps returning to when it looks at what humans were before all of this began.

We are supposed to be cooperating with each other. Helping each other. Protecting those who are vulnerable and contributing what we can and sharing what we have. Measuring a person’s worth by what they give, not what they control.

That includes the animals we share our lives with.

I keep coming back to something I can’t quite resolve. Real change for dogs, not just better training methods or updated legislation, but a genuinely different relationship between humans and animals requires something much deeper than policy. It requires humans to extend empathy and moral consideration to beings outside themselves. And I find myself wondering whether that is truly possible in a species that is simultaneously creating wars, generating vast inequality, and struggling to extend that same consideration to other humans.

Maybe the question isn’t whether we can fix dog welfare, or gender equality, or how we treat children, as separate issues. Maybe they were never separate issues. Maybe real change, the deep kind, the kind that actually lasts, that could only truly happen if we were somehow able to move back toward something more egalitarian. Not necessarily in a literal sense. We can’t unknow what we know or unfarm what was farmed. But in terms of values. In terms of what we measure a person’s worth by. In terms of whose voice counts and whose needs matter.

The hunter-gatherers didn’t have a policy on dog welfare. They didn’t need one. They were operating from a set of values that made the question almost redundant because those values already included cooperation, protection of the vulnerable, and measuring worth by what you give rather than what you control.

We built something extraordinary on top of those values. And we lost them in the process.

I don’t know if we can get them back, but I think that’s the right question to be asking.

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Emotional Bubbles & Thresholds

I’ve always thought one of the easiest ways to understand a dog’s threshold is to think about our own.

If there’s a tiny spider in my bedroom, I’ll usually tolerate it. I might not particularly like it, but I can still relax in the room, get into bed and eventually fall asleep. But if there’s a large spider sitting on the other side of the bedroom, suddenly the entire room feels different to me. Rationally, I know the spider is still far away. Emotionally though, my sense of safety changes completely. At that point, I’ll probably end up sleeping downstairs.

Another person could walk into that exact same room and feel absolutely nothing at all. Their threshold around spiders is simply different from mine.

And even our own thresholds are not fixed.

Years ago, after an already stressful and exhausting day, I noticed one spider in my bedroom and managed to cope with it. Then I spotted another one lowering from the ceiling above me. Normally that might not have affected me so strongly, but I was already mentally and emotionally depleted and had been looking forward to going to bed. I ended up crying and sleeping downstairs instead. The reaction was not really about the second spider alone, it was about the accumulation of stress that came beforehand.

Dogs experience the world in very similar ways.

Every dog has emotional “bubbles” or thresholds around certain things in their environment. Outside of that bubble, a dog can usually observe the world comfortably. They can sniff, take treats, respond to cues and recover easily. But once something enters too deeply into that space, the nervous system begins shifting from processing into coping.

For some dogs, another dog 200 metres away is barely worth noticing. For others, that same distance already feels overwhelming. Some dogs are comfortable around traffic but become frightened around buses or lorries. Others are fine with most dogs except large dogs, excitable dogs or dogs approaching directly toward them. Some dogs struggle with strollers, scooters or unfamiliar people.

Even very social, non-reactive dogs can suddenly become wary when something unusual appears in a familiar environment.

Last week I was walking a dog through the park when he suddenly startled at an empty poop bag laying on the grass. He near jumped out of his skin and lunged toward it, only to realise after sniffing it that it was harmless. What made me laugh was that he had seen empty poop bags before. But this one was laying in a place he had never seen one before, slightly inflated and sitting differently against the grass. To him, it looked unfamiliar enough for his nervous system to briefly flag it as suspicious.

Humans do this too. We are naturally more alert when something appears “wrong” or out of place in an environment we thought we understood. Dogs are constantly assessing their surroundings in the same way.

Trigger Stacking

Just like humans, dogs also do not experience the world with the exact same emotional capacity every single day.

Most of us know what it feels like to become overwhelmed by something that normally would not bother us. Discovering one of the ingredients you needed for dinner has gone mouldy after an already stressful day can suddenly feel far bigger than it actually is. Accidentally dropping a glass when you are exhausted and overstimulated can feel like the final straw. The reaction often looks disproportionate from the outside, but usually it is not really about the mouldy ingredient or the broken glass. It is about everything that came beforehand.

Dogs experience the same kind of trigger stacking all the time.

A dog who would normally cope with traffic may struggle more after poor sleep, stressful walks, loud noises at home, physical discomfort or several difficult days in a row. Another dog may usually tolerate seeing dogs across the road, but after repeated exposure with no opportunity to decompress, their emotional bubble begins shrinking smaller and smaller. Eventually something that would normally feel manageable suddenly becomes overwhelming.

This is why thresholds are not fixed distances.

A dog seeing another dog at 100 metres away might calmly notice them one day, become slightly tense another day, or go completely over threshold barking and lunging on another. That does not necessarily mean the dog is becoming “worse.” Often it simply means their nervous system is carrying more than usual.

Discovery Before “Fixing”

This is also why, when helping reactive dogs, discovery and planning should come before trying to “fix” anything.

One of the first things I encourage people to do is simply slow down and begin observing. What specifically triggers your dog? Is it all dogs, or only certain types of dogs? Is it traffic in general, or only larger vehicles like buses and lorries? How close can the trigger be before your dog becomes uncomfortable? Are they still able to sniff the ground, take treats and disengage, or are they becoming fixated long before the barking starts?

Sometimes I even recommend taking a few days away from walks entirely if both you and your dog are stuck in a constant cycle of stress and reactions. And use this time as an opportunity to reset, observe and plan more clearly.

Once you begin understanding your dog’s thresholds, you can start working with both your dog and your environment more thoughtfully.

In my own area, Sunday mornings are often ideal because traffic is quieter and more isolated. Early mornings around 6am are usually calmer too, as well as later evenings. Midday can even become calmer depending on the day. For traffic-sensitive dogs, one or two vehicles passing occasionally is very different from continuous traffic with no opportunity to recover in between.

Sometimes patterns begin revealing themselves over time as well. You may begin noticing that a particular lorry tends to drive through the area around the same time every morning, or that a certain road becomes much quieter after school traffic has passed. You do not need to have everything perfectly figured out immediately. Often helping reactive dogs starts simply by slowing down enough to notice these patterns.

This is not about controlling the entire world for your dog. It is about learning how to work with the environment you have in a way that keeps your dog feeling safer and more capable of coping.

What Progress Actually Looks Like

One of the biggest mistakes people make is believing they need to push dogs directly toward the things they are unsure about. We often see this even with non-reactive dogs. A dog notices a strange object like a paper bag blowing slightly in the wind and hesitates, only for the human to immediately encourage them closer while saying “it’s okay, it’s just a bag.”

We know it is just a bag but the dog does not.

Sometimes what helps dogs most is simply being allowed to observe, assess and make choices. Some dogs may cautiously approach and investigate. Others may decide to create distance and walk away. Often the ability to make choices is exactly what helps nervous systems feel safer in the first place.

The same applies when working with reactive dogs. There is rarely any benefit in deliberately putting a dog into situations where they are likely to go over threshold simply to “test” them or demonstrate the behaviour to someone else. If anything, this creates more stress and rehearses the reaction again. Calm observation often tells us far more than explosions do.

Personally, I never feel the need to “see” the full reaction for myself. Most guardians already paint a very clear picture through their descriptions alone. If someone tells me their dog freezes at the sight of another dog, begins scanning constantly on walks, refuses food outdoors, or erupts barking and lunging when triggers get too close, I already understand that the dog is struggling emotionally. I do not need to deliberately place that dog into another stressful situation just to witness the reaction firsthand.

In many cases, the less obvious moments beforehand tell us far more anyway. The lip licking, the tension, the hypervigilance, the inability to disengage, the shrinking emotional bubble. Those details are often far more valuable than waiting for the reaction itself.

If reactions happen organically during walks, that can sometimes provide useful information without intentionally setting the dog up to fail. Even something as simple as a phone recording (if possible) or body camera footage can often reveal far more about the environment, body language and trigger stacking than a staged “show me the behaviour” situation ever could.

Over the years, television and reality shows have also dramatically shaped how many people think behaviour work should look. Reactive dogs are often shown through extremes: explosive reactions followed by dramatic transformations, most of which is just for viewership. What we rarely see are the boring, subtle parts where most real progress actually happens.

To many people, a successful walk might not look particularly exciting at all. A dog calmly sniffing the ground, taking treats, noticing a trigger and disengaging again can appear uneventful from the outside. But for someone who understands nervous systems and thresholds, those moments can be enormous.

Sometimes the best behaviour modification sessions are the boring ones. The calm walks where nothing dramatic happens at all. Because often, that “nothing” is actually a dog finally feeling safe enough to simply exist comfortably in the world around them.

Understanding thresholds is often the first step. If you’d like to read more about helping reactive dogs navigate walks and the outside world more comfortably, you can find my previous post here:

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Several Saturday’s ago I went into Belfast City Centre for lunch for Mother’s Day with my mum and sister. I hadn’t been in town in ages, when I do go in I tend to go in the morning during the week when it’s quieter.

Finding a parking spot was a nightmare, the stress had already begun before even getting out of the car.

The town was full of people, getting in the way and bumping into me. On top of that, there were so many buskers and someone doing religious outreach who was screaming to make his voice heard.

The shops suddenly seemed to have way too many options for something as simple as a T-shirt. Between the noise, the crowds, the fumes and the ridiculous amount of shops selling so many of the same clothes, it felt like an overdose of consumerism, I couldn’t even think straight. I couldn’t wait to get home, by the time I got home I was exhausted.

If I decide to go into town again, which I probably will, never again on a Saturday. I enjoy browsing through a half empty store, sitting outside a coffee shop in the sun. Just relaxing and taking my time in peace and quiet.

Interestingly, when I’m travelling, I love busy cities. Bangkok was amazing, there was so many things to look at. I had to be aware of the insane busy traffic. There were so many different smells in the air, novel noises. But on these occasions, the sensory overload was different. The input felt good, engaging and enjoyable.

How the Same World Feels Different

When I look at Luna, I can see something similar in how she experiences her environments. For example, when we lived at home, the walk to her local park was triggering for her along with the park itself. But, if we walked a different route to the park, her triggers didn’t overwhelm her as much. We would sometimes drive her to Ormeau Park, Ormeau Park is a lot bigger, more expansive and busier. But she loved it, she rarely had a reactive or overwhelming moment even though there was more going on. She was chilled and excited.

When I think about our usual route we used to take to her local park; turning right and everything was right there in front of her. She could see the junction ahead, she knew dogs often appeared from those streets, and she could see the park in the distance. It was all there at once, before we’d even properly started the walk.

On the alternative route, those same things still existed. But they weren’t all visible straight away. The environment unfolded more gradually, and she didn’t seem to carry that same level of anticipation. She was more regulated, more able to take things as they came.

On the surface, that might not seem like much of a difference, especially for a dog who isn’t reactive to traffic. But it’s still part of the sensory experience. It still adds to what the dog is taking in, even if they’re not actively reacting to it.

The Bucket: How Things Build Up

Everything a dog takes in can add to their bucket, especially for more sensitive dogs. It doesn’t have to be triggers to fill it. Each dog has a different capacity of what they can cope with.

More sensitive dogs often have a smaller bucket, meaning it can fill up more quickly. But that bucket isn’t fixed, it can change depending on the environment.

In my local area, Luna’s bucket is quite small. She can become overwhelmed very quickly, sometimes before we’ve even properly started the walk.

But in other places, it’s different. Since my sister moved into her own place with Luna, her bucket there feels bigger. The same goes for places like Ormeau Park or the beach, even though there’s more going on, she has more capacity to cope.

And then there are dogs at the other end of the scale. One dog I work with has what feels like a huge bucket. He can take a lot in without it affecting him in the same way.

A dog who is uneasy around strangers might be fine simply walking past someone. But for that same dog, someone stopping, staring at them, or trying to say hello could be enough to push them over their threshold.

Or take something like a siren. Some dogs might hear it in the distance and not be bothered, they’re aware of it, but it doesn’t affect them. But as it gets closer and louder, that same dog might start to struggle, until eventually it becomes too much

It’s not always one big thing, it’s often about intensity, proximity, and how much has already built up.

Another thing to be aware of is your dog’s comfort distance or “bubble.” A dog might be completely fine seeing another dog across the road. They can look, take it in, and carry on.

But that same dog, on the same footpath, with less space and less distance, might find it too much. When you start to notice your dog’s bubble, the distance they’re comfortable with, it becomes easier to support them before they reach that point where it all feels like too much.

Different Dogs, Different Capacities

Some of us are extroverts who thrive on socialising and partying. Some of us even look forward to going out on a Friday night after a busy week at work. For me, that would be my worst nightmare, to go to a pub or a club after working all week. Dogs are no different, some are the life of the party who could play and socialise all day with dogs, whilst for others a half hour of socialising is more than enough and for some, having just one friend who mirror them and doesn’t need constant interaction from the other is just perfect.

There’s also some really interesting research on this by Dr. Maya Braem, who looked at what are referred to as “highly sensitive dogs.”

She developed a questionnaire made up of different statements about a dog’s behaviour and how they respond to their environment. Owners rate each one on a scale from 1 to 7, and the overall score gives an indication of how sensitive that dog might be.

The questions cover things like how a dog reacts to changes, noises, social situations, how quickly they respond to things, and how long it takes them to settle again afterwards. So it’s not just looking at one behaviour, but patterns, how much the dog is taking in and how that builds.

Interestingly, the research also looked at the people filling in the questionnaire. There was some link between a guardian’s own sensitivity and how they rated their dog, but it was only small. So while our perception plays a role, it doesn’t fully explain it, suggesting this is something real in the dog, not just how we see them.

I filled it in for Luna and she scored 4.7. Some of the questions were actually quite difficult to answer, because like I’ve mentioned throughout this post, she doesn’t experience everything the same way in every environment.

I guess it’s just like us. There are environments we thrive in, and others we don’t. Some days our tolerance is lower than others. Our mood and behaviour can change depending on where we are and who we’re around. We understand that about ourselves, but we don’t always extend that same thinking to our dogs.

Starting to Notice

It can actually be really useful to start noticing patterns in your dog.

Not in a complicated way, but just paying attention to things like:

• what puts them on alert

• when they seem more calm

• when they go over their threshold

• what happened just before that

Sometimes that build-up is gradual, and sometimes it happens very quickly, it can just be one thing.

If you find yourself wanting to understand your dog better, it doesn’t need to be complicated or clinical with a rigid checklist tracking everything perfectly. It can be more about bringing mindfulness into it, just noticing your dog and what they experience. Noticing patterns, small details, things you might not have thought about before.

It could be as simple as reflecting on a walk afterwards. The route you took, the direction you were walking, how busy it was, how much traffic there was, what felt easy and what didn’t.

Or even at the end of the day, many of us keep some sort of journal about what we’ve done or how we’ve felt. But what if we extended that same curiosity for our dogs, especially the ones who find things more stressful?

Because once we start noticing these things, our dog’s “bucket”, their thresholds, what affects them, it can make a real difference.

The world can be a complex place to navigate. We all experience it differently, what feels manageable one day might feel like too much the next. Sometimes, understanding them starts with recognising those same patterns in ourselves.

If you’re curious to explore this a bit more, I’ve included a link to the research by Dr. Maya Braem, along with the questionnaire.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177616&type=printable

Questionnaire: https://www.insightfulanimals.com/csps

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Luna’s reactivity began when she was around a year old. Walks were overwhelming for her and for me, I started off by avoiding every dog so as to avoid Luna getting stressed out. Thankfully through more information being available online and through the dog training course I was taking at the time, I learnt about distance and “look at that”. I learnt about the levels of thresholds dogs experience, the importance of decompression and rest days. Thankfully Luna already knew about attention exercises - look at me.

I also discovered how dogs regulate themselves such as “shaking it off” and sniffing etc.

Luna has always been a thoughtful, sensitive dog. She enjoys standing or sitting to take in the world around her, thankfully my local park has a large grassy football pitch that I used to walk her on away from the footpath that created enough distance for her to stay below her threshold or at times at her threshold. Often if she spotted a dog she would stop walking and stare at them. During this time I would praise her which would result in her looking up at me and back towards the dog, she would often get a treat too.

One day I decided not to intervene to see what choice she would make, I had no idea if she would react, do nothing or look at me. I stood with her saying and doing nothing whilst silently praying “Please Luna, don’t crack up”. Once she had enough of watching, she started sniffing the grass and looked up at me. I was over the moon and said to her “That was a really good choice Luna, all the good decisions”

Looking back, that moment, her choosing, on her own, to regulate herself, was one of the most significant things that happened in our journey together. Not because of anything I did. Because of what I didn’t do. I gave her enough space and enough trust to figure it out herself.

A week ago I realised this is actually an element of supportive walking.

I came across the term through a talk by Andrew Hale, a Certified Canine Behaviourist and the creator of Dog Centred Care. His framework gave language to something I’d already been doing with Luna, that a walk could be less about managing a dog and more about supporting them. That there was a difference between those two things, and it mattered.

Whose Walk Is It?

When you take your dog out for a walk, who is it actually for?

If the honest answer is that it’s for your dog, their enrichment, their wellbeing, their experience of the world, then it follows that it should, as much as is realistically possible, be their walk. Their pace. Their nose. Their choice of direction. Their decision to stop and just take something in.

We don’t always walk that way. We have routes, we have time, we walk in straight lines at human pace with a destination in mind. And our dogs, attached to us by a lead, have to come with us.

That’s not always wrong. But it’s worth asking whether we’re leaving any room for the walk to be theirs.

The Curve We Forget

Here’s something worth thinking about. When dogs approach each other freely and politely, they don’t walk in straight lines. They curve. They arc toward each other, a natural, socially fluent behaviour that signals peaceful intent and gives both dogs time to read one another before they meet. Some do a gentle arc. Others do a wide sweep. It depends on the dog.

We, as humans, approach things head-on. That’s just how we move through the world. And when we’re walking our dog on a lead, we often extend that habit to them without realising — marching them straight toward other dogs, other people, whatever is in their path.

When I’m walking and there’s a dog coming toward us, I do what I’d describe as a soft capital L. I step to whichever side has space and walk out and around, creating a curve rather than a collision course. It’s a small thing. It takes seconds. But it recreates something much closer to what dogs do naturally when they’re given the choice.

This isn’t only for reactive dogs. Every dog benefits from not being walked head-on into another dog’s face. And honestly, it’s just good etiquette, for the other dog, for the other owner, and for the shared spaces we’re all trying to navigate together.

When Your Dog Stops

When Luna stops on a walk (or when any dog I work with stops on a walk), the first thing I do is stop with her. Then I look at her, and I look at where she’s staring, to try and see what she’s seeing.

There is always a reason a dog stops. They’ve heard something, smelled something, spotted something in the distance that’s given them pause. Something in their environment needs processing, and they’re doing exactly that.

The most supportive thing you can do in that moment is just be there. You don’t need to intervene, redirect, or fix anything. Watch them. Watch what they’re watching. Give them time.

If after a while they’re still reluctant to move forward, don’t push. Keep the lead loose and step gently to one side — that soft L shape again — and see where they want to go. Often a dog who won’t walk toward something will choose to walk parallel to it instead. Or they might decide they’ve had enough and turn back the way they came. Both are completely fine. Both are your dog making a choice, and that matters enormously.

At Threshold — Not Over It

There’s a distinction worth understanding as it can be easy to miss.

A dog standing still, body tense, staring hard at something, often the dog is at their threshold. They’re right at their limit, but they haven’t gone over it. And while it can look alarming, this is actually a moment of processing, not a crisis.

You don’t always need to rescue them from it.

As long as their trigger isn’t approaching and the situation stays stable, you can wait. Watch for the small signs that they’re coming back to themselves such as their body softening slightly, the nose dropping to the ground, the glance back at you. These are signs of decompression. Signs that they found their own way through.

When Luna used to do this on the football pitch, tense and staring, I’d stand with her and wait. And when she’d eventually sniff or look at me, I’d quietly tell her she’d made a good choice. Because she had. She’d chosen to regulate herself rather than react and that’s a skill, one that takes time and trust to develop.

Allowing your dog to work through these moments, with you calmly present, can help build real resilience. They learn that difficult things can be survived. They learn to reach for their own coping strategies; sniffing, looking away, moving off to the side, rather than relying entirely on you to step in.

That said, this is not about abandoning them to struggle alone. The training you do together such as “touch”, “look”, “middle” is a shared language. It means your dog knows you’re there, that you’re paying attention, and that you’re a safe place to turn if they need one. A dog who has learned these things might use them in those processing moments, offering a look, reaching toward your hand, because they chose to. That’s the relationship piece. That’s what all of it is building toward.

Rest Days

Luna used to have bad days on a daily basis. Walking her every day, back then, would have been too much. A dog who is constantly triggered never gets the chance to come back to baseline, which can make everything harder.

So Luna had rest days where we didn’t go out and enrichment happened quietly at home instead.

This is something I feel strongly about and don’t think gets said often enough: not every day needs a walk. For a dog who finds the world effortful, and many dogs do, reactive or not, rest is recovery. It gives the nervous system a chance to decompress so that the next walk can be met with more capacity, more resilience, more ability to cope.

If your dog has had a hard walk, or a stressful day, or an unexpected encounter, a rest day is not giving up. It’s good care.

A Note on Social Dogs

This post isn’t only for people with reactive dogs. I want to say something directly to those whose dogs are easy, friendly, enthusiastic greeters, because you have a role in this too.

Just because your dog wants to meet every dog they see doesn’t mean every dog wants to meet them.

Continuing to walk your sociable dog past dogs who are clearly struggling, or allowing them to rush up to on-lead dogs, doesn’t just affect those other dogs. Over time, it can affect yours. Repeated uncomfortable interactions, even for the dog who seems to be enjoying themselves, can compound. Social dogs can become reactive dogs. The connection isn’t always obvious, but it is real.

And if your dog is off lead: please, call them back from dogs who are on lead. The lead is there for a reason you can’t see from a distance. That dog might be recovering from surgery. They might be fearful. They might be reactive. “He just wants to say hello” is always said with the best intentions, but the person on the other end of that lead is managing something, and an off-lead dog charging straight at them in a direct line makes everything so much harder.

Curving away, giving space, reading what’s in front of you, these aren’t just good practices for reactive dog owners. They’re how we all make shared spaces kinder and safer for every dog in them.

It’s taken years for Luna to get to where she is today, I can’t remember the last time she had a reactive moment. But her walks are still managed and on her terms and she still has rest days, I help her stay under her threshold. We create appropriate distance from other dogs, we do check ins during our walks, I encourage sniffing, allow her to process her environment and choose what direction we go in. If I suddenly stopped all that thinking Luna was back to her old self before she became reactive, she would more than likely regress. Every dog has their own limits and each dog differs in what they are able to cope with.

What Supportive Walking Really Is

It isn’t a training programme or a set of rules. It’s a way of showing up for your dog, present, unhurried, willing to follow their lead and trust their process.

It’s stopping when they stop. Stepping to the side in a soft L when another dog approaches. Letting them sniff for as long as they need. Giving them the freedom to choose a direction, to turn back, to stand on a grassy football pitch and stare at something until they’re ready to move.

A walk doesn’t have to look a certain way to be a good one.

Luna taught me most of this before I had the language for it. I just paid attention to her and tried to give her what she seemed to need. It turns out that the best work comes from watching your dog and being willing to learn from them.

Your dog is telling you something on every walk, being present and listening can make all the difference. In doing so, you get the opportunity to step into their world and get a glimpse on how they experience it.

The term “supportive walking” comes from the work of Andrew Hale of Dog Centred Care, whose framework I’d highly recommend exploring. You can find him at dogcc.org.

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The Invisible Compass

Have you ever noticed your dog circling a few times before toileting?

It’s something we see quite often, yet rarely give much thought to. It becomes part of what dogs do, familiar enough that we stop questioning it. But when you do stop and think about it, even briefly, it starts to feel a little less ordinary.

Research shows that dogs possess the ability to detect changes in the Earth’s magnetic fields, a biological “sixth sense” that tethers them to the planet in a way we can’t perceive. Scientists have observed that dogs prefer to align themselves along a north-south axis when they are calm, but this connection is delicate. When the “magnetic weather” is stormy disturbed by solar flares or shifts we don’t consciously register, that alignment vanishes.

We don’t yet have a definitive answer as to why they do this. Researchers have theorised it may be for physical comfort, a leftover instinct from their ancestors, or perhaps a way of calibrating their internal maps while stationary. Knowing this makes that small circle feel different. It is a reminder that dogs detect far more than we do; they sense the barometric drop before a storm or the micro-vibrations of a distant disaster long before we notice a thing.

Science explains an incredible amount, allowing us to measure and test the world, but it is still limited to what can be observed. We are often quick to explain things away, labelling a dog’s reaction as mere “behaviour” or a coincidence, but sometimes those explanations feel like they close the door a little too quickly.

What I find most fascinating isn’t just that we don’t fully understand why they do this, but what else it might be influencing, including how a dog learns, responds, or concentrates in a moment we assume we understand.

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The Learning Gap

When we look at how a dog learns compared to how we learn, there is a significant overlap. We both bring our past experiences, our current stress levels, and our moods into every interaction. Yet, there is a fundamental divide. As humans, we move through the world filtered by logic, expectations, and the need to “think things through.” Dogs do not experience the world in quite the same way. They respond to what is there, not what they think should be there. While we share the same physical moment, we are rarely sharing the same sensory experience.

If a dog is struggling to focus during a session, we typically ask, “what’s wrong with the dog?” But there may be a prior question: what is the dog currently experiencing that we aren’t?

If something as subtle as the Earth’s magnetic field can shift a dog’s behaviour enough for researchers to observe it across thousands of instances, what does that mean for a five-minute training session in a park? The dog hasn’t “switched off.” They’re simply operating in a richer sensory environment than we realise.

This gap matters immensely when it comes to training. We might assume a dog is “refusing” to listen, but they may simply be processing environmental signals such as magnetic, chemical, or atmospheric that exist entirely outside our awareness. We often talk about “intelligent disobedience” when a dog pulls someone away from oncoming traffic or stops them from falling onto train tracks. But it isn’t really disobedience at all, it is a dog making a decision based on what they can sense. In those moments, they aren’t “breaking the rules”; they are acting as the primary decision-maker because they can sense a danger that we may not be aware of.

The Social Guardians

Their awareness extends far beyond the physical environment and into the complexities of our social world. We know they can read our emotions even when we appear calm on the surface, picking up on the subtle chemical shifts in our bodies, but research shows they are also “eavesdropping” on how the world treats us. In one striking study, dogs watched as a stranger either helped their person open a container or actively refused to help. Later, when those same strangers offered the dogs a treat, the dogs avoided the person who had been unhelpful to their person.

This wasn’t because the person had been mean to the dog; it was because the dog had observed a breach in social support. They were monitoring a situation that didn’t affect them directly, simply because it affected their person. It suggests that dogs aren’t just passive companions; they are active social evaluators. Some are trained to use these abilities as service animals, alerting to seizures or changes in blood sugar, but many more seem to use them instinctively. They stay close when something feels “off,” or they comfort us before we’ve even fully recognised our own struggle. They are not just reacting to us; they are actively guarding the space between us and the world.

The Persistent Connection

Dogs have lived alongside us for thousands of years. You might expect that over 10,000 years of co-evolution and domestication, these ancient abilities would have faded away as they became redundant. Yet, they remain. It is a beautiful reminder that no matter how much we think we have “domesticated” them, a part of our dogs remains deeply, invisibly connected to the Earth. Even if they aren’t actively using these sensors in ways we can see, the “hardware” is still there, running in the background of their lives.

When I think about Luna, and consider all of this, what she might be picking up on, and what she might be experiencing in ways I don’t fully understand, it makes me pause.

It leaves me with a question I don’t have a clear answer to: Who am I really sharing my life with?

We like to think of ourselves as their guides, but perhaps they are looking out for us, too. Maybe they are our guardians just as much as we are theirs, standing at the edge of a sensory world we can only guess at. It leaves you wondering: what on earth else do they know and experience?

Further reading:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24370002/

https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/research-news/2015-06-24

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You can be mid-conversation, not even looking at your dog, and say a word like “hungry” or “walk” and they react immediately with a tilt of the head and their tail wagging with anticipation. It’s hilarious to notice and often makes me wonder, how often are they listening in to our conversations.

A 2026 study published in Science by researchers from the Family Dog Project at Eötvös Loránd University looked at a small group of “gifted word learner” dogs, dogs who already knew the names of multiple objects.

The researchers didn’t just say the word a few times and test the dogs. They used a structured routine over several days.

Each new, novel toy was introduced in short sessions. In each session, the word was used briefly for about a minute (e.g. “This is the toy”), followed by a few minutes of play where the word wasn’t repeated, and then time where the dog could explore the toy on their own. This was repeated twice a day over several days, so in total the dogs only heard each new word for around 8 minutes.

In Condition A (direct teaching), the person spoke directly to the dog during that short labelling phase, introducing the toy in the usual way people would.

In Condition B (overhearing), the setup was different. Two people sat facing each other and passed the toy between them while talking about it using its name in simple sentences like “this is the toy” or “do you want the toy”. The dog was in the room, but neither person looked at or spoke to the dog at any point. The dog could only watch and listen.

After this, the dogs were tested. The new toys were placed in another room along with familiar toys. The person then asked the dog to bring a specific toy by name. Each new toy was tested multiple times, so the dog had to consistently choose the correct object rather than guessing.

They were successful in both conditions, including when the word had only been heard in conversation. The researchers compared this to how human toddlers (around 1.5 years old) begin to learn words by overhearing speech.

It’s a small, specialised group of dogs, so it’s not something we can generalise. But it lines up with something many people already notice.

Dogs don’t stop listening when we’re not speaking to them. You can say “do you want…” and they become engaged before you’ve even finished the sentence. They’re already anticipating what comes next.

And it’s not just tone. If you say a completely different word in the same tone, with the same rhythm or number of syllables, most dogs won’t respond. Use the word they know in a different tone, and they still understand it. That points to the word itself carrying meaning.

I saw this clearly with Zeus. We used the word “hungry” when feeding him. If we were talking to each other and didn’t want him reacting, we’d spell it — h-u-n-g-r-y. It didn’t make any difference. He would still get up and go straight to his dish. We never taught him what spelling meant. He only ever heard the word in context, but over time he treated both versions as the same thing.

It wasn’t limited to one word. “Hungry”, “h-u-n-g-r-y”, and even “rumbly tumbly” all led to the same outcome. He knew “cake”. He knew “lead”. If we said “go get your dish”, he would run upstairs and bring it back from wherever he had left it. At one point I wrote a list of the words he understood and it went over 150, and that was a conservative estimate, I wish I had kept that list.

None of this came from structured training. It came from everyday language, repeated over time, with a dog who was paying attention.

We tend to focus on what we actively teach dogs such as cues and repetition, but they are picking up far more than that. They hear conversations, notice patterns, and link words to outcomes without being directly included. So when a study shows that some dogs can learn words by overhearing us, it doesn’t feel far removed from real life.

For a species that has co-evolved alongside us for thousands of years, it seems simplistic to reduce their understanding of our words to cue and tone.

Whilst not all dogs are gifted word learners, some are, and some of us might just be living with one.

You can even try a rough version of this at home, just for fun.

Take a new object your dog hasn’t seen before, have it in the room with a couple of toys they already know, and talk about it in conversation for a few minutes while your dog is there.

Then later, in a different room, ask them to get it by name and see what they do.

It won’t give any definite answers, but it can give a bit of insight into how your dog learns, and if nothing else, it’s just a fun activity.

I’ll be trying it with Luna tomorrow to see how she gets on and hopefully get a few videos of her.

Most dogs won’t do this straight away, and that’s completely normal. The dogs in the study already had large vocabularies before being tested.

It doesn’t really matter if your dog can’t do it as every dog has their own abilities that are unique to them. If I was doing this with Zeus, he probably would have passed it. Luna knows loads of words, but my guess is she’ll struggle, and that’s okay. The fun for me is finding out whether she can do it or not and no doubt she’ll have fun trying!

If she can’t, it doesn’t detract from everything else she can do, like picking up on subtle emotional changes in the people around her, or just being entertaining and making you laugh.

What’s the most surprising word your dog has picked up by accident?

Full study: https://shanydror.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Dror-et-al.-Science-2026.pdf

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Many people have a picture in their mind of what having a well behaved dog looks like. A dog you can take anywhere. Easy to walk and easy to be around. It’s a very common thing to hope for. But it’s worth asking where that picture actually came from.

It might be from walking past a dog on the street walking calmly beside someone or dogs depicted in movies. Maybe even a dog you had in the past that just seemed easy.

Are these expectations also influenced by society? There are signs and unspoken rules that your dog is allowed into a premises or certain area provided they are well behaved, which of course, many people interpret that as, their dog won’t toilet or be disruptive.

A “well-behaved dog” becomes one that fits into human spaces without drawing attention, without causing disruption, without interrupting what’s going on around them. The problem is, dogs don’t understand those rules and never will. They can learn through training, habituation and socialisation but they will never understand that they have to follow what people accept as socially appropriate.

For some who have never had a dog before, or their previous dog was very easy, we already have this idea formed in our head before our dog even arrives into our life. And when they do, the idea is already formed.

When we combine the preconceived notion of a ‘well-behaved’ dog with how they’re depicted on screen, the gap between that image and our reality starts to show.

You come home to your dog anticipating them waiting at the door and wagging their tail to greet you. What might not be anticipated is behind them a chewed sofa or the trash torn open and scattered over the floor. Walks might start off relaxing and enjoyable then several months later your dog starts pulling, even barking or lunging at other dogs or traffic. For those who have never had a dog before this can come as a shock. And for someone who has had an “easy” dog in the past, it can feel just as confusing. Because now they’re not just comparing reality to an idea, they’re comparing it to a memory.

So they start looking for help. They ask people they know, they search online, they listen to advice. And often, they’ll come across someone who sounds confident and certain.

“I know a guy, he’s brilliant.”

And that feels like relief.

But without a clear idea of what they’re actually aiming for, it’s hard to know what advice is appropriate or in the best interest for the dog. A dog that pulls on the lead might end up with rules about furniture, doorways, or corrections that don’t address what’s actually going on. The result can cause a dog to suppress their behaviour or even shut down, so what appears as a calm or well behaved dog is actually the opposite.

And sometimes, it appears to work, the dog becomes quieter and easier. People might even comment on how “well behaved” they are. But there’s a difference between a dog that is calm and a dog that has learned it isn’t safe to communicate. One is a dog that is coping. The other is a dog that has stopped trying. And from the outside, they can look identical.

All of this is happening while that original idea of a “well-behaved dog” is still sitting in the background, shaping how everything is being judged.

It’s a very common experience to see a dog walking nicely on the lead and being engaged with their person and thinking, “I wish my dog was like that.” It’s a reasonable thought; walks would be much easier and less stressful for the person and their dog. But what we see is only a glimpse, that dog might struggle in other ways we don’t see. We end up comparing our everyday reality to someone else’s brief moment.

On some days, we’re calm and patient. On other days, we’re stressed and something small is enough to push us over. We understand that about ourselves. But with dogs, it’s easy to forget how much context matters. What’s happening around them, how they’re feeling, what they can cope with in that moment.

If a dog is barking or lunging, it’s easy to see that as something to stop. However, it can also be a sign that something isn’t right. That the dog isn’t coping, or doesn’t understand, or needs help in some way.

Underneath all of this, there’s something else. When everything is being measured against whether a dog is “well-behaved,” it can start to overshadow everything in between. The dog that follows you from room to room. The way they seem to notice when something isn’t right. They may have a comical gait when they’re running that makes you laugh every time.

Certain expectations can remove the joy and what it actually means to have a relationship with a dog.

Having a dog can be stressful at times as it is. But when we shift away from a vague idea of “well-behaved” and instead look at whether a dog is healthy, safe, and able to cope, it becomes easier to understand what’s actually going on and what might need support, rather than adding more pressure.

And if that’s the case…
What are we actually asking for when we say we want a “well-behaved” dog?

Because until that’s clear, everything else, advice, progress, even setbacks becomes harder to understand.

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It’s something many people say in those moments where they’ve asked their dog to do something, and nothing happens.

You’re out on a walk and it feels like your dog has completely forgotten you’re on the other end of the lead. You ask for something simple, like a sit, and nothing happens. It can feel like they’re not listening at all.

It’s easy to assume they’re ignoring you, or choosing not to respond. Especially when it’s something they’ve done before, or something that seems so basic.

But most of the time, that isn’t what’s happening. It’s not that your dog has suddenly decided not to listen, or that’s their personality; just the way they are. Often it is something that is getting in the way of them being able to respond in that moment.

When you start to look at it this way, the question changes. Instead of asking why your dog won’t listen, it becomes about understanding what might be getting in the way, and what they need in order to be able to respond.

It also means you don’t have to fix everything at once. Sometimes, the most helpful place to start is by slowing things down and taking the pressure off, for both you and your dog.

The first thing to consider is whether your dog is actually able to respond. If they’re over-excited, stressed, or completely absorbed in what’s going on around them, it can make it very difficult for them to focus on anything else. In those moments, their attention is already taken up by something else.

When things feel overwhelming for your dog, it’s not just behavioural, it’s physiological too. Their body is responding to the environment, with stress hormones like cortisol playing a role, which can make it much harder for them to think clearly or respond in the way we might expect.

It’s also worth considering whether your dog actually understands what’s being asked of them in that moment. A behaviour might feel well learned at home, but that doesn’t always mean it carries over into different environments. What seems obvious to us isn’t always as clear to them.

The environment plays a big role. New places, movement, smells, and other distractions can make even simple cues much harder to respond to. Sometimes it’s not that your dog is ignoring you, but that something else is simply more interesting or engaging in that moment.

What you’re offering also matters. What one dog finds rewarding, another might not. A piece of cheese might be far more valuable to one dog than a standard dog biscuit. If what’s on offer isn’t meaningful enough compared to everything else going on, it’s going to be much harder for your dog to choose it.

If your dog has previously been able to respond to something like a sit, and suddenly seems reluctant or avoids it altogether, that’s something to pay attention to. In some cases, it can be linked to discomfort, pain, or even changes in hearing, so it’s always worth ruling that out with a vet.

So where do you start with all of this?

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It’s something many people say in those moments where they’ve asked their dog to do something, and nothing happens.

I saw this recently with someone who said their dog wouldn’t sit, or really do anything when asked. When they asked for a “sit”, the dog just stood there, then started jumping up at them instead. From the outside, it looked like someone saying a word, “sit” and expecting the dog to automatically know what it meant and respond. But nothing happened.

Their response was mixed with frustration and a kind of exasperation, “See? He just doesn’t listen to anything.”

I’ve had similar moments in the past, before I started working with dogs. But even then, I remember having a sense that it was down to me. I didn’t know how to teach what I was asking, and because of that, the dog didn’t understand. It wasn’t that they were choosing not to listen. It was that I hadn’t shown them clearly enough what I meant.

That’s still where my mind goes now when I hear someone say their dog doesn’t listen. Not that the dog is ignoring them, but that they don’t understand what’s being asked, or that something is getting in the way of them being able to respond.

Sometimes the dog is stressed, too excited, or too interested in something else going on around them to be able to focus. Other times, they simply haven’t learned what that word or cue actually means yet.

A large part of the problem is the expectation placed on dogs. There’s often an assumption that they should just know, even something as simple as “sit.” But it only seems simple because we understand it. For a dog, it’s something that has to be taught, built up over time, and practised in different environments before it becomes reliable.

The phrase “won’t listen” also carries an assumption. “Won’t listen” doesn’t describe the dog. It describes a misunderstanding.

Dogs also differ in how they learn and what they can cope with. Some are able to concentrate for longer periods, while others have much shorter attention spans. Breed, personality, past experiences, and individual traits all play a role too, as does a dog’s level of experience with what’s being asked of them.

They’re constantly taking in information from the world around them, including us. Some dogs are very tuned into our emotional state, while others, often because of past experiences, may hear a change in tone, especially an angry one, and anticipate punishment.

Sometimes what is being offered is not meaningful enough to the dog at that moment. What one dog finds rewarding, another might have no interest in at all. A piece of cheese might be far more valuable to one dog than a standard dog biscuit. That value can look very different depending on the individual dog. In other cases, the dog might be over threshold, too stressed, too stimulated, tired, or even in pain. Pain is an important factor, if your dog has always know how to “sit”, “lay down” or knows what the word “off” means such as getting off the sofa, and they suddenly decide not to, it is necessary to get a veterinarian check to rule out pain.

Dogs are always taking things in, they are listening in ways that are easy to miss such as a flick of the ear, a glance in your direction or a small shift in their body. But if we’re only looking for a specific response, like a sit, it can seem like nothing is happening at all.

When someone says, “My dog won’t listen to me,” what it often means is, “My dog doesn’t understand what I’m asking,” or “Something is making this difficult for them right now.” This is an important difference, because it changes the question entirely. Instead of asking why the dog won’t listen, it becomes about understanding what’s getting in the way, and what the dog needs in order to be able to respond.

It can be easy to assume your dog is being disobedient, stubborn, or intentionally choosing not to listen. But when we start to look at teaching as a shared learning experience, it can make training feel more enjoyable, less stressful, and helps to strengthen the relationship between you and your dog. Your dog’s response becomes feedback rather than something to get frustrated with.

If it feels like your dog isn’t listening, it’s usually because they don’t yet have a reason to stay connected with you, especially when the environment is more interesting.

This is where attention comes in, not forced focus, but your dog choosing to check in with you.

I’ve put together a step-by-step free guide on how to build that foundation in a way that actually makes sense to your dog:

→ Start here:

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Dogs in Every Day Life

Dogs are everywhere in everyday life. Even if you don’t have one yourself, chances are you know someone who does.

We can’t escape them, just as we can’t escape other people. They are part of the fabric of our world.

Many of us think about dogs most days, even if only briefly, from seeing one in an advert on television to passing a dog on the street.

Yet something we rarely stop to think about is the language we use when talking about them.

The Word “Obedience”

One word that is used especially when we get a dog is the word “obedience”, there’s many obedience classes that teach the basics from sit, stay and down. There’s formal obedience trials, even Crufts hold obedience championships. On the surface, the word might not seem much, but when we look at the definition of the word it means compliance to follow an order issued by someone in authority. It implies that one is to do as they’re told with little room for error or there may be consequences.

Paradoxically, obedience originates from the Latin word oboedire, meaning “to listen toward.” Over time the meaning shifted to imply compliance with authority, but hidden inside the word is the much simpler idea of listening.

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The Expectations Behind the Word

The concept of obedience is embedded into society, again passed down through generations. As introduced earlier it implies immediate response, to remain under control, behave correctly and leaves little room for mistakes. This can create pressure for both the person and the dog, it can also shape expectations which is a lot for a dog. The person may feel that something has gone “wrong”, or the dog is refusing, being difficult or not listening. There’s very little room in that framework for hesitation, confusion, distraction, or learning; all the normal parts of being a living animal. When we frame behaviour through the language of obedience, it can quietly turn learning into compliance.

Interestingly, the word obedience was once commonly used when talking about children as well. Earlier generations often praised “obedient children,” with the expectation that they should simply do as they were told.

Over time, however, the language around parenting began to shift. As understanding of child development grew, many people began to focus more on communication, guidance, and helping children understand the reasons behind rules rather than expecting simple obedience. There has been an increased focus on how they learn, their emotions and how the need to regulate their emotions

As our understanding of learning and emotional development grew, the focus gradually shifted from simple obedience toward communication and guidance.

When we look more closely at dogs, we begin to see that they too are navigating the world through emotions, experiences, and the need to regulate themselves.

Dogs constantly regulate their own emotional state through behaviour. They sniff the ground, shake their bodies, pause to observe their surroundings, or move away from something that feels overwhelming.

Modern training often encourages these behaviours, particularly for dogs who find the world intense. Allowing a dog time to sniff, for example, can help them process their environment and reduce stress.

Some trainers even recommend occasional rest days for dogs who become overwhelmed on walks which gives their nervous system time to settle before gradually reintroducing challenges. The goal isn’t simply to expose the dog to more and more stimulation, but to help them build resilience in manageable doses. Dogs are not merely machines executing instructions; they hesitate, they get distracted, they misunderstand, and sometimes they simply aren’t ready for what we’re asking. When we step away from the language of obedience, a different picture begins to emerge.

When behaviour is viewed through this lens, the relationship begins to look less like obedience and more like guidance. The person isn’t simply giving instructions. They’re helping the dog navigate a complex world in a way that feels safe.

The Myth of the Perfect Dog

A popular and very accurate phrase is: “comparison is the thief of joy”. The language of obedience can also quietly invite comparison. If the expectation is that a dog should be obedient, then it becomes easy to look at other dogs and measure ours against them. A neighbour’s dog may walk perfectly beside them on the lead, while another dog pulls or becomes excited by everything around them. It can box dogs into a certain category of how they should be; generalising them. Each dog is different, no two Labradors are the same, each dog has their own experiences, personalities, traits and behaviours, not all size fits one

And in that moment, the difference can feel like a failure; as though one dog is doing things “right” while another is somehow falling short. The idea of obedience can also quietly suggest that there is such a thing as a “perfect” dog. A dog who responds immediately, behaves correctly in every situation, and never makes mistakes. But in reality, there’s not really such a thing as a perfect dog, just as there’s no such thing as a perfect person.

Everyone has quirks, things they find difficult and everyone makes mistakes.

For example, to me Luna is perfect.

The television is usually on in the background to soften outside noises that might make her bark. Part of the window is partially obscured so she doesn’t feel the need to watch every passer-by.

When we’re outside, she doesn’t like sitting on concrete, so she isn’t asked to. At traffic lights she simply stands beside me and waits. None of those things feel like problems to me, they’re simply part of who she is.

And that’s the most important part, she waits patiently which increases her safety, however she behaves, as long as she’s safe and happy, everything else is a bonus. But someone else, looking at the same dog through the lens of obedience, might see it differently. They might notice the barking, or the fact that she doesn’t sit on cue in certain situations, and conclude that she isn’t “obedient”.

When Language No Longer Fits

When we step away from the idea of obedience, we start to notice something else: dogs are communicating with us far more often than we realise. Dogs are also constantly absorbing information from the world around them.

In many ways they’re like sponges, taking in far more than we often realise — our routines, our tone of voice, our body language, even subtle shifts in breathing or tension.

Long before we give a cue or ask for a behaviour, dogs are already observing and learning. They notice patterns in our daily lives, the small signals we give without thinking, and the rhythms of the environments we share with them. When we think about dogs in this way, training begins to look less like a series of instructions and more like a shared process of learning.

Living with a dog becomes partly about recognising their constant alertness and awareness and learning how to incorporate that into the way we move through the world together.

Something else interesting happens when behaviour is framed through the idea of obedience.

If a dog isn’t responding to cues, it’s often described as the dog “not listening” or being “disobedient”. But in many situations the opposite may be happening; the dog is communicating, and it’s the person who isn’t noticing. When a dog looks back at their person during a walk, that’s a form of communication. It’s a check-in. A moment of shared attention.

And in that moment the person has a choice about how to respond. If that glance is acknowledged perhaps with a quiet “yes” or a small treat, the dog learns that checking in with their person is worthwhile.

Over time, those small moments can build something far more valuable than simple compliance: attention, engagement, and connection. What might look like obedience from the outside is often simply the result of many small moments of communication being noticed and reinforced.

Instead of commands and compliance, the relationship starts to look more like communication. Or perhaps cooperation.

When we examine words closely, it often leads to questioning others which can create a snowball effect. Words like owner, command, aggressive and obedience come from older frameworks of authority and hierarchy. Many of us use those words because they are normal but they don’t always reflect on how we feel. More and more people view their dogs as companions, family members, it’s a relationship woven into our daily lives.

It’s not just about changing words, changing words is a part of it. Another element may be about noticing when language no longer matches our experiences and aligning ourselves with how we really feel about our unique relationship with dogs.

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Black cats have always carried strange reputations. Some people associate them with bad luck, but in other traditions they are seen as the opposite. Sailors once considered them lucky, Scottish folklore says a black cat appearing at your door brings prosperity, and some old beliefs even say they protect a house from negative energy and evil spirits.

Thirteen years ago a small black cat appeared at our door, and she did indeed bring a lot of luck with her, simply by being herself.

I thought Pandora should have a post about herself. Seeing as she’s black, it’s Friday the 13th, her birthday falls sometime this month (her previous home couldn’t remember which day), and she’s an amazing, quirky, gentle wee cat, it seemed like the perfect excuse.

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Panda (she knows her name is Pandora and Panda for short) is pure black with black whiskers, blackish grey claws and grey skin with huge green eyes, now that she’s older, her eyes have developed a sort of gold ring around her pupils. She’s very tiny and dainty which makes her eyes look more pronounced.

Panda arrived when I was still living at home on 16th August 2013. For about a week I had been hearing a cat meowing but not close enough to be in the garden and they sounded more like a kitten.

That night in August I went downstairs around 11.45pm to wash the dinner dishes as I’d been putting it off all day. When I went into the kitchen I saw these 2 green eyes staring in through the back door which has a window at the bottom. As soon as I saw her she started meowing. Of course I was very excited, who wouldn’t be seeing a wee cat at their door? I opened the door but she ran down the yard, my mum and brother came down. My brother gave her some pate, she ran off with it growling and scoffed it and came back for more. After 3 helpings of pate she eventually came into the kitchen. She sat for about 20 minutes whilst we talked about her, wondering where she came from, is she lost, was she abandoned and noting how skinny she was.

Panda then stood up and made her way upstairs. My mum’s house is a 4 story house, Panda didn’t explore, she went up the first 2 flight of stairs and straight into my bedroom. After sniffing around for a while, she jumped onto my bed and settled. She moved to my pillow and lay there all night beside my head watching me. I kept waking up throughout the night because I was aware there was a new wee cat in my room, each time I woke up she was there in the same spot beside my head watching me. I was currently half way through reading Pet Sematary so naturally I kept getting quite spooked!

A couple of days later my sister posted to Facebook to see if anyone was missing her. Someone who lived nearby commented about how they had moved back home and weren’t allowed to keep her and had to put her outside. She was glad we had taken her in, but it still meant that a five-month-old kitten had been put outside, underweight, not spayed and already in the early stages of pregnancy.

I took her to the vet to make sure whether she was spayed or not and for a health check. They found that she was in the early stages of pregnancy, confirmed that she was underweight and had ear mites. Even though it felt like a horrible decision, I done what I felt was responsible for Panda and decided to get her spayed and terminate the pregnancy. I thought a lot about that decision but with her being so young and the thoughts of her having up to 7 kittens and how they would all need to be spayed and neutered before being rehomed and even then there would be no guarantee they would actually get their forever home. It was a minefield and the kindest, most responsible decision under the circumstances.

Pandora settled into the house very quickly, we had a huge German Shepherd called Zeus at the time, he was 8 stone (50kg) and on his back legs he was nearly 6 foot. Panda loved commandeering his bed, if she was on it he wouldn’t go near it, he slept on the sofa most of the time anyway. Panda used to sit in the middle of the stairs, poor Zeus would be on his way up, bump into her and slink back downstairs with his tail between his legs, she never hit him and he had grown up around cats, but she was one he wasn’t brave enough to mess around with, he took her quite seriously. After he passed away in late 2013, Panda did become quieter and she didn’t sit downstairs as much as she used to. I often wonder did she enjoy having him around despite her blocking the stairs and not being happy if he came into my room?

She’s the only animal today out of the ones in our family that knew Zeus, I joke and call her the oracle. Quite a few animals have passed through our lives over the years, Zeus, a dog I accidentally fostered, another dog I found one day, my mum’s cats past and present, and of course Luna.

Some of them knew each other, but Panda is the only one who knew Zeus and still knows the ones we have now. She’s been there through all of it, quietly watching everything unfold.

I refer to Pandora in many ways, I see her as my wee pal, housemate, my familiar; someone who depends on me and I depend on her.

Pandora has been through a lot in the 13 years she’s been with me from surviving being knocked down by a car to moving into our own house.

She’s incredibly intelligent and very quirky and one post covering everything would turn into a book. So alongside my articles on dogs and Luna, I’ve decided to include some posts about Panda’s life and her personality. She’s a very interesting wee cat and deserves to have her own posts 🐈‍⬛❤️

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Luna has always been a thief, not constantly. She doesn’t spend her days plotting elaborate robberies, but every now and then she takes a notion.

Her favourite targets are bags especially if you’re just back from shopping. If someone leaves one within reach, she’ll quietly wander over and begin rummaging through it with great focus and usually emerges triumphantly with a receipt or some other completely useless item.

The funny thing is that she only does it if there’s an audience. If Luna is alone in the room, she doesn’t bother. But if someone is there to witness the crime, the performance begins.

When she successfully “steals” something, we immediately start shouting dramatic accusations:

“Thief! Thievery! Tomfoolery!”

This is Luna’s cue to sprint gleefully up the hall with her spoils. Nearly ten years of these antics and they never fail to entertain me.

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Last week she pulled off one of her best heists yet. She wandered into the kitchen and began rummaging in a box of cat food, her tail wagging suspiciously. We all knew exactly what she was up to.

Archie, my mum’s cat, was sitting nearby watching the whole scene. Strangely, he looked slightly hopeful, even though Luna cannot actually feed him and was technically stealing his food.

“Archie,” we told him, “Luna’s stealing your food!”

This seemed to encourage Luna even more. Within seconds she had managed to grab three sachets of cat food and bolted gleefully up the hall while we shouted: “Thief! Thievery!”

She was absolutely delighted with herself.

Because Luna is very gentle with things she carries, we let her enjoy her spoils for a few seconds before trading them for something more appropriate before she had a chance to chew them.

But the moment we returned the sachets to the box, she immediately came back to try again. At that point I had to close the lid which ended her crime spree.

Turning a Thief into a Trick

When I first heard about the trick “pickpocket,” I immediately thought of Luna, it suited her perfectly.

Since she already enjoyed rummaging in bags and running off triumphantly with whatever she’d managed to “steal,” the behaviour was halfway there already. The trick simply gives that natural mischief a clear cue and a controlled setup.

Another nice bonus is that it can help practise a drop or trade, because once the dog has successfully stolen the item, you’re usually swapping it for something else. Over time this can help reinforce the idea that giving things back to you leads to something positive.

In Luna’s case, she loves the whole game so much that the reward almost becomes secondary. The real fun is the act of sneaking up behind someone and making off with the prize.

If you’re using something simple like a cloth or a rag, you can even let the dog parade around proudly with their spoils for a few seconds before resetting the game. After all, every successful thief deserves a brief moment to celebrate.

How to Teach Your Dog to Pickpocket

1. Start with a cloth hanging out of your pocket. Use a cloth that slides easily out of your pocket so your dog succeeds with only a light grab. If they need to yank hard, they may start jumping or tugging at clothing.
   
   

2. Stand with your back to the dog
   
   

3. Encourage curiosity with a bit of movement
   
   

4. Mark and reward when they grab it
   
   

5. Add the cue (“steal” / “thieve”)
   
   

6. Progress to walking away

A Quick Note About Resource Guarding

This trick works best with dogs who are comfortable with people being near them when they have objects and who are happy to trade items.

If a dog struggles with resource guarding; becoming tense, defensive, or protective over things they pick up, this isn’t a game I would recommend practising.

Pickpocket works because the dog learns that grabbing the item leads to a fun interaction and a positive trade, not a confrontation. If a dog already feels worried about people taking things away, a game like this could add confusion or stress.

In those cases, it’s much better to focus first on building safe, positive trading skills and helping the dog feel relaxed about humans approaching while they have something valuable.

Once that foundation is strong, trick games involving objects become much safer and more enjoyable for everyone.

Adjusting the Trick for Smaller Dogs

If you have a smaller dog, they may not be tall enough to easily reach a back pocket.Simply use a longer cloth or rag so that it hangs lower and is within comfortable reach. The goal is for the dog to be able to grab the fabric without jumping or straining.

You can also make the first stages easier by:

• slightly bending your knee or leaning forward
  
  

• practising while standing still before adding movement
  
  

• letting more of the cloth hang out of the pocket at the beginning
  
  

As your dog becomes more confident with the game, you can gradually make the setup a little neater so it looks more like a real “pickpocket.”

If Standing or Walking Isn’t Comfortable

You don’t have to be standing or walking to teach this trick.

If you have limited mobility, you can practise it while sitting down. Simply tuck the cloth into a side pocket or waistband and let it hang within reach so your dog can grab it.

At the beginning, you might gently move the cloth to catch your dog’s attention just as you would while standing. Once they understand the game, you can add the cue and reward the same way.

The important part isn’t the position you’re in, it’s the setup and the reinforcement.

Dogs are very good at adapting to different situations, and most will quickly figure out the game regardless of whether you’re standing, sitting, or moving around.

What if You Use a Wheelchair?

This trick can also be adapted if you use a wheelchair.

Instead of a back pocket, you can tuck a cloth into a side pocket, waistband, or even drape it over the arm of the chair so that a piece hangs within reach of your dog.

At the beginning, you might move the cloth slightly to make it noticeable and encourage curiosity, just as you would when standing. Once the dog understands the game, you can add the cue and reward when they successfully pull it free.

Dogs are very good at learning patterns, and most quickly figure out that the goal is simply to grab the item that’s hanging out.

The exact position; standing, sitting, or using a wheelchair, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the dog can comfortably reach the item and that the game stays fun and safe for both of you.

Writing this post has reminded me how much Luna enjoys this game. Next week I’m looking forward to playing it with her again and seeing how much she still remembers.

Something tells me the wee tea leaf hasn’t forgotten this skill.

Does your dog have a favourite mischievous habit? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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What the Word Means

Most dictionaries define aggressive as behaviour intended to cause harm, assert dominance, or attack. In behavioural science, the term is used more neutrally to describe actions that function to increase distance or stop an interaction. The word aggressive is commonly used in discussions about dog behaviour. It appears in training conversations, veterinary notes, shelter records, and everyday descriptions of dogs who growl, snap, lunge, or bite.

From a scientific perspective, the term is therefore technically correct. It describes a category of behaviour.

But language does not exist only in scientific textbooks. Words also carry meanings shaped by culture, emotion, and human experience. Outside of behavioural definitions, the word aggressive often evokes ideas of hostility, danger, and intent to harm.

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And this is where the conversation becomes more complicated.

When the word is applied to dogs, it can quickly shift from describing a behaviour to defining the dog itself.

When Behaviour Becomes a Label

A dog who bites in a specific situation may suddenly become an aggressive dog.

Once that label appears, it can begin to shape how the dog is perceived. The behaviour becomes the story, even when the underlying cause may be something very different: fear, pain, confusion, or a dog attempting to cope with a situation they do not understand.

In many cases, what we call aggression in dogs is not about hostility at all. It is communication, a signal that the dog is trying to create distance, protect something important, or escape a situation that feels overwhelming. The label “aggressive” can often rob a dog of their right to say “no” or set a boundary, framing their protest as a “defect” rather than a choice.

Experienced behaviourists, ethical trainers, and vets rarely stop at the label. When they encounter aggressive behaviour, their first question is usually why. What was the dog experiencing at that moment? What function did the behaviour serve? Was the dog afraid, in pain, protecting a resource, or trying to escape a situation they could not cope with?

In those contexts, the word aggression is only the beginning of the investigation.

Outside of behavioural work, however, the word often appears before the explanation. Someone might say, “My dog is aggressive around food,” or “That dog is aggressive with other dogs,” and the conversation can stop there.

Unless someone asks why, the underlying cause may never be explored. The label becomes the whole description.

This matters because behaviours that look similar on the surface can arise from very different causes. One dog may growl when approached while eating because they have learned that food can be taken away. Another may react to other dogs out of fear. Another may bite because a painful medical condition makes handling uncomfortable.

When the word aggression comes first, those distinctions can easily be overlooked.

For the average person hearing that a dog is aggressive, the label alone may shape how the dog is perceived. And in some cases, it can influence what kind of help the dog receives. A trainer who relies on punishment may see aggression as something to suppress, rather than a signal to investigate.

None of this means the word aggression is incorrect. It simply highlights the weight the word carries, and how easily it can shape the way behaviour is interpreted.

When a Label Defines the Dog

If my own dog Luna were ever described that way during one of the rare moments when she becomes overwhelmed, it would genuinely break my heart for her to be defined by that word.

Not because the behaviour itself didn’t happen, but because the label would tell only a fraction of the story.

Luna is not a hostile dog. She is a thoughtful, sensitive animal navigating a human world that can sometimes be confusing or overwhelming. In those moments, her behaviour is communication. Reducing that communication to a single label would miss the much larger picture of who she is.

When a dog is described as aggressive, the label does not only affect the dog. It can also shape how the person living with that dog is perceived and even treated.

Not everyone will experience this, but many people do.

When Labels Affect People Too

The word can quietly carry assumptions about the person as well. People may imagine a poorly trained dog, an irresponsible owner, or a dangerous situation. For someone who is doing their best to understand their dog and help them navigate the world, those assumptions can feel heavy.

In some cases, the label can even discourage people from seeking support. If the conversation begins with judgement rather than curiosity, it becomes harder for people to talk openly about what their dog is experiencing and this can leave people feeling isolated.

For many people, this may seem like a small issue of wording. But for those who live closely with their dogs, the implications of a label can feel much heavier.

Labels can also influence how people behave around their dogs. If someone believes their dog is aggressive, they may unconsciously become more tense, shorten the lead, or anticipate problems before they occur. Dogs are highly sensitive to human body language, and those subtle changes can sometimes make a situation feel more threatening or restrictive to the dog.

Imagine a sensitive dog who occasionally becomes overwhelmed and reacts by barking or lunging when the situation becomes too much. If someone were to describe that dog simply as aggressive, the word would immediately carry a series of assumptions about who that dog is.

For someone who knows that dog, who knows their temperament, their sensitivity, their trust, that description can feel deeply unfair and for me personally could feel quite distressing.

How Language Changes As Understanding Evolves

History shows us that language often reflects the limits of our understanding at the time.

Centuries ago, behaviours that people struggled to explain were often described using broad labels such as mad, insane, or crazy. These words were not precise diagnoses. They were general descriptions applied to behaviour that seemed unusual, unpredictable, or difficult to understand.

A person experiencing intense anxiety, emotional distress, neurological differences, or trauma might once have been described simply as “mad.” The word functioned as a label for the behaviour, but it did little to explain what the person was actually experiencing.

As knowledge of psychology and mental health developed, those broad labels gradually gave way to more specific descriptions. Instead of stopping at the label, people began asking deeper questions about what might lie behind the behaviour.

The language evolved alongside the understanding.

This is not to suggest that the word aggression functions in exactly the same way. Behaviour science has already made significant progress in understanding the emotional and environmental factors that influence dogs.

As our understanding improved, our language became more precise. We stopped using one umbrella term and started asking: what is this person actually experiencing? What do they need? How can we help?

Maybe now we are reaching a similar point with dogs and the word aggressive.

Where the Conversation About Dogs Is Now

Our understanding of dogs has changed dramatically in recent decades. We now speak more openly about emotion, stress, learning, and wellbeing than ever before. Many people who live and work with dogs are increasingly motivated by curiosity and compassion rather than control.

In many ways, the conversation around dogs has become more compassionate and more progressive.

Yet some of the language we inherited from earlier eras still lingers.

The word aggressive is one of those words. Despite the growing understanding of fear, stress, frustration, and environmental pressures in shaping behaviour, the term still carries powerful connotations. Over time, so much has happened and so much has been placed behind that single word.

When a single word carries so many assumptions, it is worth pausing to ask whether it helps us understand dogs more clearly and whether the language we use should evolve alongside it.

If dogs have rich emotional lives, and if we now understand behaviour through the lens of fear, stress, learning, and environment, does the word aggressive still reflect that understanding?

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When I looked at where my subscribers are located, something caught my attention. Among the 223 people who read this newsletter, several are in Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, and Egypt.

I have limited knowledge about Africa beyond a general awareness, even though I find it a fascinating place. Noticing where some of my subscribers are from sent me down a sort of rabbit hole. I went looking for information about dogs in different parts of Africa and found something that made me stop and think. I wanted to share it because I think it’s worth knowing about not just as a curiosity, but as an example of the ingenuity and depth that exists in cultures all over the world.

Africa is a continent of extraordinary diversity, made up of fifty-four countries, thousands of ethnic groups and over 2,000 languages. The ways people live, the beliefs they hold, the traditions they carry forward — all of it varies dramatically from one region to the next, sometimes from one village to the next. And as I started reading about different parts of the continent, I found myself wondering: how do dogs fit into all of this? How are they viewed, how do they live, what roles do they play?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it depends entirely on where you are and who you ask.

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While reading about dogs in different cultural contexts, I came across the Shona people, the largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe, with communities also in Mozambique and South Africa. Even within the Shona there isn’t just one dialect; there are several major dialect groups, and identity is often shaped by which one is spoken. That depth alone was striking.

A dog named Matipedza

Among the Shona-speaking people of Zimbabwe, dogs have long served practical roles such as hunting, security and the protection of livestock. In many rural areas, they are not confined in the way dogs often are in Western contexts, and may move more freely within and around the homestead. They also serve another purpose, one that has nothing to do with the dogs themselves.

They carry messages.

Not in the way a messenger dog might carry a physical note, but through their names. A dog’s name, in Shona culture, can function as a form of indirect communication, a way to address conflict, express grievances, or call for change without direct confrontation.

I came across a very interesting paper called Dog Names: A Conflict Resolution Strategy by researcher Livingstone Makondo who studied dog names in the Wedza district of Mashonaland East province. The paper describes how, in some Shona communities, dogs are sometimes given names that function as indirect messages within the community. They’re carefully chosen, often loaded with meaning, and they speak to tensions that might otherwise go unaddressed.

Names such as Tamai (“Relocate”), Idyaimukore meaning “Eat so that you become fat” and Zviregwe (“Let it be stopped”), are not simply labels for an animal. They can serve as commentary, warning, or boundary-setting directed at other people.

Rather than confronting someone directly, the message is embedded in the dog’s name. Each time the dog is called, the statement is repeated. It moves socially without an argument needing to take place. The dog becomes part of a wider system of communication.

Take the name Matipedza: “You have finished us.”

On the surface, it’s the name of a dog. But the name is not really about the dog. It’s a statement directed at someone; a family member, a neighbour, someone whose behaviour has left the namer feeling vulnerable or wronged. Calling the dog’s name in public becomes a way of voicing that grievance without pointing a finger directly. Everyone within earshot hears it, and those familiar with the context understand what it means and the person it’s aimed at knows they’re being called to account.

Why indirect communication matters

Part of the explanation lies in broader Shona cultural values.

Direct confrontation, particularly with elders or respected community members, is discouraged. Harmony within the family and the wider community is valued deeply. The concept of Ubuntu, often expressed as “I am because we are”, reflects a deeply relational understanding of personhood.

You don’t publicly shame someone. You don’t escalate disputes unnecessarily. You find ways to address problems that preserve relationships and allow for reconciliation.

Dog names became one of those ways.

A name like Kusanyara, “Not being ashamed” functions as a public rebuke. It tells the listener that they should know better, that their actions are unacceptable, and that they need to change. But it does so without a direct accusation. The dog carries the message. The namer maintains their dignity. And the person being addressed has the opportunity to reflect and reform without losing face entirely.

Names that ask, command, and warn

The names Makondo documented fall into different categories, each serving a slightly different communicative function.

Some are rhetorical questions. Matizvidii?, “What have you said it must be?”, asks the listener to reconsider their behaviour. It’s a challenge wrapped in a question, spoken not to the dog but to the people around. The namer might create situations where they need to call the dog’s name loudly, ensuring everyone hears it. Those not involved in the dispute start asking questions. What’s going on? Why that name? And sometimes, they intervene, suggesting ways to restore harmony.

Some are commands. Tamai, meaning “Relocate”, is a firm statement: if you see me as a problem, then leave. It’s bold, almost radical, and it suggests that things have reached a point where subtlety is no longer enough. But even this blunt message carries an undertone of reconciliation. Relocation is a physical act, something visible. The name calls the person to visibly demonstrate that they’ve changed, so they can be forgiven and accepted again.

Some are declarations. Tigozviona meaning “Let us see”, is a challenge. If you’ve threatened me with misfortune, then let’s see what happens. If your threats come to pass, everyone will know you were behind it. The name functions as both a warning and a form of protection. It puts the aggressor on notice: whatever happens next, you’ll be held accountable.

And some are deeply sarcastic, even derogatory. Idyaimukore: “Eat so that you become fat”, is aimed at someone who has plenty but refuses to share with struggling neighbours. In a culture that values communal support, this name is a sharp rebuke. Eat and get fat while we starve, it says. Let everyone see what kind of person you are.

What the practice reveals

What strikes me about this practice is how much it accomplishes with so little.

A dog’s name becomes a moving reminder of unresolved conflict. It creates social pressure without direct confrontation. It preserves the possibility of reconciliation while making it clear that something needs to change. And it does all of this in a way that aligns with cultural values around respect, community, and Ubuntu.

It’s also a reminder of how creative people can be when navigating difficult situations.

Makondo’s research notes that with the spread of education and scientific knowledge, some of these practices have become less common, particularly among younger generations who may not use dog names in the same way their grandparents did. But the practice still exists in some areas, and the names that have been documented offer a window into how people managed relationships, expressed grievances and sought peace in a culture that prioritised harmony above almost everything else.

One practice, one place

This is one practice, among one people, in one part of Zimbabwe. It doesn’t represent “African culture” any more than a single tradition in rural England represents all of Europe. The Shona people are not a monolith, and even within Shona-speaking areas, practices vary.

But that’s exactly why I found it so compelling.

The diversity I mentioned at the start, the thousands of ethnic groups, the different languages and the varied beliefs, means there are thousands of stories like this one. Stories that show how a dog can be more than a companion or a guard, but a participant in the social life of a community.

If you’re reading this from anywhere outside the UK, I’d be genuinely interested to know how dogs are understood where you are.

Reference:

Makondo, L. (2014). Dog Names: A Conflict Resolution Strategy. Studies of Tribes and Tribals, 12(2), 173-180.

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Command is a word I barely used, not because I had consciously rejected it, but because I encountered the word cue early enough in my learning that command never really took hold and yet, it’s everywhere.

When I began training and behaviour courses, I initially used the word command because it was the only term I knew. It was during those classes that a tutor explained the distinction between command and cue, and why they preferred the latter. That explanation made immediate sense to me, perhaps because it aligned with how I had already been interacting with dogs, even before I had the vocabulary for it. When I taught my old German Shepherd Zeus to sit or “find it,” I wasn’t issuing orders, nor was I expecting compliance in the rigid sense implied by the word. If something wasn’t landing, I would stop, reset, or return to something he understood. If I felt impatience rising, I would pause, the interaction never felt like authority directing obedience.

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Only later did I begin to realise that the difference reflects something much deeper.

If you look up the definition of command, it is generally described as an authoritative order, a direction given with authority and expected to be obeyed. The word carries with it an assumption of hierarchy, it implies that one party directs and the other complies, and that failure to comply brings consequences. Its strongest associations are arguably military, where commands are not optional and flow downward through rank.

For much of the history of dog training, this framing was entirely standard. Victorian training manuals often described obedience as a virtue and spoke of dogs as having duties. Even when the language was softened, phrased as firm yet fair instruction, the structure remained hierarchical. The dog was expected to be faithful, steady, and compliant; deviation was framed as stubbornness or wilfulness rather than confusion. The dog’s role was to comply and the human’s role was to direct.

The word cue, by contrast, became more widely used in dog training much later, particularly from the 1980s onwards with the growing influence of clicker training and trainers such as Karen Pryor, whose work drew heavily from marine mammal training. In that context, coercion was neither practical nor ethical. Dolphins and whales cannot be physically compelled in the way domestic dogs historically were. Behaviours had to be voluntary, shaped through clear signals and reinforcement rather than force.

A cue, in behavioural terms, is simply a signal that predicts an opportunity to perform a learned behaviour. It does not carry moral weight or imply obligation and it functions within a reinforcement history rather than within a hierarchy; a distinction that, the more I sit with it, feels significant to me.

When I ask Luna to sit, I am not issuing an order that must be obeyed; I am presenting a signal she has learned to understand. If she responds, it is because that behaviour has meaning within her experience. If she does not respond, that tells me something, perhaps about distraction, confusion, discomfort, competing motivation, or simply she does not want to sit. There are no consequences for choosing not to respond; a lack of response tells me something about the moment rather than about her character.

For many people, however, the word cue may never have entered their vocabulary. Unless someone has read modern behavioural literature or worked with a trainer grounded in modern learning theory, the word command is often simply the only term they have ever heard, it feels neutral because it is familiar.

At the same time, the language professionals use can offer subtle insight into the framework they are working from. Words are rarely accidental; a trainer who consistently speaks of commands and obedience may be drawing from a different training tradition than one who speaks of cues, reinforcement, and learning history. That distinction is not about superiority; it is about recognising the assumptions that underpin the work.

Marine mammal training demonstrated decades ago that complex, reliable behaviours can be built without coercion. Learning does not require intimidation or dominance. It requires clarity, consistency, and reinforcement. The shift from command to cue did not emerge from nowhere; it reflected a broader shift away from hierarchy as the organising principle of training, and towards an understanding of how behaviour is shaped and maintained.

Words shape the frameworks we inherit, often long before we stop to examine them. “Command” may feel ordinary, even professional, but its history and definition carry assumptions about authority and obligation that deserve a closer look. Whether we choose to keep the word or replace it, the act of noticing is where the shift begins.

When you think about the word you use; command or cue, does it feel neutral, or does it shape the way you see the interaction?

As part of this ongoing reflection on the language we use around dogs, next week, I’ll be exploring the word obedience and the expectations that have historically accompanied it.

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I didn’t start out thinking about language at all.

Over the years I’ve been thinking about the various words we use in regards to dogs and how it came to me slowly. One example is the term owner.

For years I called myself a dog owner without questioning it as it’s just one of those words you use and it’s used by everyone. It didn’t occur to me to think about it, even though the word never quite sat right with me. I never felt like I owned Luna the way I own a jacket or a phone. I never felt superior to her, never felt like she was my property. But I kept using the word anyway, because that’s just what it was called.

Recently things have started to shift, I started noticing the discomfort in using that word. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing.

Words like “owner” sit alongside other familiar ways we talk about dogs such as obedience, commands, pack dynamics. They’re so embedded they barely register as language at all, passed down through generations in how we talk about dogs that they’ve become invisible. Even the kindest, most thoughtful people who live with dogs use them. I used them. People who would never dream of hurting their dogs still describe themselves as owners who give commands and expect obedience.

Here’s what I’ve come to realise: words aren’t just labels. They’re frames, and frames shape what we see, what we ignore, and what we allow, often without us realising it.

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What ownership means

Think about what ownership means in any other context.

I own my car, my laptop, I own the furniture in my home. Ownership means complete control. I can sell these things, modify them, get rid of them when they no longer serve me, they exist for my benefit, to meet my needs.

Now think about actual relationships.

Sara is my sister, but I’m not her owner. My mum is my mum, but even when I was a baby, my mum was my mum, she was never my owner, even though I was completely dependent on her. Luna is my dog, Panda is my cat, but I’m not their owner.

The word doesn’t fit and it never did. Yet for years I used it anyway, because it was normal, it was the word everyone used and it didn’t feel like a choice.

Inherited language

Language that gets passed down through hundreds of generations, it stops feeling like language at all. It just feels like the way things are. When something feels normal, we don’t question it. We don’t even notice it, it becomes invisible.

When we call someone an “owner,” certain questions never occur to us. What does this being need? What do they want? What would they choose if they could tell us? Those questions fade because ownership isn’t about mutual relationship, it’s about possession and control.

I never consciously thought “I own Luna, therefore I can do what I want with her.” I would have been horrified by that idea. But the word was still there, it's still there in society, quietly shaping the wider framework around dogs, one in which ideas of control or correction often feel more reasonable than they otherwise might.

How words work as frames

Words aren’t just descriptions, they shape how we perceive things. Think of them as frames. A frame determines what we notice, what we ignore, what feels justified and what feels inevitable.

Once a frame is normalised, once a word feels so ordinary that we stop thinking about it and it stops being questioned. And here’s the uncomfortable part: if “owner” is the frame, what does that make acceptable?

If I own something, I have the right to control it, to make it behave the way I want and “correct” it when it doesn’t. To prioritise my needs over its needs because it’s mine. I’m not saying everyone who uses the word “owner” thinks this way consciously. I certainly didn’t. But the frame is still there, working quietly, making certain approaches to dogs feel more reasonable than they actually are.

What changes when the word changes

Recently, I stopped calling myself a dog owner. I started using “caregiver” instead. At first it felt awkward and unfamiliar, but I’ve kept at it because something about it felt more honest and it aligned with how I truly feel. And here’s what I noticed: the words created a different kind of accountability.

If I’m Luna’s caregiver, my job is to care for her wellbeing, my job is to protect her, to look out for her interests, to keep her safe and content. I’ve always felt like this, the problem is, the word “owner” that I’ve always used just didn’t align with that.

Can one call themselves a caregiver or refer to those with dogs as caregivers while yanking a prong collar on a dog’s neck? Or can a “trainer” use the term “caregiver” whilst simultaneously telling you to dominate your dog and show them who’s boss?

The contradiction becomes hard to ignore.

The word shift exposes what was always there but hidden. It makes you choose: either change the word back to something that allows what you’re doing, or change what you’re doing to match the word you’re using. The language we choose matters. It shapes how we think, how we act and what we’re willing to accept.

Not about perfection

I’m not perfect at this by any means, if you scroll back through my posts, you’ll still find “owner” scattered throughout along with other words. I’m still updating my About page to reflect this shift in language and thinking.

This isn’t about being purist or getting everything right nor is it about shaming anyone who uses these words, I used them too, for most of my life, even though I never felt superior to Luna or Panda, even though I never saw them as property.

This is about awareness. About noticing the words we use and asking: Does this word match the relationship I actually have? Does it match the relationship I want to have?

What’s next

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be exploring more of these inherited terms, words like “obedience,” “command,” “training,” “pack” and looking at how they shape the way we see and treat dogs, often without us realising it.

If you’ve been reading Lead with Luna for a while, you might have noticed my language has shifted, I started talking about cues instead of commands. These weren’t arbitrary changes, they were part of this slow realisation.

Next week, I’ll be looking at the word “command” itself, what it means, what it implies, and whether there might be better language for what we’re actually trying to do.

We rarely stop to question the words we inherit. I didn’t, for a long time. What do you call yourself in relation to your dog?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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