No dog is perfect. We all have things we wish our dogs would stop doing. Your dog might be pulling on-lead, not coming back when you call or jumping up at visitors. Or maybe they’re stealing and destroying your stuff, digging at your carpet or eating things they shouldn’t. You could just punish your dog to try and stop the problem behaviour. But that’s going to affect your dog’s welfare and damage your relationship with them. And it’s not going to deal with the root cause of the behaviour so it’s unlikely to work long term.

Our dogs live in a human world and the rules and expectations are often very different to the dog world. Your dog doesn’t automatically know why they can’t jump up at people, why they need to walk on a lead and why they shouldn’t steal food from your kitchen counters. They don’t understand that not everyone likes muddy paw prints on their clothes, that they could be injured or killed if they get hit by a car and that some human food is poisonous to dogs. Life skills training teaches your dog everything they need to know to live in our confusing human world safely.

We all dream of those lovely, relaxing walks with our dogs where they walk calmly next to us. But if you’ve tried training your dog to walk calmly on a lead you’ll have found it’s harder than it looks. That’s because those exciting walks come with lots of distractions for your dog. There’s so many things to see, hear and smell and it’s really hard for them to focus on walking with you when there's so much other stuff happening.

You got a dog dreaming of taking them out on lots of relaxing walks. But then you discovered that reality is very different. Your dog pulls you to every person or dog they see out on a walk and as soon as you let them off lead they fuck off as far away from you as possible. Now you're dreading taking them out because what should be the best part of your day has become a huge chore.