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Just because your dog is comfortable with one person, place or situation doesn’t mean that learning automatically transfers to every similar one. Different movement, distance, smell, location or context can matter. Categories are convenient for humans. Dogs experience the details. 🩵 #dogbehaviour #dogs #themischiefmethod #behaviourmakessense #cookiepushersunited

🌿 Tiny Toxins: Paws Off Plants 🐾 (A little series combining my love of plants and pets 🌿🐶) Today’s tiny check: Yew (Taxus). That familiar evergreen hedge with its soft-looking needles and bright red berries? Beautiful. Snack? Definitely not. Yew contains highly toxic compounds called taxines, which can affect the heart and nervous system. Most parts of the plant are toxic, and poisoning can be extremely serious. Signs may include: 🐾 Vomiting 🐾 Weakness 🐾 Trembling 🐾 D

🌿 Tiny Toxins: Paws Off Plants 🐾 (A little series combining my love of plants and pets 🌿🐶) Today’s tiny check: Elder — the shrub that produces elderflowers and elderberries. Those clusters of tiny flowers and dark berries may be familiar sights in hedgerows and gardens. But they aren’t something we want our dogs helping themselves to. The leaves, stems, bark, roots and unripe berries contain naturally occurring compounds called cyanogenic glycosides. If chewed and digeste

Your dog absolutely smashed it. And it’s incredibly tempting to think: “Right! Let’s make it harder!” But you don’t have to. You can repeat the easy version. You can keep the same distance. You can finish while everyone is still having fun. You can let success simply… be successful. Learning doesn’t require us to continually test whether our dogs can cope with something more difficult. Repeated experiences of feeling safe and successful are valuable in their own right. There’

🌟 WE’RE FINALISTS! 🌟 I’m absolutely delighted to share that Mutts & Mischief Holistic Education and Behaviour Services has been named an East Midlands finalist in the Dog Trainer/Behaviourist category of the UK Pet Industry Awards 2026! 🐾🏆 My work has always centred upon supporting dogs and their people with compassion, curiosity, choice and kindness, so having that work recognised means an enormous amount to me. The awards are decided entirely by public vote. If Mutts &

🐾 2am Dog Questions: Why did my dog suddenly react? “They were absolutely fine five minutes ago!” And they may well have been. But the thing immediately before a reaction isn’t necessarily the whole story. Maybe there was a noise earlier. A difficult interaction. Poor sleep. A frustrating moment. Something uncomfortable in their body. A dog staring from across the road. Then another little thing. And another. Until one seemingly tiny event becomes the moment when their syste

🌡️ HEAT WITHOUT SHAME #15 — Your Dog Won’t Fall Behind A few missed walks won’t undo your dog’s progress. Neither will cancelling a training session, changing your plans or spending a few days doing very little because it’s simply too hot. Progress isn’t that fragile. Sometimes management IS training. Choosing not to put your dog into a situation their body may struggle to cope with is not giving up. It’s good guardianship. Training will still be there when the temperature d

“They love this food at home, but outside they won’t even look at it!” That’s useful information. If a dog who normally LOVES food suddenly can’t eat, we shouldn’t automatically conclude that we need tastier treats. They may be worried, overwhelmed, highly aroused or simply processing everything happening around them. Food refusal can be information about how your dog is coping in that moment. Rather than immediately upgrading from chicken to cheese to sausage to the canine e

Enrichment doesn’t always require buying something new. Try moving something familiar. A blanket in a different room. A cardboard box somewhere unexpected. Their bed in a sunny spot. A favourite toy appearing somewhere unusual. Then… do nothing. No pointing it out. No encouraging them to investigate. No turning it into a training exercise. Just let your dog notice. Novelty can be incredibly simple, and watching how our dogs investigate changes can tell us quite a lot about th

We tend to celebrate the breakthroughs. The first successful walk. The first visitor they relaxed around. The first time they did the thing. But what about the weeks where nothing particularly remarkable happens? Those matter too. Maintaining safety, confidence and skills isn’t “doing nothing”. Sometimes our dogs need time to live inside the progress they’ve already made rather than immediately being asked for the next achievement. You don’t always need to move forwards. Some

THE MISCHIEF METHOD™ — ADVENTURE ONE IS HERE! What if learning with your dog wasn’t about getting everything right? What if you could explore, experiment, change the plan, make mistakes, celebrate the unexpected and discover what actually works for you and your dog? Welcome to The Mischief Method™ — Adventure One. 10 weeks. One shared adventure. No perfect required. Across ten weeks, we’ll explore listening and observation, choice and agency, curiosity, connection, scent and

Time for our Behaviour Makes More Sense clip: Habituation vs Sensitisation “They’ll get used to it.” But… will they? With habituation, repeated exposure to something that is insignificant or harmless can lead to a decreased response over time. But repeated exposure can also have the opposite effect. With sensitisation, the response becomes stronger. The dog who becomes increasingly worried by a particular sound, increasingly alert to dogs appearing on walks, or increasingly u

🌡️ HEAT WITHOUT SHAME #14 Behaviour Can Be an Early Clue Sometimes our dogs tell us they’re struggling with the heat long before things look dramatic. It might be slowing down on a walk. Stopping more often. Seeking shade. Being less interested in something they would normally enjoy. Lagging behind. Or simply deciding that they would rather go home. Those little changes matter. We don’t need to wait for a dog to be visibly struggling before we’re “allowed” to change the plan

“But they never do that with me.” Unfortunately, those words can leave the person who is experiencing a behaviour wondering what they’re doing wrong. Dogs aren’t machines producing identical responses regardless of who’s beside them. Different people bring different movement, voices, expectations, reinforcement histories and emotional associations. The context changes — and behaviour can change with it. Instead of asking: “Why do they get away with that with you?” Try: “What’

What if, just once today, your dog got to decide where you were going? At the next safe junction on your walk, pause. Give them a moment without pointing, prompting or encouraging them in either direction, and see what happens. They might turn left. They might turn right. They might decide that the incredibly important patch of grass behind you requires another investigation. 😂 Choice and agency don’t have to involve enormous changes to our dogs’ lives. Sometimes they can be

Something mischievous is coming… 👀🐾🔍 The Mischief Method™ — Adventure One 10 weeks. No obedience checklists. No chasing perfection. Just you and your dog learning to notice more, understand more, make choices together — and have some mischief along the way. And yes… there are Mischief Medals. 🏅 Adventure One is coming very soon. Fun, Not Formality — Building Connections Through Paws to Play. 🩵🐾 #themischiefmethod #funnotformality #cookiepushersunited #dogs #muttsnmisc

2am Dog Question “My dog can do it perfectly in the kitchen… so why can’t they do it on a walk?” Because learning doesn’t automatically transfer from one environment to another. Your kitchen and the outside world are very different learning environments — different sights, smells, sounds, emotions and distractions. Rather than thinking “but you know this!”, try asking: “Have we practised this version of the behaviour, in this environment, under these conditions?” Dogs aren’t

Today’s tiny check: Cyclamen. Those beautiful swept-back flowers and heart-shaped leaves? Gorgeous. Snack? Not so much 😅 Cyclamen contains irritating compounds called saponins. These are found throughout the plant, but are particularly concentrated in the underground tuber. For some dogs, chewing or eating Cyclamen may mean: 🐾 Drooling 🐾 Vomiting 🐾 Diarrhoea 🐾 Tummy discomfort Larger amounts, particularly of the tuber, can cause much more serious signs and need urgent ve

Sometimes progress doesn’t look impressive from the outside. Your dog still barked. They still needed distance. They still found the situation difficult. But perhaps they recovered in three minutes instead of twenty. Perhaps they turned away. Perhaps their body softened. Perhaps they could sniff again afterwards. When we only measure success by whether behaviour disappears, we can miss an enormous amount of change happening underneath it. Sometimes progress whispers. Make sur

You are allowed to have days where nobody works on anything. No training plan. No exposure. No “just one repetition.” No attempt to move forwards. Your dog can sniff in the garden. Destroy a cardboard box. Nap somewhere sunny. Search for treats. Watch the world. Play. Rest. Exist. And you can exist alongside them. We talk about progress so often that it’s easy to accidentally make life itself feel like a behaviour plan. But your relationship with your dog is happening now — n