The Natural Dog School was born out of a desire to help owners and their dogs work together with understanding and respect. It offers a combination of puppy training, dog agility and help with problem behaviour. Through a blend of modern theories and techniques you will be shown how to motivate and train your dog so that they will do what you want, when you want.
You may be familiar with a dog that comes back UNLESS there is another dog / rabbit / squirrel around, or can be perfectly obedient at home but NOT where and when it truly matters. Here at the Natural Dog School, the goal is to train for precisely these situations and to use methods that are respectful to a dog's inner nature.
Some of the training is based on Natural Dog Training, a branch of dog training that looks at behaviour in terms of energy. It is, in many respects, similar to Natural Horsemanship, which looks at horse behaviour in terms of the dynamic relationship between predator and prey, but transposed into the dog's world. It is therefore based on the hunting behaviours of dogs - why they chase, chew and tug things.
Natural Dog Training looks to answer two fundamental questions in a dogs life.
Knowing what to do when the world around is un-natural and confusing leads to many problems that owners can struggle to deal with.
The second question centres on fear and the need for safety.
Natural Dog Training aims to answer these questions, resulting in a happy dog that knows how to behave appropriately in any given context.
After several years of research at Southampton University, I decided to follow my heart and become a dog training instructor back in 1998. For several years prior to this I had enjoyed dog training classes and agility with my own dogs. I am very interested in why dogs behave as they do and in finding training methods that utilise a dog's natural instincts and help them to live in harmony with their human family. I have worked with hundreds of dogs and their owners, helping to solve problems with behaviour and aggression, as well as teaching agility. I live in Botley, near Southampton with my family and four border collies.