The Dogs Blog......Two Ends Of The Leash

The Dogs Blog began in 2025. There’s a short story behind how it started, and if you haven’t already read it, you’ll find a link here along with all of last year’s posts. Those early pieces were born in the quiet gaps between puppy feeds, long days, and even longer nights, when odd questions, frustrations, observations, and moments of humour had a habit of appearing uninvited and refusing to be ignored.

What started as a few scribbled notes quickly turned into something more structured. The 2025 posts covered a wide range of subjects, some practical, some behavioural, some scientific, and some simply calling out the strange things we accept as normal in the modern dog world. They weren’t written to preach or to claim ownership of “the right way” to live with dogs, but to encourage people to stop, think, question, and maybe look at their dog from different perspectives. If even one owner came away with a better understanding of their dog, or a stronger relationship because of it, then the time spent writing them was worth it.

This page marks the start of the 2026 The Dogs Blog. The aim moving forward is simple: regular, bite-sized posts, ideally one a week, where I’ll continue to share thoughts, ideas, experiences, and knowledge gathered from years of living and working with dogs. The subjects you’ll find here are just honest reflections with the hope that somewhere along the line they help deepen understanding, improve communication and take the relationship between people and their dogs to another level.

14/03/2026 Why So Many Dogs Can't Walk Nicely on a Lead

There is a growing problem in the dog world, and it has become so normal that most people no longer question it. Walking a dog calmly on a lead something that should be simple and enjoyable has turned into a daily struggle for a huge number of owners.

Head collars, figure-of-eight leads, front-clip harnesses, dual-clip harnesses with one lead on the chest and one on the back so the dog can be “steered” the market is full of solutions. Take the Halti Headcollar and similar designs are often marketed as humane alternatives to traditional collars, they are not they are aversive tools and more importantly they deliver a non contingent message to the dog leaving them confused and stressed but that's a different story. Harnesses, particularly front-clip versions, are promoted as kind and pressure-free. Some owners now walk with two points of contact, guiding their dog from the front and back as if handling a small child. But how can these be pressure free when we are using pressure to guide the dog in the right direction?

The problem is not that these tools exist. The problem is that they are being used instead of education. Most dogs wearing this equipment are under constant physical control throughout the walk, yet they have no real understanding of what behaviour is expected of them. They are redirected when they pull. Their heads are turned. Their bodies are steered. The lead tightens, loosens, tightens again. But at no point has the dog been clearly taught what “walking nicely” actually means.

That lack of clarity is the root of the issue.

I once saw a post from someone I knew showing his dog in a head collar because it “couldn’t walk calmly without one.” I messaged him privately and explained that the equipment wasn’t addressing the underlying problem. I even offered to fix the pulling for free. In most cases, I can show an owner how to begin resolving lead pulling in under fifteen minutes. He declined, saying he didn’t have the time. Are you serious!!!. Many people will spend years managing a problem, but they will not spend half an hour to properly understand the solution.

So why is lead walking such a widespread difficulty?

In many cases it begins with puppies. When a dog is small and light, its meandering is endearing rather than inconvenient. It zig-zags, sniffs, forges ahead slightly. Owners allow it because it causes no real discomfort. The puppy is not strong enough to be a problem. In some cases we are told that we should let our dogs walk where they like its their walk!! So we let it persist...until it is a problem. However, behaviour that is rehearsed becomes behaviour that is ingrained. A few months later the same dog is larger, stronger, and confident in the pattern it has practised hundreds of times. The only thing that has changed is the force behind it.

With rehomed dogs the dynamic can be different but the outcome often the same. Owners are cautious. They do not want to “upset” the dog. They fear applying clarity because they believe the dog is fragile. Rules are softened. Expectations are unclear. Boundaries are delayed. The intention is kindness, but the result is confusion. The dog still has no clear picture of what walking alongside a human actually involves.

From the dog’s perspective, it is often their walk entirely. The excitement begins the moment the lead is picked up. The dog rushes the door. Once out, the dog moves from scent to scent while the owner follows. If the dog stops, the owner stops. If the dog pulls, the owner resists. One of the most revealing signs I see with clients who struggle with lead pulling is that their dog rarely looks at them during the walk. There is no check-in, no shared focus. That absence of engagement speaks volumes.

When I use the word “heel,” whether on or off the lead, the dog I am working with will come to my right-hand side and stand there waiting to move. That is not achieved through steering or constant pressure. It is achieved through teaching the behaviour in a controlled environment before expecting it in the real world.

Many owners attempt to fix pulling during the walk itself, surrounded by distractions, competing motivators, and environmental stimulation. It is the most difficult place to try to install a new behaviour. Instead, the skill should be built in low-distraction settings first. The dog must learn precisely where you want it, what earns reinforcement, and what the criteria are.

So here is a test for everyone who has problems walking their dog “nicely”. Stand still with your dog close by, put your hands in your pockets and say whatever your “heel” command is to your dog. Where is your dog now? My guess with the vast majority of you is that your dog is now not at your right or left side waiting for you to move forward. If your dog doesn’t understand the basic command of “heel” why on earth do you expect them to understand how to walk “nicely” at your side?

15/02/2026 Is Playing Fetch Dangerous

Some of you may have come across information saying that playing fetch is bad and dangerous for your dog. I’ve heard it from a few different angles. Some people are genuinely concerned and asking sensible questions. Others are simply repeating a narrative because it sounds progressive and they enjoy a bit of virtue signalling without really understanding what they’re saying!!!

There are two main reasons people claim fetch is “bad”. Let’s start with the ridiculous one and get the crackpots out of the way early.

Playing fetch is apparently dangerous because it engages the dog’s predatory drive and takes them into high arousal. Arousal is not dangerous. In fact, I would argue that suppressing arousal is far more dangerous. Dogs are predators. They are designed to experience arousal. Denying them appropriate outlets builds frustration, and when frustration has no release, something eventually gives. That usually shows up later as uncontrolled reactivity at times you didn’t expect.

So why do some trainers push the “never let them get aroused” narrative? My honest view is when dopamine and adrenaline enter the system, their handling, timing, and reinforcement structures fall apart. Rather than improving their skill set so they can guide the dog through arousal, they simply try to remove arousal altogether. Keep the dog under threshold at all times and you never have to develop proper control within drive. That’s not training the dog. That’s managing your own limitations.(Training in drive is a subject of a future post, something called state-dependent learning.)

Now, onto the second argument, the one that at least has some mechanical logic behind it. The concern is that when you throw a ball a long distance, the dog accelerates to full speed, the ball lands and becomes stationary, and the dog then has to decelerate rapidly to collect it. Repeated fast stops, tight turns, and explosive direction changes could theoretically place stress on joints and soft tissues.

There is some research showing high-impact, repetitive exercise can be associated with joint issues in growing puppies. But anyone repeatedly sprinting a developing puppy up and down a field needs to give their head a wobble. That’s just common sense. For adult dogs, there isn’t any strong evidence showing that games of fetch cause joint problems. However, I wouldn’t dismiss the biomechanics entirely. Basic physics shows rapid deceleration does create higher forces than continuous movement.

Where I do think people get it wrong is how they’re playing the game. The chuck-it launcher make it very easy to send a ball to the other side of the county. The dog hits full speed. By the time they arrive, the ball is dead still. That’s where the potential issue lies: sprint, brake hard, grab. Sprint, brake hard, grab. Repeated over and over.

In my opinion, launching the ball into orbit often serves one purpose, exhausting the dog as quickly as possible and this is not what play with your dog is about. What I use are the yellow or green Starmark ball on a rope. I’m sure a quick Google will show you what I mean… but finish reading this first.

Because it’s on a rope, you can’t throw it to the other side of the planet, which is a good thing. The pendulum effect still allows you to generate decent distance without dislocating your shoulder, but the game stays closer, more controlled, more interactive. More importantly, the ball is often still moving when the dog reaches it and that changes everything. Instead of sprint–brake–stop, the dog runs through the catch. Momentum is conserved rather than abruptly killed. Turns tend to be wider. Deceleration is spread over time instead of spiking at one instant. Mechanically, that’s a very different movement pattern.

It also keeps the game more personal. You can build rules. You can add obedience. You can switch into tug. Don’t get me started on the people who say tug is bad because it engages drives that make your dog aggressive. Pleaseeeee. You can teach impulse control. It becomes a structured outlet, not just a cardio session. However too many owners use balls that are too small for their dog. A lodged ball in the throat is rare, but it absolutely happens. With a rope attached, you at least have something to grab if things go wrong.

So while there may not be definitive science proving that fetch destroys joints, how you play fetch absolutely matters.

Change the mechanics of the game, and you change the forces involved. Make it interactive instead of exhausting. Keep movement flowing instead of forcing repeated dead stops.

That alone is reason enough to ditch launching the ball as far as humanly possible.

08/02/2026 Take My Bark Away....

I was asked to go and see a local family the other day. They’d contacted me via a farmer I know and the opening line, once I rang them back, was fairly direct.

“We’ve got a four-year-old Cockapoo and he’s out of control. We need some help.” As they only lived five minutes away, I skipped my usual load of questions and just arranged a time to pop over and see things for myself.

Monty was a beautiful Cockapoo boy. Full of life, bright, friendly, and very excited to see me walk through the front door. Excited in the sense that he was bouncing up and down, whining, throwing himself at me in a way that would have given Tigger a run for his money. I started chatting to the family without acknowledging Monty at all. After a few seconds the lady said, “If you just give him some attention, he’ll stop jumping.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll wait until he decides to stop, then I’ll say hello.” And that was the first lesson of the afternoon. “So this is the problem you are having” I asked.

“Oh no, its the walking,” they said. “The moment he realises we’re going out, he starts barking and doesn’t stop for the first five minutes of the walk.” They explained they’d tried everything. Harnesses. Different collars. Food. Even giving him a toy to hold so he couldn’t bark. That worked right up until the second Monty realised a walk was actually happening, at which point the toy was spat out and the barking took over.

“Show me,” I said. “Show me what it really looks like.”

The husband walked towards the lead hanging on a hook by the door. Instantly, the barking started.

“Put it back,” I said.

He did. The barking continued.

“We’ve tried this before,” they told me. “It didn’t work.”

“Let’s try again,” I said. “But this time, we will do it properly.”

I asked them to lift the lead again. The moment Monty barked, I told them to say a clear, calm “no”, put the lead back on the hook, sit down, and completely disengage. No eye contact. No talking.

Once Monty stopped barking, we moved again. We didn’t even get as far as the lead this time before the barking kicked off. “No.” Sit back down. Seven attempts later, we were able to walk all the way to the lead without a sound. Then, predictably, the barking started again as the lead was lifted. So back it went. Sit down. Reset. A dozen or so repetitions in, you could see the penny starting to drop. Monty wasn’t being shouted at. Nothing unpleasant was happening to him. But the thing he wanted most in the world at that moment kept disappearing every time he barked.

Shoes went on with only a couple more resets. We went to let him out of his crate and the barking flared up again. Clear “no”, everyone sat down. This time, Monty stopped almost immediately. He was beginning to understand the rule.

We managed to get him out, put the lead on, and walk to the door with only a bit of what I call “vocal leaking”. I let that go on this first attempt.

Once outside, the barking started again. “No.” We all turned around, opened the door, and went straight back inside. Even though Monty stopped barking on the “no”, the consequence still happened. The walk vanished. We stood inside for twenty seconds. Monty sat quietly, staring at the door as if he could open it by sheer force of will. When it opened again, he walked out calmly with us, quiet as a mouse.

The walk wasn’t perfect. There were a few barks here and there, but compared to what they’d been living with, it was a massive improvement. As we walked, I explained what they’d just seen was called Negative Punishment and it wasn’t about being “strict”. It was a real-world application of something called the Premack Principle.

David Premack showed that behaviours a dog really wants to perform can be used as the reward for behaviours we want to see. In Monty’s case, the walk itself was the reward. Not food. Not toys. Not praise. Every time Monty barked, the reward disappeared. Access to the walk was what he really wanted. Every time he offered calm, things moved forward again. Loud or wrong behaviour was clearly marked, and we returned to a reset point. Calm behaviour reopened the possibility to what he wanted. No treats. No complicated theory. No gadgets. Just clear rules and consistent consequences.

By the end of the session, Monty wasn’t “fixed”, and that’s important to say. But the family finally understood why nothing else had worked. They’d been trying to override the most powerful reward Monty had with things that simply didn’t matter to him in that moment. They now had a simple clear technique that they could implement to take control of the walk and lots of other areas as well including the jumping up.

01/02/2026 Whistle For a Recall

I’m often asked what I think about using a whistle for recall, and my answer is that I use a verbal cue, a visual cue, and a whistle. Each has its moment, each has strengths, and each can fail if it’s used badly. But yes, there are certain situations where a whistle simply performs better, and there are very good reasons for that.

The most practical and slightly British reason of all. If your dog is a hundred yards away and heading enthusiastically towards something it really shouldn’t be heading towards, it is far more civilised to use a whistle than to shout your dog’s name at the top of your lungs. Your neighbours, other walkers, and anyone quietly trying to enjoy nature will thank you and we all remember “...F E N T O N…”, not a good look that one.

This reason isn’t new. Search and rescue services talk constantly about the importance of carrying a whistle because it cuts through distance, wind, and background noise. Even the police of old, the peelers, carried those large silver whistles to call for backup. They didn’t shout each other’s names down the street; they used a clear, unmistakable signal that meant one thing and one thing only. Dogs, it turns out, aren’t that different.

When you raise the volume of your voice, it distorts. Words stretch, clip, wobble, and pick up emotional baggage. Your calm “come” at ten feet sounds very different from your panicked “COME!” at a hundred yards when a deer has just appeared. To us it’s the same word. To a dog, it can be an entirely different sound. Add in stress, frustration, or urgency and now the recall cue carries emotion as well as instruction, which can cause hesitation rather than speed.

A whistle doesn’t do that. It produces a perfectly consistent sound every single time. Same tone, same pitch, same pattern. From a learning perspective, that consistency makes it much easier for the dog to lock that sound to one behaviour: turn around and get back to me now. There’s solid learning theory showing that consistent signals are learned faster and responded to more reliably. A whistle is a textbook example of consistency. Human speech, on the other hand, is wonderfully expressive but an absolute mess from a training point of view.

The next advantage is meaning. When you train a whistle recall properly, a toot-toot means one thing and one thing only. The dog never hears it in casual conversation. It’s not used when you’re chatting to a friend, muttering to yourself, or asking what’s for dinner. The whistle stays clean. It stays important. Your voice however does not. Your dog hears it all day, every day. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn’t. They hear words like “come” or “here” dropped into conversations that have nothing to do with them at all. Over time, those words can fade into background noise.

This leads neatly into one of the biggest recall problems I see. People using the dog’s name as the recall cue. For many dogs, their name means several different things. It can mean “come here”, “stop that”, “are you okay?”, “pay attention”, or just “hello you”. By the time you actually need a recall, the dog’s name is so muddied that it’s no longer a clear instruction. It’s more of a conversational filler.

None of this means a whistle is magic. It won’t fix poor training, lack of practice, or a recall that’s only ever tested in the garden. Whether you use a whistle, a word, or both, clarity is everything. One cue, one meaning, practised regularly, and rewarded properly. That’s it. No shortcuts, no gimmicks.

So if your recall isn’t working, the question isn’t “should I use a whistle or a word?” The question is “have I been clear, consistent, and fair with the cue I’ve chosen?” Get that right, and the tool becomes far less important. Get it wrong, and even the fanciest whistle in the world won’t save you from shouting your dog’s name into the wind.

18/01/2026 You Wouldn’t Buy the Car, So Why Buy the Puppy?

I recently needed to get a new car. I saw one online and rang the dealer. That was the first red flag. I arrived at the dealer’s location, second red flag. Then I was told the vehicle wasn’t actually there, but would be back in five minutes. Twenty minutes later, it still hadn’t arrived. That was the third red flag, and I left knowing full well something dodgy was going on.

On the drive home, it got me thinking about how often people buy dogs from less than reputable breeders after being shown exactly the same warning signs.

I speak to people about their dogs every day. And the phrase I hear again and again is this: “I didn’t think it was a good place.” “Something just didn’t feel right.” “The dogs were in bad condition.” And then comes the line that undoes all of that common sense, “So I just couldn’t leave the puppy there. I had to save it.”

Is this rescue? Or is it emotional self-protection? It’s avoiding the discomfort of walking away. Or, occasionally, a nice bit of virtue signalling. “Oh yes, we just had to bring the little guy home, we couldn’t leave him in that horrid place.”

By handing over your money, you’ve just sealed the fate of the next litter, and the one after that. Oh and the one after that. You may have helped one puppy, but your money has told that back-street breeder exactly what they needed to hear, this works. The operation continues, the conditions don’t improve, and dozens more puppies are born into the same or worse situation. All because the business model remains profitable.

I understand emotions are involved. Of course they are. Dogs press every emotional button we have. But it’s remarkable how all the logic we show at a dodgy car dealer evaporates the moment the product on offer has four legs and a wagging tail. People walk into places they’d never tolerate if they were buying anything else. Dirty pens. Poorly conditioned dogs. No paperwork. No health testing. No questions asked of the buyer. Puppies that look exhausted, withdrawn, wildly over-handled, or completely overstimulated. And instead of walking away, we leave with the puppy.

Bad breeding survives because buyers keep paying. And the problems that come with badly bred dogs don’t magically disappear once the puppy leaves. Poor health, unstable temperaments, anxiety, reactivity, shortened lifespans, these don’t vanish. They come home with you. Along with the vet bills, the stress, and the heartbreak. I’ve heard those stories time and again, usually from people who say, “It didn’t feel right”.

If no one bought those puppies, those breeders would stop. Not because of awareness campaigns, or because of angry comments online. They would stop because breeding dogs would no longer make money.

Every pound handed over is a vote for continuation. Rescuing feels good, but preventing suffering is far more effective.

Walking away doesn’t give you a warm glow or a heroic story. There’s no “before and after” photo. No grateful eyes looking up at you on the drive home. But it’s the only decision that actually reduces harm.

The consumer controls the market. Bad breeding exists because people keep paying for it. And it will continue until buyers are willing to tolerate the discomfort of saying no.

You wouldn’t buy the car.
So stop buying the puppy.

Not because you don’t care but because you care enough to think past the moment… and past your own feelings.

18/01/2026 Why Biology Trumps Your Recall

One of the hardest things to train reliably is recalling your dog away from something they want to chase. It might be leaves, squirrels or bikes. And despite what you’re often told, this isn’t about how many times you’ve practised your recall or whether you’ve upgraded from kibble to roast chicken.

This is about biology or more specifically, it’s about how your dog’s nervous system works and something hard-wired into their DNA called predatory motor patterns.

Let me set the scene. You’re in the park. A squirrel appears. Your dog spots it before you do and launches into action. You notice the movement a second or two later, shout your recall, and… nothing. Your dog has already gone... absolutely committed to the chase.

At this point, trainers will often tell you that you need to practise more, improve your recall, or use higher-value food. Unfortunately, none of that helps in this moment.

Predatory motor patterns are automatic responses baked into your dog’s nervous system. When a prey-like stimulus appears and moves, the brain doesn’t stop to weigh up options. It doesn’t think, “Shall I have chicken or shall I chase?” Instead, arousal spikes, stress and motivation chemicals flood the system, and the dog drops into what is essentially autopilot. The chase is on.

Latency is the time between the stimulus appearing and the behaviour starting. In chase behaviour, that delay is measured in milliseconds. By the time you see the squirrel, process what’s happening, and open your mouth to call your dog, the decision has already been made. Not consciously, but neurologically.

Food can’t compete once the chase has started because the comparison never happens. By the time food becomes relevant, the chase is already self-reinforcing. The movement, the speed, the dopamine hit all of it is far more valuable than whatever you’re waving around in your hand like a desperate street magician.

Counterconditioning and differential reinforcement don’t solve this either. They can help change how a dog feels about a stimulus at a distance, under controlled conditions, but the automatic motor pattern is still there, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Now, there is an important exception here, dogs with very low arousal and reduced prey drive, often through selective breeding or individual temperament can have longer latency. Their chase motor patterns are weaker or never fully engage. In those dogs, food can still matter because the system never truly switches on. This is why some people can stop chasing with positive reinforcement alone.... they are working with a very low drive dog.

So how do you actually get on top of this issue with a dog with normal drive?

Option one is to spot the stimulus before your dog does and recall early. In the real world, this is extremely difficult and often unrealistic.

Option two is keep your dog on a lead or long line, but a life spent permanently tethered isn’t great for a dog’s physical or mental health.

Option three is the use of an aversive. An aversive doesn’t have to mean pain, force, or “lighting a dog up”. Aversives exist on a spectrum and what matters far more than intensity is timing. Poorly timed aversives cause confusion and stress. Well-timed aversives interrupt behaviour at the exact moment it matters.

And then there’s option four: say screw it and chase the squirrel with your dog. Which, while emotionally satisfying, does at least have the potential to become a long-term fitness plan.

But seriously, if you want to genuinely get on top of recall issues by working with your dog’s biology rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, spend time finding a properly competent trainer. One who understands what’s actually happening inside your dog, isn’t tied to slogans, and is realistic about what can and can’t be achieved with your dog and your specific abilities.

This isn’t something that gets fixed with a quick tip, a higher-value treat, or a catchy Instagram reel. It requires a structured training plan, good timing, honest assessment of risk, and an approach that is matched to the dog and owner.

When recall fails in the real world, the consequences can be seroius and they’re paid for by your dog.

11/01/2026 Howl at the Moon...Or Anything Else in Fact

05:15 this morning, as with every morning, the house dogs and I headed out for their early walk. The world was quiet and then from somewhere across the fields came a sound, that for me is instantly recognisable.

A fox calling for a mate. It’s not exactly subtle. I can only really describe it as a cross between someone being brutally murdered and someone being emotionally devastated about it. If you haven’t heard it, the internet is full of helpful descriptions and my personal favourite is “a horror film sound effect designer showing off.” But that vixen got me thinking.

If this call is essentially a fox saying “anyone fancy a date?”, how does that link into domestic dogs and wolves and their tendency to howl? Wolves live and mate within a defined family group, so their howling must serve some other purpose entirely. And dogs? Well, they’re domesticated, and from my experience as a breeder I’ve never observed an increase in howling from females when they come into season.

So why do dogs howl at all?

One of the most popular, well-meaning explanations is that dogs howl because they’re lonely or unhappy. But again, that’s not something I recognise from real life. Dogs howl when they’re content, when they’re with other dog. In fact, one dog howling can quite happily set off a full blown chorus from the others around them, something so familiar that even cartoons show it.

Which tells us straight away that howling isn’t a simple sign of distress, isolation, or hormones. It’s something far more social, far more communicative, and far less tragic than we’re often led to believe, and is far more layered than most people realise. In wolves, howling is primarily a long-distance communication tool. It helps coordinate pack members, reinforce social bonds, and announce their presence to others in the area. It’s not howling at the moon.

Domestic dogs inherited this vocal behaviour, but like many inherited traits, it’s been reshaped by selective breeding and environment. Some breeds are far more inclined to howl than others. Dogs of working breeds often keep a stronger connection to this kind of vocal communication. Other breeds have had it mostly bred out of them.

When dogs howl in response to sirens, music, other dogs, singing or wildlife, they’re not usually distressed. They’re communicating. Sometimes they’re replying. Sometimes they’re practising. Sometimes they’re simply saying, yes, I heard that too, and sometimes as happens with a group of our dogs one starts and the rest join in, copying behaviour or just lending their support in the same way as if someone sings “just one Cornetto” we have to join in and sing along with “give it to me” (if this makes no sense to you in dog terms you are still a pup).

Studies using MRI scans, have shown that dogs process human vocalisations in similar brain regions to humans. Dogs are particularly sensitive to pitch, tone, and emotional inflection. When a person sings or plays a violin, the dog’s brain doesn’t interpret it as a song it interprets it as an emotionally loaded sound.

That explains why dogs are far more likely to howl at singing, violins, or sustained wind instruments than, say, a drum kit or a piano. Percussive or broken sounds don’t resemble a howl. Long, drawn out notes do.

Research into group behaviour in dogs shows that one dog vocalising increases the likelihood of others joining in. This isn’t distress contagion its social participation. In simple terms, one dog says “I hear this”, another says “me too”, and suddenly you’ve got a choir. This is why dogs often howl more readily in groups, and why a single howler can set off the whole neighbourhood.

Finally, we have behavioural observations rather than lab studies but they’re consistent in their results. Dogs howl when relaxed, when excited, when engaged, and when socially connected. They howl with owners they trust, if any of you have seen the Cocker Spaniel on the internet “Shoutout2myRex” you will know what I mean. They howl with other dogs they feel comfortable around. They rarely howl when shut down, frightened, or emotionally suppressed. That alone challenges the idea that howling is a distress behaviour.

It’s a behaviour shaped by genetics, learning, confidence, and context. So if your dog occasionally howls at strange noises, wildlife calls, or questionable singing, it’s not something to panic about. It’s one of those little reminders that there’s still a communication system ticking away that predates domestication.

04/01/2026 Emotion Drives Behaviour

I’m reading a book at the moment by Temple Grandin, and in it she talks about emotion driving behaviour. She describes an experiment involving burrowing animals in captivity. These animals were showing an unwanted, persistent behaviour: digging.

The animals were split into two groups. Group one was placed into an enclosure that already had ready made burrows. Group two was placed into an enclosure with no burrows at all, but soil they could dig. The first group barely dug. The second group dug persistently. The behaviour changed not because it was corrected, discouraged, redirected or trained out. It changed because the emotion driving it was no longer present. The digging wasn’t about digging. It was about feeling safe.

Remove the need for safety and the behaviour evaporates. Leave the emotion unresolved and the behaviour becomes relentless. This is where dog owners with “problem behaviours” should probably pause for a second, because when a dog barks excessively, chews the skirting boards, paces the house, digs holes, lunges on the lead or explodes at the window every time a leaf moves… our attention goes straight to the action.

How do I stop the barking? How do I stop the chewing? Etc. If you focus only on stopping the behaviour and ignore the emotion driving it, you’re not fixing anything. You’re just dealing with the symptom, not the cause.

Dogs may be performing these behaviours responding to internal states, fear, frustration, insecurity, over-arousal and conflict to name a few. A dog that chews when left alone may not have a chewing problem. It may have a safety problem. A dog that barks at every noise may not be territorial. It may be overwhelmed and unable to switch off. A dog that pulls on a walk may not be badly trained. It may be emotionally flooded before it even leaves the house.

When we focus only on the visible behaviour, we tend to reach for visible solutions. Tools. Techniques. Corrections. Distractions. Management. Sometimes these help, sometimes they don’t, but very often they miss the point entirely. The more useful question isn’t “how do I stop this?” It’s “what does my dog need right now that it isn’t getting?”

Just like the burrowing animals, dogs will keep repeating behaviours for as long as the emotion driving them remains unresolved. You can suppress the behaviour for a while, but the pressure causing it doesn’t disappear. It just leaks out somewhere else. So it’s worth remembering your dog isn’t being difficult for fun. No animal burns energy for no reason. If they’re doing something persistently, their nervous system believes it matters. So if you’re living with a dog that’s driving you up the wall, try this small mental shift. Instead of asking how to eliminate the behaviour, step back and ask what job that behaviour is doing for the dog. Because once you address the emotion, the behaviour often stops being a problem at all.

The Dogs Blog 2025

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