Lovely to see those of you that came to Ashton Court today! Love that place <3 After drinks Nick and I headed to a slightly quieter place to go thru some reactivity training and scenarios to stress test some of the techniques and behaviours that we have trained. It was soooo good. We experimented with "look at me" as well as the TBRR stuff and worked up to Onyx (still fan girling after being able to work with her😂) coming over to be a menace and me faking telling Nick off for not calling his dog back. It was fun to try and set up real life situations to overcome. Most importantly i need to get more insistent that the barking stops by interruption/punisher as although there is some insecurity there, much of it is patterened and Aster showed me she's perfectly capable of focusing on me with Onyx (big bouncy black shepherd, the kind of dog she hates!) pretty much right up in her grill. I now need to make it very clear that the barking doesn't need to be part of her coping strategy and that this is all just training behaviours with distractions. I feel inspired to go practise this now but also feel like I've had a bit of a confidence boost in having Nick assess Aster's reactions and the reasons for them. So, big thanks again Nick for all your help! And organising another lovely meet up 🙏🙏👌❤️

Looking forward to seeing some of you tomorrow! We had a slightly longer walk today, just on the flexi. I had my hands full with a horse in each hand, her on the Flexi and a flag for a 2 mile walk 🤦‍♀️good job they are all well behaved. We also met a neighbour with his two hulking great labs straining towards her. She hates them so did her usual hackles up and bark but I sent her past quickly, I wasn't in the mood to be trying to do anything more than that with horses in tow! I swear she went slightly lamer after her outburst. Quite interesting. Im sure that she holds tension in her tail - does anyone know anything about the tendancy for dogs to nibble a tail and associated tension? I've still not heard back from physio yet but good question for them I guess. Here's Snoost enjoying her new bean bag bed. She makes a beeline for my neice's any time it comes downstairs so I thought she would appreciate her very own ❤️

Thank you everyone. It was a lovely meet up today! Sorry, I am terrible at remembering to take photos.

This was one of my favourite messages from 2025 [attached]. I am working with so many reactive dogs, almost every single day. Even here on Skool many of you are messaging me about how to resolve your dog's reactivity. It made me think maybe we should do a free online workshop on this topic. I can share with you a bit more about reactivity and how I like to solve it. Is this something you'd be interested in?

Aster is better every day! Which is a relief lol. I have kept up with her massage and mostly rest, although we did some low key position changes to just have her use that leg a little bit, but sensibly! No tearing around. We also did some source focus stuff and contact heeling with a bit of food. She appreciates something, even if only a couple minutes. I took her for a little walk this afternoon as very gentle exercise seems to help. I kept her on a flexi but all this rain made the tributary at the bottom of the lane flood. I dutifully carried her across but discovered I have a hole in my welly and got a very wet and very cold foot. I didn't fancy that on the way back so I cut through my neighbours property to avoid. I would normally have asked beforehand but had left my phone at home so thought I'd just message after in case his teenage son had seen me and wondered what was up. I immediately came back to two missed calls and a message asking if everything OK as his CCTV pinged his phone with my presence 🙈I couldn't imagine living with a set up like that!