"Change isn't about control. It's about consistency, clarity, and teamwork"
Angie Brown - 

Quite simply: Oskar, my Blue Merle Border Collie.

 

I’d had dogs all my life and thought I knew what I was doing. For seven months, Oskar was a dream — exactly what I thought a Border Collie puppy would be. Then he woke up one morning and started chasing cars, cyclists, runners. Barking at people. Behaving as though he’d never been trained. I was mortified.

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What was actually happening was adolescence in full Border Collie flight;  hormones, growth spurts, his ‘eye’ coming online and looking for something, anything, to fix on.

 

Genetics doing what genetics does!

I took him to a class for the socialisation. He was lying quietly on his mat when a young Labrador jumped off its own mat and lunged at him, barking. Oskar got the blame — “classes aren’t always a good fit for Collies.” We tried to continue, and when the Lab went for him a second time, Oskar finally reacted. On the way out of the room it happened again, and that time the trainer’s own dog physically pinned mine to the ground to “correct” him.

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I walked out and never went back to a class run by anyone else.

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That was the moment. The day I walked out of that room. Because that was when I knew there had to be a better way — and that I’d learn how to do it myself. Everything that followed — the certifications, the mentor, the years of study, becoming Scotland’s only Certified Control Unleashed Instructor, the Family Dog Mediator training, the Aggressive Dog Master Course — grew out of that one decision.

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That’s also why I’m so immovable on ethical and humane practice. It isn’t a fashionable position I’ve adopted. It’s a conviction I came to the hard way. I’ve seen what coercion does to a seven-month-old dog in a room he was supposed to be safe in.

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I’ve come to prefer “ethical and humane” over “force-free,” because the more experience I gain, the more I notice the small forces hidden inside everyday training that the term doesn’t quite cover. I make every effort to avoid adding force, or creating harm. Life for dogs can be hard enough without us adding to it.

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What Bailey and Zac have taught me since

My Bailey — a Labrador-Lurcher cross — has lived with serious separation anxiety. Helping her find her way through it, slowly, over time, has taught me that emotional rehabilitation can’t be rushed. You can’t hurry a nervous system that’s operating from genuine fear. You can only show up, day after day, in the same gentle, predictable way, until safety starts to feel believable. She taught me that wellbeing isn’t a single problem to be solved but a garden to be tended — and that emotional pain is as real as physical pain. It deserves the same care.

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Zac is my rescue Border Collie. He came from an abandoned farm in Ayrshire by way of the SSPCA. When I brought him home he was terrified of the kettle, the radiator, the stairs, the car. Three years on, he’s a different dog, although he still carries a lot of anxiety about town life. He’s still sensitive to any kind of pressure — physical, spatial, emotional — and he has been, more than any course or qualification, my teacher. Most of what I now offer my clients is, in some form, a translation of what Zac has taught me about what it really takes to help a dog feel safe in the world.

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I tell people this because it matters: I do this work because I live it. Not as theory. Every day, in my own home.