September isn’t just about back-to-school for the kids… it’s the perfect time for you and your dog to hit reset, refocus, and embrace the fresh-start energy of autumn. In this episode, I’ll show you how to turn gloomy walks and shorter days into an opportunity to transform your dog’s training.

We’ll dive into the science of learning, why structure is so powerful for dogs, and how to set achievable training goals that actually stick. You’ll leave this episode with practical, science-backed strategies and simple homework ideas you can start today to bring more focus, calmness, and joy into your training journey.

And if you’re ready to take things further, my 21-Day Engagement Training Course is the perfect back-to-school project for you and your dog! With daily, bite-sized lessons, you’ll build engagement step by step and create the kind of focus that makes recall, loose lead walking, and every other skill so much easier.

👉 Check it out here.

• Why September is the ideal time to reset your dog training routine
• The neuroscience behind structure, predictability, and learning in dogs
• A simple ‘Back-to-School’ framework to set achievable goals
• How small daily habits rewire your dog’s brain for lasting behaviour change
• The seasonal mindset shift that turns rainy autumn walks into training wins
• Why engagement is the cornerstone skill that makes all other training possible

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work? Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover; it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

In this week’s episode of The Walk & Talk, we take a deep dive into one of the most game-changing approaches in modern dog training: concept training.

This method goes far beyond obedience and surface-level behaviour fixes… Instead, it teaches us how to shape the way our dog’s brain works - building the core concepts that drive lifelong emotional stability, focus, and resilience.

Whether you’ve got a bouncy adolescent, a nervous rescue, or a reactive firecracker, this episode will give you a totally new lens on behaviour - and the science-backed tools to make lasting change from the inside out.

• What concept training really is and how it differs from traditional obedience methods
• The neuroscience behind behaviour: why your dog’s brain does what it does
• How core concepts like calmness, optimism, impulse control, and focus shape behaviour
• Why bad behaviour is often just a symptom of an underdeveloped skill
• How to use short, joyful games to reshape your dog’s mindset and emotions
• Why concept training is one of the most effective ways to create long-term transformation
• Practical tips to get started today - no fancy tools or long sessions required
• How this method builds connection, confidence, and clarity for both ends of the lead

https://listendogtraining.com/product/dog-training-exercises/

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work?

Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at: www.listendogtraining.com

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover—it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

Think your teenage dog is just a chaotic, cue-ignoring menace you have to survive? Think again.

Today I’m flipping the narrative on canine adolescence—and showing you why this misunderstood phase is actually a once-in-a-lifetime training window.

If your dog is between 6 months and 2 years old (ish) this is not the time to throw in the towel or cross your fingers and hope they grow out of it. It’s time to get strategic. Because biologically, behaviourally, and emotionally, your dog is primed for growth. You just need to know how to work with it.

And if you're craving more focus, more connection, and more joy on your walks? This is also the perfect time to jump into my 21-Day Engagement Training course... a science-led step-by-step program to help you become the most rewarding and compelling thing in your dog’s world.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the “just survive adolescence” mindset is sabotaging your training
• What’s actually going on in your dog’s brain during this stage
• The 3 major neurological changes shaping your dog’s behaviour right now
• How to turn independence-seeking into a bonding opportunity
• Why adolescent dogs are more trainable than puppies in key ways
• How to use novelty, reward upgrades, and real-life reinforcement to boost your results
• Practical training tips to get better focus and cooperation—without the overwhelm
• How to lay the foundations now for an adult dog you’ll be proud of for life

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work?

Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at: www.listendogtraining.com

Or jump into my 21-day engagement training program at: https://listendogtraining.com/product/21-day-engagement-training/

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover—it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

If you’ve been working on your dog’s reactivity and it feels like nothing’s changing, this episode is for you.

Because the truth is, most reactivity training skips the most important bit - the foundation work that actually sets your dog up for success before they’re anywhere near a trigger.

In this episode, I’m sharing the essential, often-overlooked steps that make or break reactivity rehab. These are the pieces I teach every client, and they’re the difference between progress… and plateau.

Whether your dog reacts to people, dogs, sounds, or everything in between, this episode will help you rethink what progress really looks like - and give you a clear, science-backed starting point to build lasting change.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why desensitisation isn’t working (and what your dog actually needs first)
• The neuroscience behind emotional regulation and reactivity
• The 5 core skills every reactive dog should master before exposure work
• How calm patterned movement rewires your dog’s brain for safety and focus
• The difference between obedience and emotional availability—and which one matters most
• The missing piece that’s keeping your training stuck on repeat
• Practical ways to build focus, settle, and co-regulation without needing to tire your dog out
• Why foundational work makes your trigger training 100x easier
• The exact daily steps to start turning things around right now

🎓 Ready to train smarter, not harder? Explore my science-led dog training programs:

🔗 21-Day Engagement Training Course 🔗 Reactivity Training Program

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work?

Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

Follow me on Instagram & TikTok →@listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover—it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

Is your dog the kind that turns their nose up at treats during training? Do you feel stuck because everyone says to ‘just use food’… but your dog couldn’t care less?

In this deep-dive episode, I unpack one of the most misunderstood training challenges: food refusal.

Because here’s the truth: your dog probably is food motivated. What’s actually getting in the way is often a mix of emotional state, stress chemistry, and misunderstood arousal.

This episode will change the way you look at your dog’s behaviour, help you understand the real reasons they might not engage with food, and give you science-backed strategies to transform your training approach - without blame, frustration, or gimmicks.

• Why ‘not food motivated’ is usually a symptom - not a trait
• How stress, arousal, and cortisol shut down appetite and engagement
• The neuroscience behind your dog’s shifting motivation
• What to do when your dog won’t take food outside
• The difference between high arousal and true engagement
• Simple, practical strategies to build food motivation from the ground up
• How to choose the right food for your dog’s emotional state
• Why food refusal is a powerful communication cue - not a training failure

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work? Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover—it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

Does your dog seem to forget everything you’ve taught them the moment you step outside? Are squirrels, smells, joggers, or birds stealing their focus — no matter how hard you try to get their attention?

You’re not alone — and more importantly, you’re not doing anything wrong. In this eye-opening episode, I dive deep into the neuroscience of attention, arousal, and distraction, helping you understand what’s really going on inside your dog’s brain when they seem to ignore you outdoors.

It’s not disobedience. It’s biology. And once you understand it, you can train around it, not against it.

This episode is packed with juicy brain science, real-world examples, and practical strategies to help you compete with the chaos of the outside world and build strong, focused engagement — even when distractions are everywhere.

• What attention really is — and why your dog literally can’t hear you when they’re overstimulated
• The science of saliency and why some distractions win your dog’s focus instantly
• How competing reinforcers hijack training (and what to do about it)
• What’s happening inside the adolescent dog brain, and why focus gets harder, not easier
• How to increase your value to your dog without bribing or begging
• Step-by-step strategies for building focus and engagement in distracting environments
• Simple training games and hacks to use movement, reinforcement, and patterning to your advantage
• Why your dog’s ‘stubbornness’ isn’t a personality flaw... it’s a nervous system in overload
• The biggest mindset shift that will change how you approach training forever

👉 This episode is a perfect companion to my best-selling 21-Day Engagement Training course - a transformational programme designed to help you become magnetic to your dog’s focus and build unshakable connection.

https://listendogtraining.com/product/21-day-engagement-training/

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work? Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover — it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

Do your beliefs shape your dog’s behaviour?

In this powerful episode, we explore one of the most overlooked yet transformational aspects of dog training: your mindset. Whether you’re working through complex challenges like reactivity or just want to deepen your connection with your dog, how you think — and what you believe is possible — will directly shape your success.

Want to know how your internal world is the foundation of your dog training journey? From growth mindset theory and nervous system regulation, to mental rehearsal and visualisation backed by neuroscience, this episode will leave you inspired and equipped to train with renewed belief and purpose.

• Why mindset is the missing piece in most dog training approaches
• How your beliefs shape your behaviour — and your dog’s
• The science of growth mindset and what it means for long-term success
• How to use visualisation to literally rewire your nervous system
• A quick, sensory experiment to prove how powerful your imagination really is
• Why your dog responds more to your energy than your technique
• How tools like intention-setting can elevate your training
• Practical daily habits to help you embody your next-level dog trainer identity

If you’re ready to shift from frustration to clarity, from panic to purpose, and from doubt to results — this episode is your starting point.

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work? Explore my digital training products, freebies, and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

👉 This episode is a perfect companion to my best-selling 21-Day Engagement Training course — a transformational programme designed to help you become magnetic to your dog’s focus and build unshakable connection.

https://listendogtraining.com/product/21-day-engagement-training/

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 Found this episode helpful? I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover — it helps the podcast grow and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!

If your dog is constantly barking at every noise, every passerby, every movement outside the window—or even just at nothing at all—it’s not just annoying… it’s a message.

In this episode, we dig deep beneath the barking to uncover what’s really going on inside your dog’s brain. Spoiler alert: the barking isn’t the real problem. It’s a symptom of something much deeper—nervous system dysregulation.

Whether your dog is hyper-alert, always on edge, or struggling to settle at home, this episode will give you the science, the insight, and the practical tools to help them feel truly safe—and finally bring calm back to your household.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why barking becomes neurologically reinforced, even without 'training' it
• What the amygdala, HPA axis, and nervous system have to do with reactivity
• The signs your dog is stuck in a hypervigilant state (that aren’t just barking)
• Why popular 'quiet' cues or corrections often make things worse
• Three transformative strategies to help your dog feel safe enough to stop barking
• How to use decompression walks, environmental safety, and co-regulation
• Ways to build a calm baseline in your home that supports long-term change
• The mindset shift that helps you train with more clarity, compassion, and confidence

This is the kind of episode that can change everything... not just for your dog, but for your relationship, too!

💻 Want to dive deeper into transforming your dog’s behaviour with science-backed strategies that actually work? Check out my digital training products, freebies and online courses at www.listendogtraining.com

📱 Let’s connect! Follow me on Instagram and TikTok → @listendogtraining

🎧 If you found this episode helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review 🌟 or shared it with a fellow dog lover—it helps the podcast grow so that I can keep going, and helps more people train with confidence, clarity, and joy!