You can get a content, calm, predictable dog without more bribes, more training, or more telling-off.

At the start, I did what every trainer is taught to do: I trained the problem. Pulling? Train the walk. Barking? Train the quiet.

But the same thing kept happening. The problem I was booked for was never the thing we ended up fixing first. Half these dogs couldn't even get through a session. Too wired, too distracted. Also, on a day-to-day basis, so many of these dogs were just not at a level you can live with. So why would I train behaviours, when we clearly need to work on the dog?

So we'd fix what was underneath instead. Their sleep. Their outlets. The pressure they were quietly living with every day.

And then the strange bit: the problem I'd been booked for started dissolving before we'd "trained" it at all.

Behaviour is the tip of the iceberg. Needs are the mass underneath. Nobody taught you that. So no, it's not your fault, and your dog isn't being difficult.