Reactive Dog Specialist Behaviourist in Romsey, Hampshire

Hi, I’m Ian Mackay and I’m a dog trainer and behaviourist specialising in reactive, aggressive dogs. I am based near Romsey, Hampshire in the UK. The techniques I use are based around a concept we call ‘dog listening’; essentially its about understanding that everything a dog does has a reason and by understanding that reason, we can find ways of managing the behaviour. 

A dog may be reactive to almost anything, from relatively trivial to quite serious.

The sound of the doorbell going off may send him off on a barking fit, or the sight of a particular dog or breed of dog may prompt a seemingly unprovoked attack.

Owning and living with a reactive dog can be extremely stressful; you are never completely sure if your dog will suddenly act up and go out of control, and it’s never nice when other dog owners and non-owners give you that ‘you never trained your dog properly’ look. From there it’s one short step to becoming the pariah of the playing fields.

But help is at hand.

We’ve had real success applying the Dog Listening principles to reactive dogs. So whether your dog drives you and your visitors crazy by barking whenever someone rings the doorbell, or whether it shows real aggression to other dogs or people, we can help you work with your dog to manage this.

One of my clients is Vasco, the Estrela Mountain Dog. Vasco is triggered by his owner’s doorbell; below is a video of a session we did to help manage this. It gives you an insight into how I work and how effective these techniques can be.

In this video I demonstrate how it is important to understand how and why a dog is reacting the way he is. Once Vasco is given a command to show that he has been listened to and everything is OK, he happily stops barking and returns to his owners.

Of course different dogs react to different stimuli, and an important step is to figure out EXACTLY what they are reacting to. After that it’s a question of training both owner and dog(!) to behave consistently…