Judy Comer-Calder

I've been a dogaholic all my life - I had a typical English family - not too much affection but I had the dogs for my best friends.  It’s like we understood each other.  I think it started then.

My background is in human psychology and communication.  But I was equally interested in animal psychology.  Natural horsemanship was so exciting because it was about looking at how horses think and behave and communicate - and then seeing if we could use some of the same language with them (instead of trying to use human values and language and communication and training ideas  - on animals with  completely different psychology and social systems!) .

I think my dog work really took shape in the 90s after Monty Roberts showed us how to behave with horses, and think like horses, and communicate with horses. Such a new and generally much kinder approach.

I was offering some dog boarding on my farm, and it turned quickly into helping people understand and behave in a way that helped their dogs to get things right.  A bit like Natural Dogmanship.

I've been helping a lot of people now over the years with this approach. Traditionally,  If a dog is behaving in a way we don’t like, we tried to change the particular behaviour with rewards or distraction for example.  What I do that is different, is that I help the owner find the cause of the behaviour - its usually us, by the way, something we are doing, which has given the dog the wrong idea of what to do. 

It's all about training humans - the dogs are fine.  I have rarely met a problem dog.  Only dogs that are doing their best.