Your dog can't tell you when something's wrong, so they rely on you to notice. The person who lives with a dog knows their normal in a way no vet or trainer ever could, because you're the one who sees them every day. That everyday knowledge is easy to underestimate, right up until the moment it matters.

Jo Middleton found that out with her own dog, when 2 vets told her everything was fine and she wasn't convinced. This conversation is about the power of observing the dog in front of you, what a calm dog might be masking, and why the closest eye on a dog is usually the most reliable one.

Jo is the principal of the International School for Canine Psychology & Behaviour, and she runs Canine Principles, where more than 20,000 students have enrolled.

She also leads the International Institute for Canine Ethics, an assessing organisation for the ABTC. She's spent 25 years in the dog world, much of it in rescue, working with dogs whose normal nobody knew yet.

Courses mentioned in this episode:

L3 Diploma in PAWS™ Dog Rescue Mental Health Support

ISCP Free Course - Bite Size Canine Communication

A puppy who only ever knew kindness grew into the most dangerous dog Trish McMillan has ever lived with. His story, and that of a dogfighting survivor who turned out gentle, sit at the heart of why a rescue dog is never a blank slate, and what the dog pays when we get that wrong.

The conversation covers rescue dogs and behaviour, how shelters decide which dogs are safe to rehome, the real weight of behavioural euthanasia, and why a harder caseload can be a sign of progress. Trish has spent over 30 years in shelters, rescues, and welfare work, focused on the dogs whose behaviour is most difficult, complex, or unsafe, and on supporting the people responsible for their care.

More from Trish McMillan:
https://www.trishmcmillan.com/
https://www.shelterbehaviorhub.com/ (Shelter Behavior Hub)
https://www.instinctdogtraining.com/personnel/trish-mcmillan/

Journal article: The perils of placing marginal dogs

A greyhound loves to run. Running across a field and racing around an oval track aren't the same thing, and greyhound racing depends on us not noticing the difference.

Nadine talks to three people working to end the sport about what it looks like from the dog's side: the falls, the kennel hours, the breeding, and what happens to a greyhound who stops winning.

They trace how one country after another has banned dog racing, and why Britain, 100 years on, has not. Norb runs Shut Down Campaigns, Isobel campaigns with Animal Aid, and Emily Lawrence campaigns with the League Against Cruel Sports.

On 25 July 2026, they march in London, a century to the week after Britain's first greyhound race, to end greyhound racing for good.

Links mentioned in this episode:

League Against Cruel Sports report: https://www.league.org.uk/media/filer_public/c5/5c/c55c246b-78d9-4205-bddb-10f8f2ef445c/uk_report_final_32326_digital.pdf

The AI investigation into racing records (University of Melbourne): https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/greyhound-racing-says-its-transparent,-so-we-used-ai-to-check-dog-by-dog

Inside the kennels (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deKUhm4ZQYI

If you've ever stood in your kitchen at half eight on a Tuesday with a dog who's barking at nothing, lunging at the postman, scared of the front door, scared of you, scared of their own shadow, and wondered what on earth you're doing wrong, this episode is for you.

It rearranges how you see your dog. Most of what we label as bad behaviour isn't behaviour at all. It's pain, fear, or stress that nobody has spotted yet, and you can't punish away pain, and you can't punish away fear. The barking, the lunging, the guarding, the dog who can't settle, almost always it's a dog telling you they don't feel safe, or they hurt somewhere nobody has found.

So the work was never about control. It's about understanding what a behaviour is for, asking why instead of how do I make it stop, and meeting a frightened dog with distance, patience, and kindness rather than more pressure. Your dog isn't giving you a hard time. They're having one, and the kindest, most useful thing you can do is work out why.

Kerry Sheldrick runs Howl School for Dogs, a qualified and APDT-accredited dog trainer and behaviour consultant offering remote support for clients all around the world, and mentoring for other dog professionals including dog trainers, dog walkers and daycares. She also hosts regular online workshops and her own informative and entertaining podcast, Are You There, Dog? It's Me, Kerry, available on all the usual platforms.

If you've ever been through it, you'll know how painful it can be. 

You'll know what it's like the next morning after they've gone. 

The little signs of them missing, like the pitter-patter of their paws across the floor, the sound of their tongue lapping at the water bowl, the warmth of their body as they scoot closer during a Netflix binge.

A recent study from Maynooth University found that losing a pet can sometimes be as intense and as long-lasting as losing a person.

Part of why it affects us so deeply is that our dogs get to see a side of us that no one else ever sees. 

That playful, that gentle, that childlike part of us that only ever comes out around them. They give us purpose. They need us completely. 

So when they go, there's a part of us that goes with them, a part of us that existed only in their presence.

And because dogs don't live that long, loving them means grieving them more than once, sometimes many times across a single lifetime. 

Lisa Waggoner, my guest on the podcast today, has lived exactly that. She's a force-free dog trainer for more than 20 years, the founder of Cold Nose College, faculty at the Victoria Stilwell Academy, author of Rocket Recall, and an ordained animal chaplain.

She's lost 4 young dogs, one of them hit by a car at a year old, and each one changed the course of her life and her work. 

We talk about why losing a dog can hurt as much as it does, why the world is still so quick to say it's only a dog, and what that kind of grief reveals about the way they were loved.

This is Just a Dog Podcast, and I'm your host, Nadine. Let's begin.

A border collie can track a sheep across a field from the smallest flick of movement. Drop that same dog on a busy street, and the skill that makes them brilliant is the one that comes undone.

Ellen Greenwood-Sole, founder of The Urban Herder, has spent more than 10 years working with collies and the people who love them.

She makes a case most of us miss. A collie's intensity is not a personality; it is an extreme we bred on purpose, the behavioural version of a flat face. We just call it clever and leave it at that.

We get into why so much reactivity is really pain, why teaching a dog to switch off matters more than another walk, and why the kindest move is sometimes grieving the dog you pictured so you can meet the one you have.

A growl is one of the clearest things a dog can tell us, and it's often the most misread.

Dog aggression specialist Michael Shikashio has spent 25 years working with dogs that other trainers couldn't help.

His view is that aggression isn't a fault to correct. It's communication. It's a dog showing us that something is wrong.

This conversation looks at where our beliefs about dog behaviour come from, and how often they come from people who were confident rather than informed.

Michael explains why he believes you can't train aggression out of a dog, why pain is one of the most missed reasons behind it, and how the dominance and alpha ideas spread despite the evidence.

Michael is the founder of AggressiveDog.com and a five-term president of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.

When a dog reacts on the lead or struggles to settle at home, what we see is often the end of a biological process that started much earlier in the day.

Daniel Shaw is a dog behaviourist with a master's in neuroscience. In this conversation, he explains what is happening in a dog's brain and body during a reaction, including how cortisol rises with each stressor, how the amygdala grows more sensitive under chronic stress, and the physical changes that trauma causes in the brain.

Daniel also works as an expert witness in UK courts in serious dog-aggression cases, where his assessment can determine whether a dog goes home or is put to sleep.

The conversation moves through the stress bucket, why secure fields can sometimes be better than a half-hour walk, why reading body language is a skill that takes time to develop, and the holes in the Dangerous Dogs Act that affect everyday guardians.

Daniel runs a behaviour consultancy in Kent, founded the Brain and Behaviour Academy for dog professionals, hosts an annual UK conference, and gives evidence in courts deciding the fate of dogs across the country.

Connect with Daniel Shaw

⁠Website⁠ | ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | Spotify

In this episode, we look at why dogs behave in ways that confuse or worry us. Dr. Lisa explains how pain, fear, and the way we treat dogs at home can show up as behaviour we'd otherwise call "bad". It's a conversation that asks you to look again at what your dog might be trying to tell you.

Dr. Lisa Radosta is a board-certified veterinary behaviourist based in Florida. She's one of a small number of specialists worldwide trained both as a vet and as a behaviourist. With over 25 years of clinical experience, she's also the current president of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists.

If you have a dog who's anxious, reactive, or hard to live with, this conversation will give you a different way to look at what's going on. Dr. Radosta also breaks down when to call a trainer versus a behaviourist, and why it matters. And if you just want to understand your dog better, you'll come away with plenty to think about.

Connect with Dr. Lisa Radosta

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

Every spring, a double-coated dog sheds enough undercoat to knit a jumper. Most of it goes in the bin, or worse, on the garden fence for the birds, where flea treatment residue can kill hatchlings. Sebastian Salvat wants a better option.

Sebastian is a fashion marketing student at London College of Fashion and the founder of Chiora, a project turning brushed-out dog undercoat into a cashmere-like yarn.

He's been working in dog rescue since he was sixteen, lives with two rescues from Romania (Chai and Ora, who the brand is named after), and is backed by LCF's startup programme.

The British Dog Wool Association was doing something similar for soldiers in hospitals over a hundred years ago. So the idea isn't new. The question is whether it should exist now.

We get into the ethics of building a luxury material from a living animal, the economics that keep the model honest, and what Sebastian is doing differently this time around.

If you live with a double-coated dog, pause before you throw the brush-outs away. Send your dog's brushed-out undercoat to Chiora [email protected] | chiora.org