Every word a trainer uses on you, in plain English
25 terms, arranged in the order a real case moves through them rather than alphabetically — because if you do not know what “threshold” means, you also do not know it comes first.
- 01 Working out what is going on The vocabulary of the first session — what is actually driving the behaviour.
- 02 Getting under the line How the work is set up so your dog can think instead of react.
- 03 Making it hold Turning a behaviour that works in the kitchen into one that works on the street.
- 04 Handing the leash back The words that matter once the trainer stops coming.
Working out what is going on
The vocabulary of the first session — what is actually driving the behaviour.
Threshold
The point at which your dog stops being able to think — past it, nothing you say gets through.
Service →Trigger
The specific thing that starts the behaviour — a bike, a doorbell, a man in a helmet, you picking up your keys.
Service →Reactivity
An over-the-top response to something ordinary — usually barking, lunging or spinning at the end of a lead.
Service →Aggression
Behaviour intended to create distance or hold onto something — growling, snapping, biting — and almost always rooted in fear rather than dominance.
Service →Resource guarding
Defending something valuable — food, a toy, a sofa, sometimes a person — against anyone who comes near it.
Service →Separation anxiety
Genuine panic at being left alone — not boredom, not spite, and not something a dog grows out of on its own.
Service →Ladder of aggression
The order in which a dog escalates — lip-lick, turn away, freeze, growl, snap, bite — with the quiet rungs at the bottom.
Service →Calming signals
Small gestures a dog uses to defuse tension — yawning, licking its lips, turning away, sniffing the ground for no reason.
Service →Getting under the line
How the work is set up so your dog can think instead of react.
Trigger stacking
Stress adding up across a day, so a dog that coped with four things blows up at the fifth — which on its own would have been nothing.
Service →Counter-conditioning
Changing how your dog feels about something by reliably pairing it with something better, until the scary thing predicts good news.
Service →Desensitisation
Exposing a dog to the thing it finds difficult at a strength so low it does not react, then raising it in increments it barely notices.
Service →Flooding
Exposing a frightened dog to the full-strength trigger and preventing escape until it stops reacting — the opposite of desensitisation, and a common way to make things permanently worse.
Service →Force-free
Training that achieves the result without pain, fear or intimidation — no prong collars, no shock, no pinning or shouting a dog down.
Service →Aversive
Anything a dog will work to avoid — a prong collar, a shock, a jerk on the lead, a shout — used to make a behaviour stop.
Service →Positive reinforcement
Adding something the dog wants immediately after a behaviour, so the behaviour happens more often.
Service →Marker
A sound — a click, or the word "yes" — that tells the dog the exact instant it got it right, and that payment is coming.
Service →Making it hold
Turning a behaviour that works in the kitchen into one that works on the street.
Proofing
Practising a behaviour across enough places, distractions and people that it stops being a kitchen trick.
Service →Shaping
Building a complicated behaviour by rewarding rough attempts first, then gradually only the better ones.
Service →Recall
Coming back when called, first time, including when something more interesting is happening.
Service →Poisoned cue
A word that has been followed by something unpleasant often enough that the dog now hesitates when it hears it.
Service →Jackpot
A much larger payment than usual, delivered for a genuinely hard success, so the dog knows which repetition mattered.
Service →Handing the leash back
The words that matter once the trainer stops coming.
Management
Changing the environment so the behaviour cannot happen while you are still training the behaviour you want instead.
Service →Decompression
Deliberate quiet time that lets a dog's stress load come back down, without which nothing else you do sticks.
Breed →Socialisation
Teaching a young dog that the ordinary world is unremarkable — not making it meet as many dogs and people as possible.
Service →Frustration greeter
A dog that lunges and screams at other dogs because it desperately wants to reach them, not because it wants them gone.
Service →Recognise your dog in any of these?
The free fifteen minutes is a call, not a sales pitch. We tell you which of these you are actually dealing with — and if you do not need us, we say that too.