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By Anthony Thomas, Founder of The Oxford Dog Training Company
For many dog owners, training at home isn’t the difficult part. Their dog may walk beautifully on a quiet road, settle happily in the living room or respond immediately to familiar cues when there is very little happening around them. The challenge begins when they try to take those same skills into the real world, particularly when other dogs are present.
This can be especially difficult for dogs who become excited, frustrated, nervous or reactive around other dogs. The obvious solution might seem to be simply spending more time around them, but successful training requires more than exposure. To learn effectively, dogs need opportunities to experience situations at a level they can cope with, while their owners need enough time and space to observe what is happening and respond appropriately.
The Problem With Practising on Everyday Walks
An ordinary dog walk can be surprisingly difficult to use as a controlled training environment. You have no say over which dogs appear, how close they come or how their owners behave. A perfectly manageable training exercise can suddenly become much harder because another dog appears around a corner, somebody allows their dog to approach on an extending lead, or a well-meaning owner decides that the dogs should say hello.
For an owner already trying to manage a dog who finds these situations difficult, there is another complication: the social pressure of dealing with other people. You may know that your dog needs more distance, but moving away can feel awkward. You may be concentrating on subtle changes in your dog’s body language while somebody else is trying to start a conversation. Even explaining that your dog is in training can become another thing to manage at precisely the moment you need to be concentrating on your dog.
There is therefore an important difference between simply being around other dogs and having the opportunity to learn around other dogs. Creating the right environment can make that distinction possible.
The Value of Training With Owners Who Understand
Something changes when everybody in an environment understands why they are there. Nobody expects the dogs to meet, nobody is offended when another owner needs more space, and nobody thinks it strange if somebody changes direction or moves further away. Instead of worrying about what other people are thinking, owners can concentrate on the dog at the end of their lead.
That also means each dog can work at an appropriate level. For one dog, success might mean noticing another dog and remaining able to engage with their owner. Another may be ready to walk calmly nearby, while a third might be learning that seeing another dog doesn’t automatically mean greeting, playing, barking or reacting. The dogs may all be sharing the same training environment, but they don’t necessarily need to be doing the same thing.
This is particularly useful when working on calmness. Teaching a dog to settle in a quiet living room is valuable, but if we ultimately want that dog to remain settled when other dogs are nearby, the skill eventually needs to be practised in progressively more realistic situations. The same principle applies to walking, attention, engagement and many of the other behaviours owners want to rely upon in everyday life.
Creating Challenge Without Overwhelming the Dog
Good training is not about putting a dog into the most difficult situation possible and waiting for them to cope. It is about finding a level of challenge at which learning remains possible and then progressing appropriately.
Having other dogs present in a controlled environment gives us far more opportunities to do this than we would usually have on a normal walk. Distance can be increased or decreased, exercises can be adapted and dogs can be given time away from the activity when necessary. Instead of the environment dictating what happens next, training decisions can be based upon the individual dog.
It also gives owners an opportunity to become better observers. Often there are small changes before the obvious behaviour occurs: the dog’s movement changes, their attention shifts, their body becomes more tense or they become increasingly interested in something happening elsewhere. Learning to recognise those earlier moments can be enormously useful because it allows the owner to make decisions before their dog reaches the point where everything becomes considerably more difficult.
Why Spending a Whole Day Training Is Different
Most dog training naturally takes place in relatively short appointments or classes, and there are very good reasons for that. A full training day, however, offers something different. There is time not only to practise, but also to stop, observe, discuss what happened, allow dogs to recover and then return to the training later.
This creates a repeated cycle of practice, feedback and adjustment. An owner can try something with their dog, receive feedback, make a small change and then have another opportunity to put that change into practice. Questions also arise naturally throughout the day rather than having to be remembered for the next appointment.
That extended period together is one of the reasons I created the One-Day Calm Dog Workshop in Oxfordshire. Places are deliberately limited, and owners spend the day working with their own dogs alongside other owners who understand that every dog present is there to learn. The day combines practical work, demonstrations, individual feedback and real-time coaching.
Having Someone Else Watch Your Dog
There is another advantage to working with a trainer for an extended period that can be difficult to quantify. When you’re handling your own dog, you’re simultaneously thinking about the lead, your surroundings, the exercise you’re attempting, the other dogs present and what you should be doing next. It is very difficult to observe everything at once.
After more than a decade of working professionally with dogs, and more than 1,000 dogs into my career, much of my role during a day like this is simply to watch. I may notice a small change in body language, the point at which an exercise became slightly too difficult, an opportunity for engagement that passed unnoticed, or a moment when an owner responded particularly well and should repeat exactly what they just did.
Having a whole day means there is time to notice those details, discuss why they matter and then give the owner another opportunity to apply what they have learned. The aim isn’t for somebody to spend a day watching me train their dog; it is for them to finish the day better able to understand and work with their own dog.
An Opportunity That’s Difficult to Recreate
A one-day workshop cannot erase months or years of previous learning, and no responsible trainer should suggest that a complex behavioural problem can simply be fixed in a few hours. Lasting behavioural change still depends upon what happens in the weeks and months afterwards.
What a carefully managed day can provide is a combination that is surprisingly difficult for owners to recreate elsewhere: suitable dogs, understanding owners, a controlled environment, professional guidance and enough time to work without rushing the process. For dogs who find the presence of other dogs challenging, that can create opportunities for learning that are much harder to find during an ordinary walk.
Perhaps just as importantly, it gives owners the chance to discover what their dog is capable of when the conditions are right, and to take that understanding back into everyday life.
Anthony Thomas is a dog behaviour specialist and founder of Oxford Dog Training Company. His One-Day Calm Dog Workshop takes place at Shellgrove Farm in Horton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire. The next workshop takes place on Saturday 3rd October 2026.