Just a Dog Podcast

How do you talk to your vet about your dog, when you've only got a short appointment? This episode of Just a Dog Podcast looks at what your vet is looking for, why they ask the questions they ask, and when it's okay to push back or ask for a second opinion. Most of us walk into the vets with something we've noticed at home for weeks, about 15 minutes to explain it, and no idea what the bill will b...

A puppy with hair growing on his eyeball, a stranger with 21 dogs at home, and a loop of nylon called a gentle leader all turn up in this Off Lead episode. You’ll hear what the vet told the puppy’s guardian about the only way to fix his eye, the news story I came across the same day that made me think twice about 21 dogs in one home, and why an Oxford professor’s research on friendship has me wond...

A puppy with hair growing on his eyeball, a stranger with 21 dogs at home, and a loop of nylon called a gentle leader all turn up in this Off Lead episode. You’ll hear what the vet told the puppy’s guardian about the only way to fix his eye, the news story I came across the same day that made me think twice about 21 dogs in one home, and why an Oxford professor’s research on friendship has me wond...

When we buy a puppy, few of us think to ask how their mum got pregnant, who helped her give birth, or how many of her puppies survived. Stan Airey has been helping breeders and owners whelp their dogs for over 50 years, and in part 2 of Call the Midwoof he shows me the side of breeding that puppy buyers rarely get to see. He explains how he helps dogs through difficult births in breeders’ and owne...

Introducing Off Lead, a new series on Just a Dog Podcast. Every second Monday, its just me, thinking out loud about what I’ve been noticing about dogs, and humans. In this episode, I explain why I’m doing it, then read my essay, Hello, Maggie, about the bulldog who lives downstairs. She meets me on the stairs with a whole-body wag, and I love seeing her. But my heart aches every time I pass by her...

Nothing in this episode is advice. If your dog is pregnant, speak to your vet. If your dog went into labour tonight, who would you call? Stan Airey is one of many people across the UK who'd answer that call. I first came across him in whelping groups on Facebook, where he's often answering people's questions through the night, and I reached out hoping he'd tell me about a part of the dog world I k...

Julie Strang is a Hollywood animal trainer and founder of Cue the Dogs. She has trained animals for film and television since 2000, including Dog, John Wick 3 and 4, Fallout, and Lioness, as well as more than 200 national ad campaigns. She now teaches guardians how to train their dogs for the camera and get paid for brand work. In this episode, we talk about how dogs get cast, who owns them, where...

Most people arrive in animal welfare believing that if they work hard enough they can save everybody. Jessica Dolce spent 20 years working with dogs, from dog walking in Philadelphia to animal sheltering in Maine, before her own burnout sent her looking for the language to describe what was happening to her. She now teaches that language for a living, as a Certified Compassion Fatigue and Grief Ed...

Toby Craze works with street dogs and with rescue dogs brought here from abroad. He traces what the trip from Romania or Thailand does to a dog, long before anyone talks about settling in. The conversation covers who checks a dog before they go on transport, what the first week looks like from the dog's side, and why the urge to walk them and show them the house can backfire. Toby runs Craze Dog T...

In the mid 1990s, Julia Robertson had a 6 month old Labrador who couldn't lift his head. Nothing showed up on the imaging, nobody could name the problem, and she was told the kindest thing left was to put him to sleep. Then a vet came out, took one look and said he'd hurt his neck. Julia started asking him to lift his head for a biscuit, and within a week he could do it on his own. The injury had...

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...

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 o...

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 anoth...

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 nob...

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 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;...

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 fro...

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 sensit...

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...

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...

Sally Muir is one of the UK’s most prolific painters of dogs. Her books A Dog a Day, Old Dogs, and Rescue Dogs are published by Pavilion. Her work has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, including Elderly Dog (2018) and Hound (2019), and she won the Holburne Portrait Prize in 2012.She co-hosts The Dog Show in Brighton with Joanna Osborne, her business partner of over 40 years. T...

A dog screaming during a dog training session in a pet store aisle set something in motion that became a 20,000-member global movement. Niki Tudge went in for supplies and came out in tears, and the Pet Professional Guild exists because of what she heard that day. That moment crystallised something she had already suspected: that the dog training industry was broken, unregulated, and unlikely to f...

There's a dog asleep on your sofa right now, or there was this morning. And there's a reasonable chance something in your wardrobe is made from dog leather. Abigail Forsyth is Campaign Manager for PETA Asia , leading investigations and campaigns across the region to expose animal exploitation. In this conversation, she talks through the industries designed to stay invisible: the dog leather trade...

This week, I sit down with renowned American bioethicist and author Dr. Jessica Pierce. Jessica has spent decades writing about dogs. Not from our side of the leash, but from theirs. And what emerges is both humbling and fascinating: a world of sound we can't hear, smells we can't fathom, and a daily sensory experience that is nothing like our own. Think about your home for a moment, but through y...

In this episode, I speak with clinical animal behaviourist Tom Candy BSc Hons MSc CCAB CSBS CDBC CBATI KA, whose career began in rescue at 15 and has spanned 15 years of frontline shelter work, behaviour support and staff development. Tom has worked across multiple rehoming centres within the UK’s largest dog welfare organisation. He now supports clinical animal behaviourists in their professional...