Just a Dog Podcast
Just a Dog Podcast questions the inherited beliefs and industry influences that shape how we care for our dogs. Hosted by Nadine, a regular dog guardian and adopter of a Spanish galga, the bi-weekly show explores welfare, training, and accepted norms with knowledgeable guests. It aims to challenge assumptions and serve the individual dog.
Episodes
Dog mating, artificial insemination and whelping in the UK, with Stan Airey | Part 2
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 owner
Off Lead | Hello, Maggie.
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
Dog Whelping UK | Inside the unregulated world of dog whelping and canine fertility clinics | Part 1
Nothing in this episode is advice. If your dog is pregnant, speak to your vet.Stan Airey says he has been helping dogs give birth for over 50 years. He is not a vet and has no formal qualification, and even if he wanted one, it doesn't exist because professional whelping is not a recognised profession in the UK.And yet there are over 400 known canine fertility clinics in the UK, some of which also
Dogs at work | What content creators can learn from Hollywood dog trainers | Julie Strang | Cue the Dogs
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
Animal rescue burnout | The signs of compassion fatigue rescue workers miss | Jessica Dolce
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
Myths and best practice | What a rescue dog from abroad needs | Toby Craze | Craze Dog Training
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 D
The invisible injury | Why your dog's pain never shows up on a scan | Julia Robertson, Galen Myotherapy
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 inj
Knowing their normal | The power of observing your dog(s) | Jo Middleton
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 f
Love isn't enough | What really shapes a rescue dog's behaviour | Trish McMillan
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
Running isn't racing | Does a greyhound love to run or race?
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 aft
Pain wears disguises | Your reactive dog is probably in pain | Kerry Sheldrick
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,
Grief is love | Why losing a dog can hurt the most | Lisa Waggoner
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 Universit
The invisible extreme | Why the border collie is an extreme breed too | Ellen Greenwood-Sole | The Urban Herder
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;
Aggression is communication | What your dog's growl is saying | Michael Shikashio | AggressiveDog.com
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
Why dogs react | Stress, trauma, and the canine brain | Daniel Shaw | Forensic Dog Behaviourist
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 mor
Behaviour is information | Why what we read as 'bad' behaviour is usually a dog in pain | Dr Lisa Radosta DVM, DACVB
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 o
Cashmere from dogs | Turning discarded dog undercoat into luxury yarn | Sebastian Salvat, Chiora
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 y
BONUS | If you love dogs, come to Brighton this May | Sally Muir
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
Consumers fix industries | The pet owners changing how dogs are trained | Niki Tudge | Pet Professional Guild
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
Dog leather looks exactly like cow leather. Did you know that? | Abigail Forsyth, PETA Asia
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
Good owners, unhappy dogs | The gap between good intentions and what dogs actually need | Dr. Jessica Pierce | Bioethicist & Author
Most of us try to do right by our dog(s). The problem is that almost everything we've been taught about how to do that was built around human needs, human comfort and human expectations.My guest for today's episode is Dr. Jessica Pierce, a world-renowned bioethicist and author of 13 books on animal ethics and moral philosophy. She's spent nearly two decades writing about dogs and explo
Dog rescue starts before the shelter | Tom Candy on prevention and responsibility
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
Your dog isn't broken | What no one told you about behaviour | Andrew Hale
You've done the classes. Watched the videos. Tried the tools. And your dog is still struggling. What if the answer isn't another training method?Andrew Hale is a certified canine behaviourist with a background in human psychology. He specialises in dogs labelled aggressive, reactive, difficult or broken. And he'll tell you straight: they're none of those things. They're trying
Fluent in dog | Why dogs need understanding not control | Marc Bekoff | Jane Goodall Institute
What does it really mean to understand a dog?In this conversation, Dr Marc Bekoff explores how dogs experience the world and what helps them thrive emotionally, socially, and psychologically.Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the world’s leading voices on animal emotions. He is a long time collaborator and close friend of the late Dr Jane Goodall thr
Dog behaviour science | How biology, environment and human relationships shape dogs | Professor Ádám Miklósi | Eötvös Loránd University
In this episode of Just A Dog Podcast, I speak with Ádám Miklósi, Professor of Ethology and one of the most influential researchers in dog behaviour and cognition.Professor Miklósi is the founder of the Family Dog Project in Hungary and has spent decades studying how dogs think, learn, and form relationships with humans. His work has shaped much of what we now understand about dog human attachment
Care is political | Changing the systems that harm dogs | Dr. Marc Abraham OBE
What does it actually take to change a law that harms dogs?In this episode of Just A Dog Podcast, I speak with Dr Marc Abraham OBE, the veterinary surgeon and campaigner behind Lucy’s Law, which banned the third party sale of puppies and kittens in England.Marc shares the moment that shifted him from treating individual dogs to challenging the system itself, how grassroots campaigning really works
Pedigree dog health | What we normalised without noticing | Extreme Conformation | Marisa Heath | APGAW | Innate Health Assessment
Marisa Heath has spent over 15 years working inside UK Parliament to improve the lives of dogs. She runs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW), leads the Canine and Feline Sector Group, and co-founded the Innate Health Assessment, a tool that helps people recognise extreme conformation before buying a puppy or choosing which dogs to breed from. Extreme conformation refers to
When optics dominate | The fight to protect Morocco’s dogs before FIFA World Cup 2030 | Les Ward MBE | Debbie Wilson | IAWPC
Morocco agreed in 2019 to manage free roaming dogs through catch, neuter, vaccinate and return. That agreement was never made law, and many regions continued killing instead. Since Morocco secured co hosting rights for the FIFA World Cup 2030, the pace and scale of killings have increased. The IAWPC has documented shootings, poisonings and mass removals near proposed stadium cities including Tangi
Building safety together | Understanding fear, trust and the weight of expectation | Sam Walker-Arends | Sam the Dog Coach
This episode looks at what happens when a dog’s inner world does not match the life we imagine for them. Sam Walker-Arends is a force free trainer who works with dogs carrying fear, uncertainty or history in their bodies, and our conversation keeps returning to one truth. Every dog is an individual. Their needs, thresholds and ways of feeling safe are never the same.We talk about Ivy the ex racer
Tools or companions | Activism for Spain’s forgotten Galgos and Podencos | Gemma & Adva | Free Spanish Hounds & Hope for Podencos
Every February, as Spain’s hunting season ends, thousands of Galgos and Podencos are discarded. Some are abandoned, some are killed, and most are simply forgotten. They are fast, intelligent and deeply sensitive, yet still treated as disposable tools rather than sentient companions.In this week’s episode, I speak with Gemma and Adva, the organisers behind Free Spanish Hounds, a UK-based movement t
Dog rescue reality | What really happens behind the scenes and the hope that keeps it going | Jenna Miller | Spirit of the Dog Rescue
In this episode, I speak with Jenna Miller, Chair of the Board of Trustees at Spirit of the Dog Rescue, an independent charity run entirely by volunteers.With more than fifteen years of experience in animal care and rescue, Jenna offers an honest look at what really happens behind the scenes — far beyond the social media snapshots and success stories we usually see.We talk about what it takes to r
Power, pain, and perception | What dogs teach us about control, care, and the systems that shape us | Rose Bao | RoseK9Behaviourist
In this episode, I speak with Rose Bao, a canine behaviourist and counsellor whose work explores the emotional lives of dogs and the systems that have taught us to value obedience over understanding. Rose brings a rare mix of science, empathy and cultural reflection to the conversation, drawing on her background in biomedical engineering and her current research in Clinical Animal Behaviour at the
The Dogs We Mirror | Guilt, Grief, and the Inner Work They Reveal | Hannah Greeno | Canine Facilitated Coaching
In this episode I speak with Hannah Greeno, founder of Canine Needs and the practice of Canine Facilitated Coaching. With over 15 years’ experience in behaviour and training, as well as volunteering with Blue Cross Pet Loss Support, Hannah brings a rare perspective on how our dogs mirror back the parts of ourselves we often ignore.We explore how guilt, grief, projection and loneliness show up in o
Breeding, preservation and the hidden costs of our choices | Hasan Yiğit Aktaş | Yume Canine Academy
This week I am joined by Hasan Yiğit Aktaş, an animal behaviourist and breeder of primitive and spitz breeds such as Akitas, Shibas and Shikokus.Hasan’s path into breeding began by accident, yet over time he has combined academic study in animal behaviour with the lived experience of generations of family breeding and hands-on work with horses and dogs.We explore what it might mean to breed for pr
Fostering as an antidote to disposable dog culture | Lisa | Long-term foster carer
In this episode I sit down with Lisa, a long term foster carer for Galgos, Podencos, and mixed breeds to explore what fostering really means in the middle of today’s rescue crisis.Lisa shares the quiet routines that help traumatised dogs begin to trust again and the reality of letting them go so that another dog can take their place.But this is about more than one person’s foster story. It is abou
Tools, Training and Trust | A Balanced Trainer's Defense of Aversives | Jack Tutty | J&P Canine Academy | Part 2
❗️ This episode discusses various training approaches. We believe examining different perspectives contributes to thoughtful decision-making for dog owners.__Jack Tutty from J&P Canine Academy returns to defend the most controversial tools in dog training, arguing they're kinder than alternatives we accept without question.This conversation challenges how we think about training tools and ani
The tools we use | A balanced trainer's perspective on dogs, control, and controversy | Jack Tutty | J&P Canine Academy | Part 1
❗️ This episode discusses various training approaches. We believe examining different perspectives contributes to thoughtful decision-making for dog owners.-Jack Tutty from J&P Canine Academy works with severe behavioural cases and trains competition dogs using methods many find controversial.In this two-part conversation, we explore the divide in dog training - and what it reveals about how w
Taking the UK Government to Court | XL Bully Ban | Sophie Coulthard | Don't Ban Me License Me | DBMLM
When the UK government announced the XL Bully ban in September 2023, Sophie Coulthard went from posting dog training videos on TikTok to founding a grassroots movement that would raise over £200,000 and challenge the government in court.In this episode, Sophie reveals what really happens when breed-specific legislation becomes law - the hidden consequences that go far beyond what most people imagi
Dogs deserve better | When good intentions meet broken systems | Nina May | Wunderdog Magazine
In Episode 4, Nina May, founder of Wunderdog magazine, exposes the maddening contradictions in dog welfare. You can impulse-buy a puppy on Instagram and have it delivered like a takeaway. Yet rescue charities reject potential adopters for not having gardens in London. The system makes it easier to buy a poorly bred puppy from a dodgy dealer than to save a dog's life from a rescue.Nina herself - wh
Art as advocacy | How Art Can Change the Way We See Rescue Dogs | Elena Marchi | Pawtiqe
Can beautiful photography change hearts and minds about rescue dogs? Elena Marchi, the award-winning photographer behind Pawtiqe, believes it can.With a unique monochrome approach, Elena creates elegant, minimalistic black and white portraits that celebrate the subtle art of being a dog in London. After several failed greyhound adoption attempts, Elena is committed to raising awareness around thes
When caring hurts | Protecting Your Mental Health While Advocating for Dogs | Dr. Tara Quinn
We've all been there scrolling through social media, witnessing questionable advice or practices, and feeling that familiar surge of helplessness and frustration.With so much suffering in the world right now, from global conflicts to environmental destruction, many of us are experiencing what some are calling "global mourning."When we're already carrying this collective sadness, how do we honour o
The question that changed everything
What happens when a dog's grief forces you to question everything you thought you knew about dogs? Host Nadine shares the moment that changed her assumptions about canine emotions and launched her down a rabbit hole of discovery that's taken her from Parliament to greyhound tracks to rescue centres across the UK.After witnessing a black cockapoo named Lola mourn the death of her father, Nadine rea
