Well, our little trial run seems to have worked! 😂 If you missed today’s live, you can catch the recording here. We chatted about calming supplements, helping hypervigilant dogs genuinely switch off and settle, evening energy bursts, and making sense of food and treat choices. I’ll create a new discussion before our next live where you can pop in any questions you’d like me to cover. Thanks to everyone who joined me today! 🤎

Our Busy Pawz Community Chat is on tomorrow at 12:30pm! If you’ve got a question about your dog that you’d like me to chat about, pop it in the comments below. It can be about behaviour, training, something you’re struggling with, or even something you’re just curious about. And if you can’t make it live, that’s completely fine — leave your question anyway and you can catch up afterwards. This is our very first live Community Chat, so paws crossed there are no tech difficulties! 😂🐾 See you tomorrow! Deb 🐾 P.S. I’ve moved tomorrow’s chat a little later to 12:30pm. You should have received an updated reminder from Skool with the new time.

🐼❤️ I’ve decided to share my fearful rescue dog’s story a little more widely, after a few people told me that our experience might help others too. This is Panda. She came to me from a rescue in Ukraine, frightened of a world she was somehow supposed to learn was safe. Our journey hasn’t looked like the rescue story I imagined. Progress has sometimes been incredibly small, and I’ve had to learn to see achievements that other people might not even notice. I started writing about our experience mainly to make sense of what we were going through. But somewhere along the way, I realised that while I was trying to help Panda heal, the experience was changing me too. I know there are people in this group living with fearful and traumatised rescue dogs, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to share our story here. Sometimes it helps simply to know that somebody else is going through something similar. But I also hope our story can help people understand these dogs a little better. When you live with a deeply fearful dog, you quickly realise how easily their behaviour can be misunderstood — why they can’t “just” do the things other dogs do, or why something that looks so simple from the outside can be enormous for them. I think there’s value in talking about that too. ❤️ We’re still very much in the middle of our journey — I’m writing it as we live it. 🐾 Parts 1 and 2 of Panda’s Healing Journey are now published on Substack, and you can read them both here: 👉 https://substack.com/@rimapanda I’d love to hear from anyone whose rescue journey has looked nothing like they expected. ❤️

I've just added a brand-new guide to the Classroom — THE GOLDEN YEARS: Understanding Your Dog as They Grow Older. Five of my six dogs are now in their senior years, and one thing they've taught me is that there really isn't one way that dogs grow older. Some changes are obvious, while others — particularly changes in behaviour — can take us completely by surprise. This guide looks at some of the changes you might notice as your dog gets older, including behaviour and cognitive changes, along with practical ways to adapt everyday life and help them stay comfortable and keep enjoying the things they love. 🐶 THE GOLDEN YEARS is available in the free Guides Library for the next week, so head over to the Classroom → Guides Library and you'll find it waiting for you. After that, it'll be moving into the Premium Guides Library. If you've got a senior dog, I'd love to know their name and age in the comments. Mine apparently all got old when I wasn't looking! 🥹

Have you ever had one of those evenings where your dog seems to have completely lost the plot? They're zooming around the house, barking at everything, pestering everyone, can't settle and apparently have forgotten everything they've ever learned. It's easy to look at that dog and think they need MORE. Another walk, a game, some training, something to burn off all that energy. But what if the little scallywag is actually overtired? That's exactly what we've been exploring in Naughty or Sleepy? — and this is where I'd love to hear about your dog. Maybe you've started noticing how deeply they actually sleep during the day, what tends to interrupt them or whether they have a particular time when they turn into a tiny gremlin. 😂 Maybe you've started the 7-Day Sleep Experiment and spotted something you hadn't noticed before. Or perhaps you've finished the whole thing and now have a question. 💤 How well does your dog actually sleep? 😈 Do they have a particular time of day when they tend to go a little feral? 👀 Have you noticed any connection between their sleep and their behaviour? 📝 If you're doing the Sleep Experiment, has anything surprised you so far? And if there's something you're struggling with when it comes to sleep — your dog's sleep, not yours personally; I'm definitely not qualified for that! 😂 — pop it in the comments too. Share what you're noticing, ask questions as you go, or come back after you've finished the Sleep Experiment and tell us how you went. 💤