Our Training Philosophy

Here at Hartmoor we truly believe in the partnership training ethos.
Training your dog is all about trust and relationship.
You and your dog are a team. We will show you how to be the leader your dog needs you to be so that you can guide them and work effectively as a team.

Dogs are amazing animals and we will demonstrate how to strengthen the bond you share.
The more we understand our dogs, the more enjoyable life is for us both.

Our training style and methods are based on understanding the canine mind and the way in which humans can communicate effectively with canines.

We use science based methods with a positive, reward based structure and aim to set our dogs up to succeed, anything else is inviting failure and it just isn’t fair to put our dogs in those situations.

We look to progress their abilities at the correct time, never to overwhelm our dogs.

All of our training is done at the appropriate age and development of the dog both physically and mentally.

We sign up to use industry best practice methods.

All of the training we do is bespoke, so depending on your specific training requirements we will get a plan put together to achieve your goals. All of our training plans are progressive, so if at a later date you decide that you’d like to do something else then it’s easy to improvise, adapt and develop a new plan. 

We start all of our training with our foundations training package, as a solid foundation is essential in order to progress, as the saying goes, “the house don’t fall when the bones are good” and then we move on to your own individual training plan. A lot of clients are satisfied with the foundations training, as it gives them a well mannered, obedient dog that they are able to handle confidently.

If you’d like to progress to doing some formal gundog training, again it’s personal preference on the plan and we’ll discuss all of your options, whether it’s some breed specific enrichment training, occasional working gundog, beating dog, picking up or a solid peg dog or if you’d like to compete in tests or trials we can put a plan together to achieve your goals.

Every element of our training plans are age and development appropriate, we understand the anatomy, physiology and psychological development of dogs and work with their care and welfare as our highest priority.

When the dogs are young we run 1-1 sessions on a 2 for 1 basis to ensure that you get the same value, we limit the intensity and duration of the session and allow plenty of breaks. If required we can travel to you and do in-home training so we can cover other types of training such as toilet training, crate training, doorway manners/steadiness etc as well as other exercises.

Our training venues are all outdoor venues so in extreme weather conditions we may have to cancel so we don’t run the risk of exposing your dog to illness or injury but we will endeavour to get an alternative appointment made available for you.

There are a lot of labels attached to dog training today, force free, fear free, pro trainer, positive only etc. etc.

I see it a little simpler than that, whatever label you want to give yourself, you’re either a good trainer or an ineffective trainer, some of whom are using certain on-trend labels to mislead clients, and have no place in the training industry.

If we had to give our training style a label, then positive and not permissive is probably the best way to describe what we do.