Emma runs Lighten Up Dog Training, supporting clients whose dogs struggle with all the BIG emotions. She helps caregivers, behaviour consultants and trainers work effectively, empathically and efficiently with dogs, both online and in person.

With a background in psychology and education, she qualified to teach in 1995 and has worked with children, adolescent, and adult human learners, as well as learners of other species since then. That’s included 1 to 1 sessions as well as leading conferences with over a thousand delegates at the Emirates stadium in London. It’s included poets, librarians, scientists, headteachers, kittens, terriers, ferrets, beagles, and shepherd dogs. It’s her aim to make learning irresistible to all.

She has been working in French animal shelters since 2014 and continues to support kennel-based and foster-based rescues in SW France, having spent 6 years as an elected trustee and behaviour consultant in one of France’s largest open-access shelters. She now works across Western Europe.

She is an advocate for client-centred approaches with her human clients as well as her canine clients. ‘Compliance’ is practically the dirtiest word she knows, and she knows lots of dirty words. Working with animals on a growth agenda in a model where their human caregivers are expected to ‘comply’ was the reason she wrote Client-Centred Dog Training for dog trainers who wanted to use less coercive processes with their humans. She truly believes R+ is for humans too.

Emma’s private clients come to her with a range of problems where bites, growls, snarls, and snapping have become the norm. Many come because of legal, familial, cultural, or social pressure to adapt. She also provides support for dogs who are sensitive to the world and struggle to regulate their emotions in ways that are healthy and growth-promoting. Her specialist subjects are fear, impulsivity and frustration, especially since these often fuel fear-based or predatory behaviour in ways that can have significant fallout. She also works online and in person as a tutor to dog trainers and behaviour consultants.

She lives with her rescue Belgian shepherd, Lidy. Both are navigating a world where they were shouty, opinionated teenagers living outside of the system, and now find themselves in a middle age that is bewildering and thrilling in equal measures.