Looking Sideways
Sometimes the biggest changes don't begin by looking harder at the dog.
If someone had asked me a few years ago whether I'd one day be writing books, creating courses, building a Digital Library and spending my evenings thinking about how chickens gossip, I'd probably have laughed.
None of it was planned.
There wasn't a business strategy.
There wasn't a five-year plan.
There wasn't even a clear destination.
There was simply a growing collection of experiences that, looking back now, all seemed to be pointing in the same direction.
At the time, I just didn't realise it.
Charlie arrived in May 2023 and completely changed the way I looked at dogs.
He also changed the way I looked at myself.
Like many people bringing home a dog, I wanted to do everything right. I read. I researched. I listened. Charlie was seriously unwell when he arrived, spending around six months on medication recovering from kennel cough and pneumonia, followed by months of monitoring before he was finally discharged from the vets.
During that time I discovered Dog Listening.
Not as a career.
Not as a business.
Simply as another way of understanding the dog sitting in front of me.
It helped.
It encouraged me to slow down, observe more and communicate differently.
Most importantly, it reminded me that behaviour is often the result of something deeper.
Then, in October 2024, Elsie arrived.
Bringing a second dog into the home was exciting, but it also introduced a completely different set of questions.
Not questions about aggression.
Not questions about "fixing" behaviour.
Questions about everyday life.
How do two dogs learn to share a home?
How do they share people?
Food?
Space?
Routine?
Leadership?
To my surprise, I found there was far less practical guidance than I expected. There was plenty of information about individual behaviour problems, but much less about simply helping two dogs live calmly together from the very beginning.
That question stayed with me.
By January 2025 I had enrolled at the School for Professional Dog Listeners.
Not because I wanted to start a business.
Not because I wanted to become a trainer.
I wanted to deepen my own understanding and become better equipped to support rescue dogs through my volunteering.
At almost exactly the same time, I registered the name Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.
I wasn't building a company.
I simply loved the phrase and thought one day it might become something.
I had absolutely no idea what.
As my studies began in March, I also found myself spending more and more time volunteering and collaborating in rescue.
I met incredible people.
People giving up evenings, weekends and holidays because they genuinely cared about dogs.
People who celebrated every successful adoption and felt every disappointment when things didn't work out.
I still have enormous respect for that commitment.
But during those months I also found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
Not because people didn't care.
Quite the opposite.
Sometimes they cared so deeply that emotion made it difficult to step back and ask difficult questions.
Good intentions occasionally became rushed decisions.
Preparation was sometimes overshadowed by urgency.
Communication between people broke down.
Expectations didn't always match reality.
I began to notice something that quietly changed the way I thought.
Many of the biggest challenges weren't starting with the dogs.
They were beginning much earlier.
They were beginning with us.
Not because we wanted to get it wrong.
Because every single person I met genuinely wanted to get it right.
That included me.
As I continued learning, I often felt as though I was climbing a pyramid of knowledge.
Every answer led somewhere different.
Training.
Behaviour.
Nutrition.
Rescue.
Veterinary advice.
Enrichment.
Dog Listening.
Everyone had something valuable to offer.
Yet it wasn't always easy to understand where everything fitted together.
Sometimes it even felt as though different parts of the dog world were competing with one another when, in reality, they all wanted the same thing.
Healthier dogs.
Happier homes.
Stronger relationships.
Around the same time another idea quietly began to emerge.
Not another course.
Not another business.
A charity.
A different way of helping people and dogs.
That idea is still evolving today.
Then life interrupted everything.
An accident in the garden left me with a serious eye injury from a palm tree and, quite literally, forced me to stop.
At the time it was frustrating.
Looking back now, it may have been exactly what I needed.
For the first time in months I wasn't constantly moving from one task to the next.
I had time to think.
Really think.
Not just about Charlie.
Not just about Elsie.
Not even just about rescue.
I found myself asking a different question.
Why do we spend so much time helping people once things have gone wrong...
...but so little time helping them before they do?
There will always be dogs that need specialist behavioural support.
There will always be trainers, behaviourists, veterinary professionals and rescue organisations doing extraordinary work.
Their work matters.
But I couldn't help wondering what might happen if more people had access to calm, practical understanding before frustration set in.
Before relationships became strained.
Before rescue dogs were returned.
Before owners felt they had failed.
Before anyone started looking for a fix.
That thought became the foundation of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.
Not another training website.
Not another behaviour programme.
An ecosystem where people could begin wherever they were.
Before bringing home a puppy.
Before adopting a rescue.
While already living with a family dog.
When adding another dog to a home with an existing dog.
Or simply because they wanted to understand the animal already sleeping beside them.
That's why this blog and so many of our resources are free.
That's why we created a free rescue course.
That's why we produce publications, companion guides and learning experiences that people can explore at their own pace.
Not because everyone needs everything.
Because everyone starts somewhere different.
Looking back now, I don't think the biggest lesson I learned was Dog Listening itself.
It was something even simpler.
I stopped looking harder at dogs.
And started looking sideways.
At the environment.
At routines.
At communication.
At expectations.
At ourselves.
Because many of the answers we search for aren't hidden inside the behaviour at all.
They're quietly waiting in everything surrounding it.
Perhaps that's the greatest lesson Charlie and Elsie have taught me.
Dogs aren't trying to make life difficult.
Most are simply doing their very best to communicate in a world they didn't create.
Our role isn't to have every answer.
Our role is to remain curious.
To keep learning.
To question our assumptions.
To pause before reacting.
And every now and again...
...to stop looking directly at the problem.
And start looking sideways.
Russ
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