Dog Training in Corstorphine, Edinburgh

Corstorphine is a comfortable place to own a dog, and that is precisely where the difficulty comes from. Most of the housing here has a garden, so a dog can get a good deal of its freedom without ever going anywhere demanding. Then you step out onto St John’s Road on a Saturday — narrow pavements, constant traffic, shoppers, buses pulling in — and discover the dog has no idea what to do, because it has never had to.

That is not a stubborn dog. It is a dog that has never practised the thing you are asking for. Which is also why training in a church hall does not solve it: a dog who is faultless in a quiet room and then loses the plot outside the shops has not learned anything you can use. We work one-to-one, starting in your own home and then moving out onto the streets, the hill and the routes you use every day, because that is where the behaviour has to hold.

A garden is a genuine advantage — toilet training is easier, a puppy can burn energy safely, and a dog that needs to decompress has somewhere to do it. But it quietly removes the daily street practice that a dog without one gets whether the owner plans it or not. The result is a dog who is relaxed and well-behaved at home and a different animal fifty yards down the road.

The fix is not more exercise. It is deliberate, structured exposure to the things the dog actually finds difficult, in the right order and at a distance the dog can handle, until they are no longer difficult. That takes a plan rather than simply walking further, and it is the bulk of what we do in this part of the city.

Corstorphine Hill is one of the best bits of green space in west Edinburgh and one of the hardest places to have a reliable recall. The paths wind, the trees break line of sight within seconds, and there is an enormous amount to chase, sniff and investigate. A recall that works in a garden, where you are the most interesting thing available, frequently evaporates the moment the dog has options.

So we build the recall properly first — a response the dog has actually learned rather than one that depends on the dog feeling like it — and then we proof it on the hill itself, in stages, with the distractions turned up gradually. The same goes for the narrow paths, where two dogs meet at close quarters with no room to step aside. That is a hard situation, and it is trainable.

Sessions are available across west Edinburgh — Corstorphine, Murrayfield, Balgreen, Carrick Knowe, Saughton, Clermiston, Drum Brae, South Gyle and the city centre — as well as the wider Lothians. If you are not sure whether you are in range, get in touch and ask; we cover most of the region.

Elsewhere in the city and beyond there are dedicated pages for Leith and north Edinburgh, Musselburgh and East Lothian, Dalkeith and Midlothian and Livingston and West Lothian.

Scott Blair is the founder of Family First Canine. His dogs have earned Best Puppy in Breed at Crufts 2020 and 1st Post Graduate Dog & Reserve CC at Crufts 2022, alongside a background in IGP and personal protection work.

That depth of experience matters just as much for a family pet in a Corstorphine semi as it does for a competition dog: it means your dog is read, understood and taught by someone who has produced dogs at the very highest level.

For everyday manners — lead walking, recall, settling — start with obedience training. If your dog is still very young, puppy training builds the foundations that make everything after it easier.

If the difficulty is lunging or barking at other dogs on a pavement or a woodland path, reactive and aggressive dog training deals with the underlying emotion first. If your dog guards food, toys or furniture, resource guarding training is the place to start, and if they cannot cope with being left, separation anxiety training addresses that directly. For a trained family or personal protection dog, that is handled separately and to a much higher standard of obedience.