Dog Training in Portobello, Edinburgh

Portobello has something almost nowhere else in Edinburgh has: two miles of sand and a promenade at the end of the street. It is the reason a lot of people move here with a dog, and it is also the reason a lot of people end up calling us. A beach is not a gentler version of a park — it is the single most demanding environment most Edinburgh dogs will ever be asked to behave in.

On a warm Saturday there are loose dogs in every direction, children running, food dropped on the sand, gulls lifting off at random, bikes and scooters on the prom and open water pulling at anything that likes to swim. A dog whose recall has only ever been tested somewhere quiet has no chance there, and that is not a failure of obedience. It has simply never been asked the question. We work one-to-one, starting in your own home and street and then moving out onto the prom, the beach and Figgate Park — because that is where the behaviour has to hold.

Recall is the request we get most often in Portobello, and the honest answer is that a recall built in a garden and then tried on the beach in July will fail. Not because the dog is disobedient, but because everything around it is more interesting than you are, and nobody ever taught the dog otherwise in that setting. Worse, every time the dog ignores the call and gets away with it, the habit gets a little stronger.

So we build the recall properly first — a trained response rather than one that depends on the dog feeling co-operative — somewhere the dog can actually think. Then we take it back onto the sand in stages, turning the distraction up gradually: the quiet end at eight in the morning before the busy middle at two in the afternoon. The same staged approach works for chasing. Chasing gulls or bolting at the water is self-rewarding, which is exactly why shouting has no effect on it. We work on interrupting the pattern and on giving the dog something that genuinely pays better, and we do it where the gulls are rather than in a field where there is nothing to chase.

A lot of Portobello housing is tenement flats and converted houses, and dogs living in them have a different set of needs from a dog with a back garden. On the plus side they get far more street practice, because every toilet break is a walk. What usually needs building instead is the indoor half: settling properly in a small space, handling a shared stair and a close where neighbours and their dogs appear without warning, and not reacting to everything audible through a wall or a floor.

The promenade brings its own problem, which is width. It is narrow, it is busy, and when another dog comes the other way there is often nowhere to step aside — which is difficult for a reactive dog and unfair to ask of one that has not been prepared. We work on the emotion underneath the reaction first, somewhere there is room to create distance, and only then take it onto the prom. Trying to fix reactivity in the one place the dog cannot escape is how most home attempts go wrong.

Sessions are available across east Edinburgh — Portobello, Joppa, Duddingston, Craigentinny, Brunstane, Willowbrae, Niddrie 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, Corstorphine and west 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 Portobello flat 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 the prom, 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.