Beyond Obedience | Dog Training, Dog Body Language, Anxious Dogs, Scared Dogs, Reactive Dogs
Tracy Franken- Dog Trainer, Vet Tech, Dog Lover, 🐾

Latest episode
253 episodes
- Hey Dog Lover 🐾
Have you ever wondered if YOU might be the reason your dog isn't getting better?
Maybe you've tried the training, followed the advice, bought the equipment, and done everything you thought you weresupposed to do.
And yet, your dog is still struggling.
And somewhere along the way, you start wondering whether you're doing something wrong. Whether you're making things worse. Or whether your dog might actually be better off with somebody else.
Ouch. That's a tough place to find yourself.
In this episode, we're having a conversation that I think an awful lot of dog lovers need to hear.
We're talking about the guilt, the second-guessing, and the pressure we put on ourselves when life with our dogs doesn't look the way we imagined.
We'll explore the difference between taking responsibility and taking the blame, why struggling with your dog doesn't automatically mean you're failing them, and how a little curiosity can help you start seeing things differently.
And I'm sharing one of my favourite questions to ask when things aren't going quite the way we'd hoped:
How interesting!
Because being part of what's happening doesn't mean you're the problem. It means you have an opportunity to be part of what changes.
And maybe, just maybe, you're not the reason your dog can't get better.
Maybe you're one of the reasons they can.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Tracy xoxox
RESOURCES
🐾 Join me for the FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp!
October 20th, 21st & 22nd
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
🐾 Take the Dogonality Quiz!
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
🐾 Read the Beyond Obedience Blog!
https://beyondobedience.ca/blog
CONNECT WITH ME!
Contact → info@beyondobedience.ca
Podcast → https://beyondobedience.ca/podcast
Connect → Living Beyond Obedience Facebook Community
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Resources → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Merch → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/store
🐾 NEXT STEPS 👣
Step 1: Join the free Living Beyond Obedience community and connect with other dog lovers who want to understand their dogs, build better partnerships, and enjoy more of life together.
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Step 2: Take the Dogonality Quiz to discover how your dog's unique personality shapes the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world.
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Step 3: Ready to stop guessing what to do when your dog is struggling? Join me for the completely FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp, happening October 20th, 21st & 22nd.
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
Music Credit 🎶: Shawn Trotter
http://www.shawntrotter.com - Hey Dog Lover 🐾
When did living with your dog stop being fun?
Maybe you got a dog because you pictured walks, adventures, companionship, road trips, or quiet nights curled up together. But somewhere along the way, life became less about enjoying your dog and more about managing them.
Who’s coming over? Which route can we walk? What happens if we see another dog? Can I bring them? Should I leave them home? What if something goes wrong?
And little by little, your world together starts getting smaller.
In this episode, we’re talking about what happens when managing your dog begins to take over your relationship—and how to start finding your way back to actually enjoying life together.
Because the answer isn’t necessarily throwing your dog into bigger, harder situations and hoping for the best.
If your world has gotten smaller, start small and build out.
I’ll give you some simple ways to start reconnecting with your dog at home, in your backyard, and eventually out in the world—while paying attention to what your dog actually enjoys and building from the places where you’re already successful together.
Because the goal isn’t to create a dog who can go everywhere and do everything.
The goal is to build a life that you and your dog actually enjoy living together.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Tracy xoxox
🐾 NEXT STEPS 👣
🐾 Join me for the FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp! October 20th, 21st & 22nd
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
🐾 Take the Dogonality Quiz!
https://beyondobedience.ca/quiz
🐾 Read the Beyond Obedience Blog!
https://beyondobedience.ca/blog
RESOURCES
Contact → info@beyondobedience.ca
Podcast → https://beyondobedience.ca/podcast
Connect → Living Beyond Obedience Facebook Community
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Resources → https://beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Merch → https://beyondobedience.ca/store
CONNECT WITH ME!
Step 1: Join the free Living Beyond Obedience community and connect with other dog lovers who want to understand their dogs, build better partnerships, and enjoy more of life together.
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Step 2: Take the Dogonality Quiz to discover how your dog’s unique personality shapes the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world.
https://beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Step 3: Ready to stop guessing what to do when your dog is struggling? Join me for the completely FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp, happening October 20th, 21st & 22nd.
👉 https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
Music Credit 🎶: Shawn Trotter
http://www.shawntrotter.com/ - Hey Dog Lover 🐾
Does your dog have an amazing walk one day... only to completely lose it over what seems like the exact same thing the next?
Find yourself wondering how your dog could handle something beautifully yesterday but struggle with it today?
Does the unpredictability leave you questioning whether you’re actually making progress at all?
In this episode, we’re talking about why your dog can be fine one day and reactive the next — and why that doesn’t necessarily mean anything has gone wrong.
Because what looks like the same situation to us may not be the same situation to our dogs at all.
Something smells different. Something sounds different. The other dog is moving differently. Your dog feels different. You feel different. And sometimes there are things affecting the interaction that we will never even know about.
We’ll talk about why a great day doesn’t guarantee tomorrow will look the same, why a difficult day doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made, and how to stop turning every reaction into a story about what you did wrong.
Because the good days give us information.
And the hard days give us information too.
Instead of immediately thinking, “We’re back at square one,” we can get curious.
How interesting. What’s different today?
Maybe you’ll figure it out.
Maybe you won’t.
Either way, you can stop comparing the dog standing in front of you today to the dog you had yesterday...
and ask the dog again.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Tracy xoxox
RESOURCES
🐾 Join me for the FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp!
October 20th, 21st & 22nd
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
🐾 Take the Dogonality Quiz!
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
🐾 Read the Beyond Obedience Blog!
https://beyondobedience.ca/blog
CONNECT WITH ME!
Contact → info@beyondobedience.ca
Podcast → https://beyondobedience.ca/podcast
Connect → Living Beyond Obedience Facebook Community
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Resources → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Merch → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/store
🐾 NEXT STEPS 👣
Step 1: Join the free Living Beyond Obedience community and connect with other dog lovers who want to understand their dogs, build better partnerships, and enjoy more of life together.
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Step 2: Take the Dogonality Quiz to discover how your dog’s unique personality shapes the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world.
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Step 3: Ready to stop guessing what to do when your dog is struggling? Join me for the completely FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp, happening October 20th, 21st & 22nd.
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
Music Credit 🎶: Shawn Trotter
http://www.shawntrotter.com 245 | What Are You Missing When You Walk Your Dog? Behind the Scenes Coaching with Lynn
05/10/2026 | 30 mins.Hey Dog Lover 🐾
Ever feel like you’re trying to do ALL the right things on a walk with your dog, but something still isn’t quite working?
Wonder what you might be missing in those tiny moments before your dog reacts, pulls, worries, or gets stuck on something in the environment?
What if the answer isn’t another training technique — but learning to see what’s actually happening between you and your dog?
In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of a real coaching call where I watched video of one of my students walking her dog.
And this is one of my favourite things to do because when we slow these everyday interactions down, we start seeing things that are almost impossible to notice when you’re the one actually holding the leash.
We’re looking at body position, movement, timing, where the dog’s attention really is, what happens when we add pressure or create space, and even what can happen when your dog decides they need to poop at exactly the wrong moment.
But this isn’t about finding everything you’re doing “wrong.”
It’s about learning to see the conversation.
Because there isn’t always a perfect sequence of steps to follow. Sometimes we try something, watch what our dog tells us, adjust, and try again.
And the better we get at noticing those tiny moments, the less we have to rely on somebody else telling us the “right” thing to do.
We can start asking the dog in front of us instead.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Tracy xoxox
RESOURCES
🐾 Join me for the FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp!
October 20th, 21st & 22nd
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
🐾 Take the Dogonality Quiz!
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
🐾 Read the Beyond Obedience Blog!
https://beyondobedience.ca/blog
CONNECT WITH ME!
Contact → info@beyondobedience.ca
Podcast → https://beyondobedience.ca/podcast
Connect → Living Beyond Obedience Facebook Community
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Resources → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Merch → https://www.beyondobedience.ca/store
🐾 NEXT STEPS 👣
Step 1: Join the free Living Beyond Obedience community and connect with other dog lovers who want to understand their dogs, build better partnerships, and enjoy more of life together.
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Step 2: Take the Dogonality Quiz to discover how your dog’s unique personality shapes the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world.
https://www.beyondobedience.ca/quiz
Step 3: Ready to stop guessing what to do when your dog is struggling? Join me for the completely FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp, happening October 20th, 21st & 22nd.
https://beyondobedience.ca/bootcamp
Music Credit 🎶: Shawn Trotter
http://www.shawntrotter.com- Hey Dog Lover 🐾
Does one bad reaction from your dog leave you wondering what you did wrong?
Do you find yourself embarrassed, frustrated, or worried about what everyone else thinks when your dog loses it?
What if progress with your reactive dog isn’t only about whether your dog reacts — but about what happens at your end of the leash too?
In this episode, we’re talking about a kind of progress with reactive dogs that we don’t talk about nearly enough: learning to trust yourself.
I’m sharing a real-life story from one of my students that reminded me just how much can change even when our dogs still have difficult moments. We’ll talk about why confidence doesn’t mean knowing your dog will never react, how too much conflicting advice can leave you second-guessing every decision you make, and why learning to ask the dog can help you stop searching for the perfect answer and start trusting yourself to figure out what to do next.
Because maybe progress isn’t getting to the point where nothing ever goes wrong.
Maybe it’s knowing that when something does, you can handle it.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Tracy xoxox
🐾 NEXT STEPS 👣
🐾 Join me for the FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp!
October 20th, 21st & 22nd
BeyondObedience.ca/bootcamp
🐾 Take the Dogonality Quiz!
BeyondObedience.ca/quiz
🐾 Read the Beyond Obedience Blog!
BeyondObedience.ca/blog
RESOURCES
Contact → info@beyondobedience.ca
Podcast → BeyondObedience.ca/podcast
Connect → Living Beyond Obedience Facebook Community
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Resources → BeyondObedience.ca/quiz
Merch → BeyondObedience.ca/store
CONNECT WITH ME!
Step 1: Join the free Living Beyond Obedience community and connect with other dog lovers who want to understand their dogs, build better partnerships, and enjoy more of life together.
https://facebook.com/groups/LivingBeyondObedience
Step 2: Take the Dogonality Quiz to discover how your dog’s unique personality shapes the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world.
BeyondObedience.ca/quiz
Step 3: Ready to stop guessing what to do when your dog is struggling? Join me for the completely
FREE CALM DOWN, DOG! Bootcamp, happening October 20th, 21st & 22nd.
👉 BeyondObedience.ca/bootcamp
Music Credit 🎶: Shawn Trotter
ShawnTrotter.com
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About Beyond Obedience | Dog Training, Dog Body Language, Anxious Dogs, Scared Dogs, Reactive Dogs
Do you wish you could enjoy life with your dog again?
Are you struggling with a reactive, fearful, anxious, or misunderstood dog?
Do walks, visitors, or everyday situations leave you feeling stressed, frustrated, or embarrassed?
I'm Tracy Franken, a retired vet tech turned dog trainer. I discovered the secret to a life of ease with my dogs; Through trust-based training, and a deeper understanding of dog behaviour, I'll help you build confidence, strengthen your relationship, and create a dog you can trust in the real world.
Because lasting change starts with understanding the dog you love.
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- Stations and podcasts to bookmark
- Stream via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
- Supports Carplay & Android Auto
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Beyond Obedience | Dog Training, Dog Body Language, Anxious Dogs, Scared Dogs, Reactive Dogs
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