freedom & focus
A deeper, longer programme for highly overwhelmed gundogs and the guardians carrying it with them.
Built on the Regulation First Model™.
Nina Fotara KCAI (WG)
Kennel Club Accredited Instructor, Working Gundogs.
15 years working alongside spaniels, retrievers, pointers, setters, HPRs, and rarer gundog breeds and crosses.
🏆 Award Winner 2026 Holistic Gundog Training Specialist of the Year & Canine Behaviour Excellence Award | Pet Products & Services Awards
KCAI (WG) qualified | Currently completing Level 6 Certified Clinical Canine Behaviourist | Creator of the Regulation First Model™
When you’ve already tried everything.
and then you find me.
By the time most people find me, they’ve already done a lot.
They’ve watched the videos. They’ve read the books. They’ve followed the social media advice. They’ve tried trainers, sometimes one, sometimes several. They’ve adjusted, adapted, tried harder. They’ve spent months, sometimes years, working on this. And they’ve arrived at a point where they’re exhausted, their dog is still overwhelmed, and they’re starting to wonder whether anything is actually going to help.
If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Not because Freedom & Focus is the last resort, but because the kind of work this programme is built for tends to be the kind of work that gets people here in the first place.
The dogs I see in this programme are usually highly driven, highly sensitive, or both. Their instincts are powerful. Their nervous systems light up quickly. The moment you step outside the front door, your gundog seems to disappear into the world, into scent, into movement, into another dog, into anything that isn’t you. At home, excitement is hard to settle. Visitors send everything sideways. You may be living with reactivity, guarding, recall that’s vanished, or behaviours that have grown more complex as your dog has grown up.
And underneath all of that, there’s you. Carrying it. Trying to stay calm whilst your nervous system is wobbling too. Trying to do the right thing whilst not knowing what the right thing is anymore.
Freedom & Focus is built for exactly this.
if any of this feels familiar, you’re in the right place.
- Your gundog disappears into the world the moment you step outside. Scent, movement, sound, another dog, and they’re gone. Not metaphorically. They are physically and mentally somewhere else, and you can call until you’re hoarse.
- The training that worked at home doesn’t work outside. You know your dog can do the thing. You’ve seen it. But the moment the environment becomes interesting, the cues seem to vanish.
- Walks have stopped feeling enjoyable. You’re managing, not walking. Scanning ahead, choosing quieter routes, picking unusual times of day, dreading what might happen rather than looking forward to going out.
- Excitement at home is hard to settle. Visitors arrive and everything escalates. Doorbells, post, deliveries. The dog hits a level you can’t bring down.
- Behaviours have grown more complex over time. What started as a small thing has become a bigger thing. Reactivity has crept in. Guarding has appeared. Recall has worsened. The list has grown.
- Adolescence has turned everything sideways. Your puppy was lovely. Then somewhere between eight and eighteen months, you lost the dog you thought you had.
- You’ve tried things and they haven’t held. Some have helped briefly. Some haven’t helped at all. The exhaustion isn’t just about the dog anymore. It’s about you, too.
- You’re starting to wonder if this is just how it’s going to be.
None of these things mean you’ve got it wrong. They mean your gundog needs more than standard training, and they need you to have more support than you’ve been given.
What’s actually happening with your gundog (and with you)
Highly driven, highly sensitive gundogs are built to notice the world. Their senses are powerful. Their instincts are strong. Their excitement can rise from quiet to overwhelming in the space of a heartbeat. None of that is a flaw. It’s what they’re built for.
The trouble is that when the nervous system rises that quickly and that high, the thinking part of the brain has very little influence. The behaviours you’ve practised, the recall, the loose lead, the settle, the wait, still exist somewhere in your dog. They just can’t be accessed in the moment, because the dog is no longer in a state where access is possible.
This is why repeating cues louder doesn’t help. It’s why more obedience training rarely makes the difference. It’s why so many of the things you’ve tried haven’t held. You haven’t been working with a behaviour problem. You’ve been working with a nervous system that’s running ahead of the training.
And here’s the part of the picture that often goes unnamed.
When you’ve been living with this for a long time, your own nervous system starts to wobble too. You begin walks already braced for what might happen. You scan for triggers. You feel adrenaline rise before your dog has even seen what’s coming. Over months and years, that takes a real toll. By the time most people find me, both ends of the lead are dysregulated, not just one.
Freedom & Focus is built for both of you. The work starts with regulation, your dog’s, and yours, because nothing else can be properly built until that foundation is in place. From there, everything else becomes possible: clearer communication, calmer choices, a real partnership returning where there was struggle.
If you’ve tried everything and things still feel overwhelming, you don’t have to keep figuring it out alone.
Your gundog isn’t trying to fight you.
They’re trying to find their way through instincts that feel overwhelming.
What Freedom & focus actually does
Freedom & Focus provides the time, structure, and guidance needed to help both you and your gundog move beyond constant overwhelm.
Freedom & Focus is twelve weeks of one-to-one work designed to meet you and your gundog where you actually are.
The aim isn’t to suppress your dog’s instincts or override their excitement with stronger cues. It’s to help them build the internal regulation that allows their thinking brain to stay online even when the world becomes interesting. From there, the training you’ve already done (and the training we’ll add) can finally start to hold.
The work moves in layers.
We begin with regulation, for your dog and for you. We rebuild the connection that’s been eroded by months or years of stressful walks. We work on the specific situations that have been hardest, in the order that makes sense for your dog rather than in a generic sequence. We bring in the parts of my methodology that match what your gundog actually needs, whether that’s Soft Speak™ for arousal, PAWS™ for impulse, Flow Walking for outdoor connection, or any of the other tools I’ve developed over years of working with dogs like yours.
No two Freedom & Focus programmes look exactly the same, because no two dogs do. Some need deep early work on settling at home before we touch outdoor work at all. Some need to start with the lead. Some need work on guarding or resource issues before anything else can progress. The shape of your twelve weeks is decided by your dog and what they’re showing me, not by a fixed curriculum.
What stays the same across every Freedom & Focus programme is the underlying framework: the Regulation First Model™ applied in depth, with the time and space to do the work properly. Twelve weeks isn’t long because the programme is intensive. It’s long because the kind of change you’re looking for needs time to settle into a nervous system that’s been running hot for a while.
what begins to change
The change doesn’t usually arrive in one moment. It arrives in small shifts that gradually add up to something you didn’t realise was possible from where you started.
The intensity begins to soften. Your gundog still has all their instincts, all their curiosity, all their drive, but they begin to find moments of pause where there weren’t any before. A look back at you on a walk. A hesitation before charging off. A breath of stillness where there used to be only escalation.
The connection starts to return. Your dog notices you again. Not just when nothing else is happening, but in the moments that used to lose them completely.
Walks begin to feel like walks again. Not perfect, not without challenge, but something you can step into without bracing for what’s about to go wrong. The scanning eases. The dread loosens. The pleasure of being outside with your dog, the thing you wanted in the first place, starts to come back.
At home, the spikes get smaller. Visitors arrive and your dog can come down from the excitement. Doorbells, post, deliveries, the volume turns down.
And the partnership between you starts to feel like exactly that. A partnership. Two of you working together rather than pulling in opposite directions, both ends of the lead settling into something steadier and far more enjoyable.
Your gundog is still your gundog. They haven’t been changed into something they’re not. They’ve just been given the tools to live alongside their instincts rather than being carried away by them.
Sometimes the dog who feels hardest to live with, is the one who needs the deepest understanding.
what is included
Twelve weeks of one-to-one work, paced to suit you and your dog Private sessions held at my fully fenced venue in Purleigh or in real-world locations, depending on what your gundog needs at each stage. The pace is set by the dog in front of me, not by a fixed weekly schedule.
Written guidance after every session A clear write-up after each session covering what we worked on and what to focus on between sessions. No relying on memory, no trying to remember what I said three days later.
Access to my full programme library All of my programme videos and PDFs, including the Calm & Connected and Rapid & Reliable libraries as well as the Freedom & Focus content. Everything I’ve developed for programme clients, available to you to refer back to whenever you need it.
Between-session support throughout the live programme Phone, email, or WhatsApp support during the twelve weeks, so you’re not stuck waiting for the next session when something comes up. If you’ve had a difficult walk, a confusing moment, or a question that can’t wait, you can reach me.
Six months of follow-on support after the live sessions end The work doesn’t stop when our twelve weeks finish. You’ll have my ongoing support for six months afterwards as you continue to apply what we’ve built together. The dog you’re with grows, life changes, and new situations turn up. You’re not on your own when they do.
Access to the Holistic Dog® community A private community of guardians on the same journey, sharing wins and difficult weeks alongside you. Not a Facebook group, a proper supported space.
The Regulation First Model™ applied in depth The methodology that runs through everything I do, given the time and space it needs to settle into your dog and into you.
Overwhelm isn’t disobedience.
It’s a nervous system asking for help.
Who Freedom & Focus is for
Freedom & Focus is the right starting point if any of the following sounds like the dog you’re living with:
- A highly driven gundog whose instincts regularly take over. The moment you step outside, your dog is gone, into scent, movement, or whatever has caught their attention. Calling them back rarely works.
- A gundog who can’t settle at home. Visitors, deliveries, doorbells, or even just the energy of the household sends them into a state you can’t bring down.
- A dog showing complex or compounding behaviours. Reactivity that’s grown over time. Guarding. Recall that’s vanished. Loose lead walking that fell apart. Behaviours that didn’t used to be there and now are.
- An adolescent dog whose behaviour has become complex. Somewhere between eight and eighteen months, your puppy became a different dog. What you were doing stopped working. New things have started appearing.
- A dog who needs longer than six weeks of work. Some situations can’t be unpicked in a shorter programme. If what your dog is carrying has been building for a long time, the work to unbuild it takes longer too.
- A guardian who’s tried things and feels worn down. You’ve been carrying this, often for years. You need a programme that supports you as well as your dog.
If you’re not sure whether Freedom & Focus is the right starting point for your situation, that’s what the Consult and Pathway Plan session is for. You don’t have to work it out alone before we speak.
The moment your gundog begins to feel safe in the world,
they begin to find their way back to you.
Here’s how one Freedom & Focus journey unfolded
In the words of the guardian who lived it.
“Having tried several different trainers over 3 years for my lovely, super high energy, excitable and easily distracted English pointer I finally found Nina. We started working together in April 2024 on the Freedom and Focus programme and had regular weekly sessions for 4 months.
I previously felt I was invisible to my dog when out on walks, everything else was just so exciting and overwhelming for her and all the training that I had previously undertaken didn’t seem to improve the situation. Nina was supportive, encouraging and always striving to find what worked for me and my dog. Each dog (and owner) are treated as individuals and there didn’t feel like a ‘set way’ to approach challenges.
Even now (April 2026) I am continuing to see improvements in my relationship with my dog. She makes regular eye contact with me which was something she couldn’t manage previously. My dog can now walk on a loose lead (even with some distractions!). She has even started looking at me when something unsettles her — previously she would have either lunged towards it or stared so intently that nothing could get her focus back on me.
Nina helped us to work as a team rather than pulling in different directions and I can now have fun with my dog playing the training games we learned rather than feeling frustrated that she couldn’t exercise some self-control like everyone else’s dogs seemed to be able to. Actually, now she behaves better than many dogs we meet!
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Nina to anyone with a high energy dog that doesn’t engage with you. Obviously, you need to be prepared to put the work in, but the results are so worthwhile. My relationship with my dog has improved immeasurably and I am so grateful to Nina.”
— Emma, Freedom & Focus programme
Stories like Emma’s are why this work matters. Yours could be next.
Your First Step
If Freedom & Focus sounds like it might fit where you and your gundog actually are, the first step isn’t signing up for the programme. It’s having a chat.
The first chat is free, with nothing to commit to and nothing to pay. We talk about your dog, what’s been happening, what you’ve tried, and what you’re hoping for. Afterwards I’ll send you full PDFs of all three adult programmes with pricing and exactly what’s included, so you can read everything properly in your own time.
From there, if you’d like to move forward, the next step is a one-hour Consult and Pathway Plan session at my fully fenced venue in Purleigh, currently £140. I’ll meet your dog properly, see what’s actually going on, and give you a written write-up with actionable guidance you can start using straight away. After the session we’ll talk through what I’d recommend, what you’re thinking, and how you’d like to move forward together.
You’re free to choose what feels right, including a different programme from the one I’ve suggested, or to take the plan and work with the information yourself. The hour is yours either way.
If you’ve tried everything and things still feel overwhelming, you don’t have to keep figuring it out alone.
“By the time most people find me, both ends of the lead are dysregulated. The work that follows is for both of you.”
Results Disclaimer:
Our programs are intended to help you train your dog, training your dog takes a normal, expected amount of work and discipline just like any worthwhile endeavour. Please don’t enrol in one of our programs if you believe in “magic solutions and results without work”. Only serious people dedicated to helping their dogs move forward, whatever the reason, need apply. We cannot and do not guarantee your ability to get results with our training, ideas, information, tools or strategies. Nothing on this page, any of our websites, or any of our content or curriculum is a promise or guarantee of specific results. No results or examples mentioned by us or our students should be expected as definite for you and your dog. You alone are responsible and accountable for your decisions, actions and results in life, and by your registration with us, you agree not to attempt to hold us liable for your decisions, actions or results, at any time, under any circumstance.