rapid & reliable
A programme for gundogs who know the cues but don’t always choose 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™
A programme for dogs who know the cues… but don’t always choose them.
When the training works at home and falls apart everywhere else.
You’ve done the work. Properly.
You’ve put in the time. You’ve practised the recall in the garden, the loose lead in the kitchen, the sit and the stay until they’re solid. You’ve watched your gundog do the thing, often beautifully, and you’ve felt the satisfaction of seeing it work. You know your dog is capable. You’ve seen the moments where everything clicks and you’ve thought yes, this is what we’re building towards.
And then a scent appears.
Or another dog crosses the path. Or birds lift from the hedgerow. Or the world simply becomes interesting in some way you couldn’t have predicted. And the dog who, twenty seconds ago, was walking beside you in lovely connection is suddenly somewhere else entirely. The recall doesn’t land. The lead pulls tight. The cue you’ve practised hundreds of times seems to vanish from your dog’s head.
You’re not back at square one. You can see that. The good moments are real, and they’re not accidents. But the training isn’t holding when the world gets interesting, and that’s the bit no one has shown you how to fix.
The frustration of being almost there is its own particular kind of difficult. Worse than starting from scratch in some ways, because you’ve seen what’s possible. You know the dog is capable. You know you’ve done the work. You just don’t yet know what the missing piece is.
Rapid & Reliable is the missing piece.
If you’ve seen glimpses of what’s possible and want to make it reliable, let’s talk.
If any of this feels familiar, you’re in the right place.
- Your recall works in the garden and disappears on walks. At home it’s beautiful. The moment you step into a field or a quiet wood, the cue you’ve practised hundreds of times seems to leave your dog’s head entirely.
- Loose lead walking holds for a while and then doesn’t. You set off well. Your dog walks nicely beside you. Then a scent, another dog, a runner, anything, and the lead’s tight again. You’ve been here many times.
- Your dog can do the thing, when the conditions are right. Quiet park, no distractions, predictable environment. The training is there. It just doesn’t transfer when life gets more interesting.
- You’re repeating cues you know your dog already knows. Sit. Sit. Sit. It works on the third or fourth try, sometimes the fifth, sometimes not at all. You can hear yourself doing it and you know it isn’t right.
- Your gundog still looks to you, but not always when it matters. The connection is there. You can feel it in the calm moments. But the moment excitement rises, something shifts and you’ve lost them until the world quietens down again.
- You’ve watched glimpses of the dog you’re working towards. A perfect recall on a quiet morning. A walk where everything flowed. A moment where you thought we’re nearly there. And then the next outing was nothing like it.
- You’re starting to wonder what you’re missing. Not whether your dog is capable, because you’ve seen that they are. Not whether you’ve been doing it right, because you have been. Something else.
What you’re missing isn’t more training. It’s the piece underneath the training that decides whether your dog can actually access what they know when the world gets interesting.
For dogs who understand the training, but need help choosing it when the world gets exciting.
What’s actually happening with your gundog
Here’s the part nobody told you when you started training.
Cues don’t live in your dog’s training memory the way we tend to imagine. They live in a part of the brain that’s only fully accessible when your dog is regulated, calm enough, settled enough, in their thinking brain rather than their reacting one. As long as your dog is in that state, the training holds. The cues come up. Your dog responds. Everything works.
But when arousal rises, the access changes. Scent, movement, another dog, anything stimulating enough to spike your gundog’s nervous system, and the part of the brain that holds the trained response loses signal. Your dog isn’t ignoring you. They’re not being disobedient. They’re not choosing the squirrel over you. They simply can’t reach the cue in that state, because the system that holds it has gone offline.
This is why repetition alone doesn’t fix the problem. You can practise the recall a hundred more times in the garden and it will still fall apart on a walk, because the issue isn’t that your dog hasn’t learned the cue. They’ve learned it perfectly. The issue is that your dog can’t access the cue when their nervous system is running ahead of their training.
The thing that needs work isn’t the cue. It’s the state your dog is in when they need to use it.
When the world becomes exciting, clarity matters more than control
Your dog has been communicating all along.
They’re just waiting for you to hear it
What rapid & reliable actually does
Rapid & Reliable focuses on strengthening the training you and your gundog already have.
Rapid & Reliable is nine one-to-one sessions over six weeks, designed to build the regulation that allows your gundog’s existing training to finally hold up in real life.
The aim isn’t to teach your dog new cues. They already know the cues. The aim is to build the internal capacity that lets your dog access those cues when arousal rises, distraction appears, and the world becomes more interesting than the cue itself.
We work with what your dog already understands and we build underneath it. We add the regulation work that’s been missing. We bring in the parts of my methodology that match what your specific gundog needs, whether that’s Soft Speak™ for arousal, PAWS™ for impulse, Flow Walking™ for outdoor connection, or whichever combination of tools your dog actually responds to.
The pace of the work is set by your dog. Nine sessions over six weeks gives us enough time to build the regulation properly and then to test it in environments that match where your real-world life happens, not in artificial controlled conditions that don’t reflect what your gundog actually meets on a Tuesday afternoon walk.
What stays consistent across every Rapid & Reliable programme is the underlying framework: the Regulation First Model™ applied to the bridge between knowing and choosing. Each programme looks slightly different because each dog is slightly different, but the structure is the same. We build the regulation. We integrate it with the training you’ve already done. And we test it in real conditions until reliability starts to feel like something you can actually trust.
If you’ve seen glimpses of what’s possible and want to make it reliable, let’s talk.
what begins to change
The shift doesn’t usually arrive as a single dramatic moment. It arrives as reliability quietly building over weeks, until you realise something that used to be unpredictable has started to feel steady.
Recall begins to hold in places it didn’t hold before. Not perfectly, not always, but more often, and in environments that used to be impossible. The garden recall extends out into the field. The quiet-park recall extends into the busy one. The gap between knowing the cue and choosing the cue starts to close.
Loose lead walking stays loose for longer. Not just on the first two minutes of the walk before something interesting happens, but through the moments that used to break it. Past the dog across the road. Past the scent on the verge. Past the bit where your gundog used to charge ahead and you had to start again.
Your dog begins to check in with you more naturally. Not because you’ve cued them, but because the connection has become something they’re choosing to return to. The looking-back-at-you moment becomes more frequent. The pause-before-leaving-the-path becomes a habit rather than an accident.
The cues you’ve already taught start to land more reliably, even when the environment is doing its best to compete with you. The training isn’t different. Your dog is the same dog. But the system underneath the training has been built, and now the cues have somewhere to land.
Walks begin to feel like walks again. Not perfect, but predictable enough that you can actually enjoy them. The bracing eases. The dread loosens. The pleasure of being outside with your dog, the thing you wanted in the first place, starts to come back.
When the world becomes exciting, clarity matters more than control
whats included
Nine one-to-one sessions over six weeks, paced to suit you and your dog Private sessions held at my fully fenced venue in Purleigh or in real-world locations, depending on where your gundog needs to do the work. The pace is set by what your dog is showing 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 programme library The Calm & Connected and Rapid & Reliable libraries of videos and PDFs, available to you to refer back to whenever you need them. The work doesn’t stop when our session ends, and neither does your access to the material.
Between-session support throughout the live programme Phone, email, or WhatsApp support during the six 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.
Four months of follow-on support after the live sessions end The work doesn’t stop when our six weeks finish. You’ll have my ongoing support for four 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. A proper supported space rather than an unmoderated group.
The Regulation First Model™ applied to the bridge between knowing and choosing The methodology that runs through everything I do, applied specifically to the gap that’s been keeping your training from holding up in real life.
Who Rapid & Reliable is for
Rapid & Reliable is the right starting point if any of the following sounds like the dog you’re living with:
- A gundog who knows the cues but doesn’t reliably choose them. Recall, sit, loose lead, settle, they can all do the things. They just can’t always do them when the world is interesting.
- A dog whose training holds at home and falls apart outdoors. The garden is fine. The quiet park is mostly fine. The busy park, the field with deer, the path with scent, that’s where it stops working.
- A gundog who still looks to you. The connection is there. They check in with you in calm moments. The relationship hasn’t been lost, it just doesn’t hold under stimulation.
- A dog showing patchy reliability. Some days are brilliant. Some days are a mess. You can’t predict which kind of walk you’re about to have, and that unpredictability has become tiring.
- An adolescent gundog whose progress has stalled. Your puppy training was working. Then somewhere between eight and eighteen months, the dependable bits started becoming undependable. You’re not back at the beginning, but you’ve stopped moving forward.
- A guardian who’s done the work and wants it to hold. You’ve put in the time. You’ve practised properly. You don’t need to start over. You need the missing piece that turns almost there into actually here.
If you’re not sure whether Rapid & Reliable 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.
When your dog can’t relax, neither can you, and that takes a toll no one else sees
Here’s how one Rapid & Reliable journey unfolded.
In the words of the guardian who lived it.
“We started training with Nina when our Black Labrador, Brinkley, was 10 months old. We had a list of things we wanted to work on, but the main focus was on recall and loose lead walking. In fact, we’ve learnt so much more!
Brinkley has made a massive improvement over the last couple of months and we’re delighted. Nina has a wonderful, positive, calm energy that makes every lesson fun, rewarding and something we all looked forward to each week, we only wish we’d found Nina from the start.
The structure of each lesson is flexible, so you can look at your successes and challenges from the previous week and work on anything that you might be struggling with, this worked really well for us. The off-site lesson is also a fantastic option.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Nina. It’s clear that she wants every dog and owner to succeed and to be happy, and this showed in every lesson. Brinkley loved her, and not just because of all the treats!”
— Vicki Dawson, Rapid & Reliable programme
Vicki and Brinkley’s story isn’t a guarantee, but it isn’t a one-off. This work, done properly, lands.
Reliability isn’t created by louder cues.
It grows when your gundog learns that choosing you always matters.
Your First Step
If Rapid & Reliable sounds like the missing piece you’ve been looking for, 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 working, what hasn’t, and what you’re hoping to make reliable. 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 seen glimpses of what’s possible and want to make it reliable, let’s talk.
“Knowing the cue and choosing the cue aren’t the same thing. The bridge between them is what Rapid & Reliable builds.”
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.