Natalie Turton

FdSc BSc (Hons) CDBC — Dog behaviourist specialising in reactivity and aggression

Natalie Turton is a UK-based dog behaviourist with more than 19 years in reactivity and aggression across all breeds and rescues. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Animal Biology, is fully accredited with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants as a Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant, and sits on the IAABC Vet Relations Committee. Her 2025 case study was published in the peer-reviewed IAABC Foundation Journal.

Key Takeaways

• Natalie Turton is an IAABC-accredited Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant specialising in reactivity and aggression.

• Her 2025 case study was published in the peer-reviewed IAABC Foundation Journal.

• She works on veterinary referral and screens for pain before treating behaviour as a training problem.

• She uses positive reinforcement only, to a standard that exceeds LIMA guidelines.

• She has supported thousands of dogs and served as an Animal Welfare Visitor inspecting police dog welfare.

Natalie's academic route began in 2006 at Nottingham Trent University, where she completed two degrees with an academic focus on canine behaviour and physiology. Her career began the following year, prompted by her heart dog Scrappy, a Jack Russell so frightened of other dogs that he would try to attack any he saw. Working through his case set the direction of everything since.

She founded Pawsitive Dog Behaviour in Nottinghamshire and has run it for over a decade, working in person across the UK and online worldwide with families and with other professionals, supported by an executive behaviour assistant. More than a thousand families have come through her programmes. Her focus is complex cases: dogs whose behaviour may be driven by pain or undiagnosed health problems, dogs who struggle with handling, veterinary visits or social contact, and dogs whose owners have already tried other approaches without success.

She served as an Animal Welfare Visitor for the Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner, inspecting police dog welfare at Nottinghamshire Police Headquarters. She has presented internationally as an expert in her field and has been interviewed on local radio about her behaviour practice. That welfare-first view also shapes how she thinks about working dogs, and she sets out how much should reasonably be asked of any dog in assistance roles.

Natalie works with six helper dogs, all rehabilitated rescues. Several were highly aggressive when they came to her, some of them serious bite cases, and they now work alongside her in consultations. Natalie also runs small-group scentwork workshops for reactive dogs.

Natalie takes both straightforward and complex cases, and is often the person families come to when earlier approaches have not worked.

• Leash reactivity, and reactivity toward dogs, people and noise.
• Aggression, including bite cases and conflict between dogs in the same household.
• Behaviour driven by pain or undiagnosed health conditions.
• Rescue and rehomed dogs, including overseas rescues settling into UK homes.
• Terrier and hound breeds, which are often labelled stubborn when they are simply working harder for environmental rewards than for their people.
• Dogs who struggle with handling, grooming or veterinary visits.
• Scentwork for behaviour, used to build confidence and resilience.

Pain is a recurring theme in her casework. Musculoskeletal problems, gastrointestinal disease, thyroid imbalance, ear infections, dental pain and allergies can all drive behaviour change, and she screens for them before treating a behaviour as a training problem. Where a dog's behaviour has changed suddenly, that screening comes before any training plan.

• BSc (Hons) Animal Biology, Nottingham Trent University.
• Foundation Degree (FdSc) in Animal Studies.
• Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant (CDBC), International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.
• IAABC Vet Relations Committee member.
• Former Animal Welfare Visitor, Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner.

Natalie is the author of a peer-reviewed case study in the IAABC Foundation Journal, published March 2025. It documents a three-month intervention with a Romanian street dog rehomed to the UK who showed severe intra-household aggression, resource guarding and generalised anxiety across four previous placements.

The paper argues for a multimodal, etiological approach: rather than treating the aggression directly, it identifies genetic, health and environmental contributors, including musculoskeletal pain that conventional veterinary examination had missed. By the second follow-up, intra-household aggression had stopped. Her Pawsitive Dog Behaviour and Wellbeing framework is published in full as an appendix to the paper.

Woody the Romanian Rescue: A Holistic Approach to Intra-Household Aggression in a U.K. Home. Turton, N. (2025). The IAABC Foundation Journal, Issue 30. DOI: 10.55736/iaabcfj30.4

Natalie's method starts from the position that a behaviour is a symptom, not the problem. Every case opens with an assessment of the whole dog, health included, measured against the Pawsitive Dog Behaviour and Wellbeing framework she spent five years developing. It covers sleep, nutrition, pain and discomfort, autonomy, choice, predictability, social skills, breed-specific behaviours and self-regulation. Gaps in those needs are addressed first, and in some cases resolve the presenting behaviour without training at all.

Where training is needed, her stated standard exceeds LIMA guidelines: pain-free, fear-free, force-free, manipulation-free and coercion-free, using positive reinforcement only. She works closely with the referring vet, reads the dog's full veterinary history before forming an assessment, and refers on to clinical canine massage therapists and other practitioners where physical discomfort is implicated.

A large share of her consultation work is done online. That takes the pressure of public environments off dogs who cannot cope with a group class, and it keeps expert support reachable for families who cannot easily get to in-person sessions.

She sets out how the approach works in practice, past the basics, in her guide to advanced training for reactive dog families.

Natalie is among the most respected reactivity and aggression specialists working in the UK today. Nineteen years of casework, an accredited practice that takes veterinary referrals, published research, and thousands of dogs behind her, many of them dogs other professionals had already given up on.

There is one concrete link between her work and ours. PawChamp content is reviewed by the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants, the same body that accredits her and on whose Vet Relations Committee she sits, and both of us train on positive reinforcement alone. Past that shared floor, what she brings is depth.

• Pain before training. She screens for musculoskeletal problems, dental pain, thyroid imbalance and gut conditions before treating a behaviour as a training problem. In her published case the dog's pain had been missed on standard veterinary examination and only surfaced under specialist gait analysis.
• Evidence, not just principle, against punishment. That same case records what happened when previous owners hired an aversive trainer: the dog's aggression escalated, it bit its caregiver, and it went back to rescue. Most of the field holds that punishment backfires. Natalie has published the documentation.
• A standard above the industry's. Pain-free, fear-free and force-free are the usual commitments. Hers adds manipulation-free and coercion-free, and the wellbeing assessment comes before any training cue is taught rather than after the first plan stalls.

Reactivity and aggression are where wrong advice costs the most, to the dog and to the family living with it. They are what Natalie has given her career to, and what she writes about here.

• Advanced Dog Training For Reactive Dog Families: From Basics To Next Level
• Service Dog Training Vs Standard Dog Training: How Much Should We Ask Of Any Dog?

• Pawsitive Dog Behaviour — Natalie's behaviour practice
• Woody the Romanian Rescue — IAABC Foundation Journal
• LinkedIn

A note on veterinary care. Natalie is a behaviour consultant, not a veterinarian. She works on veterinary referral and reviews medical records as part of her assessments, and refers cases on to veterinary professionals where physical health is implicated. PawChamp does not diagnose or treat medical conditions.