Part two of the Malta Dog Life Global Expert Series — speaking to leading dog trainers from around the world about what their expertise means for dog owners here on the islands.
Every year since 2020, a panel of judges in the United Kingdom has handed the same award to the same dog training business in Cheshire. Dog Trainer of the Year, Cheshire, five years running. In 2024 and 2025, the recognition expanded nationally: Clinical Animal Behaviourist of the Year, United Kingdom.
The business is Nose to Trail, founded by Rachel Rodgers — a Clinical Animal Behaviourist with a Master’s degree in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare, and a background spanning the RSPCA and Dogs Trust Dog School. And the question Rachel keeps returning to — with clients, with colleagues, and increasingly with an audience that has found them through their growing reputation — is a deceptively simple one. Are you training your dog? Or are you simply managing them?
It is a distinction that matters more than most dog owners initially appreciate. And it is a question that has particular relevance for Malta’s dog-owning community — not least its substantial British expatriate population, for whom the Cheshire-based practice’s approach may already feel familiar.
The Science Behind the Awards
Nose to Trail operates from Cheshire in the north of England, and is registered on both the APBC (Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors) and ABTC (Animal Behaviour and Training Council) registers — the two most respected professional bodies for clinical animal behaviourists in the United Kingdom. These are not self-awarded credentials. Listing on either register requires demonstrated competence, ongoing continuing professional development, and adherence to a formal code of ethics.
The methodology is science-backed and positive reinforcement-based. Where the pack leadership approach discussed in our first Global Expert Series feature emphasises structure and the owner’s role as pack leader, the Nose to Trail philosophy begins somewhere different: with understanding what is driving the behaviour before attempting to change it.
“Management is not training,” Rodgers explains. “Keeping your dog behind a baby gate so it doesn’t jump on guests is management. Teaching the dog that greeting guests calmly is more rewarding than jumping is training. Both look the same from the outside on a given day. Over six months, they produce completely different dogs.”
This distinction — between suppressing a behaviour and actually changing the underlying motivation for it — sits at the heart of evidence-based animal behaviour work. And it is what has earned Nose to Trail its string of national recognition: not a dramatic training philosophy or a celebrity endorsement, but consistent, measurable results across a wide range of dogs and presenting problems.
What This Means for Malta’s Dogs
Malta’s dog-owning population is as varied as the island itself. There are Maltese families who have kept dogs for generations, mostly outdoors. There are younger owners in Valletta and Sliema apartments with working breeds that need far more mental and physical stimulation than their living situation naturally provides. And there is a significant British expat community — one of the largest foreign communities on the islands — many of whom arrived with dogs, or acquired them here, and who are navigating Maltese dog ownership with habits and expectations formed in the UK.
For this last group in particular, the Nose to Trail approach may feel like familiar ground. The positive, reward-based methodology that has become mainstream in British dog training over the past decade is built on the same evidence base that underpins Nose to Trail’s award-winning work. But the Maltese context introduces variables that British-trained owners may not have encountered before: the heat, the street culture, the proximity of dogs to the daily rhythms of café and village life.
“Understanding your dog’s threshold is everything,” says Rodgers. “What a dog can cope with in a cool, quiet environment and what it can cope with in heat, noise, and stimulation are two completely different things. Training has to account for the environment, not just the animal.”
This is an insight that translates directly to Malta. A dog that manages perfectly well on a cool February morning in Valletta may be a completely different animal on a July afternoon in Sliema with tourists, scooters, and the smell of a hundred restaurants in the air. Threshold management — understanding exactly how much a dog can handle before its behaviour deteriorates — is not a luxury in this environment. It is a baseline skill for any owner who wants a genuinely well-behaved dog rather than a dog that only behaves in ideal conditions.
Training in Stages, Not Sessions
One of the practical implications of the science-backed approach is that it tends to view training as a long-term investment rather than a series of discrete interventions. A single session with a trainer — however skilled — changes very little. What changes dogs is the consistent application of clear principles across hundreds of small interactions every day.
Nose to Trail’s work, like all clinical animal behaviour practice, is structured around this reality. Initial consultations identify the underlying drivers of problem behaviour. Follow-up work focuses on building new habits — for the owner as much as the dog. The support structure continues after formal sessions end, because the work continues at home, every day, in every interaction.
For Malta’s dog owners, this is a useful reframe regardless of which training philosophy they subscribe to. The dog that pulls on the lead in Mdina or barks at the 4×4 in the Sliema parking lot is not going to change because of a single training session. It is going to change because its owner has genuinely understood why the behaviour is happening, and has committed to responding differently — consistently, patiently, over time.
That is as true in Cheshire as it is in Malta. It is, in fact, the one thing that every good dog trainer in the world agrees on, whatever their methodology.
Expert Profile: Nose to Trail
Business: Nose to Trail
Founder: Rachel Rodgers, MSc Applied Animal Behaviour & Welfare
Location: Cheshire, United Kingdom
Accreditations: APBC and ABTC registered Clinical Animal Behaviourist
Awards: Dog Trainer of the Year — Cheshire (2020–2025); Clinical Animal Behaviourist of the Year — UK (2024 & 2025)
Website: nosetotrail.co.uk
Google Business Profile: View on Google Maps
Next in the Malta Dog Life Global Expert Series: we travel to Melbourne, Australia, where an award-winning trainer explains why the climate you live in changes everything about how you should approach dog behaviour.