Workbook · Diona The Trainer
A seven day fillable PDF for dog owners who want to read their dog before reacting to them. Designed to surface what's actually going on at home.
Diona The Trainer
A seven day reading practice for your dog
Diona Chu
BVSc · MEd · Melbourne
They're regulation problems. A dog whose baseline arousal is high will react to almost anything. A dog whose baseline is low can walk past most things without flinching.
You don't fix that with corrections or with treats. You fix it by understanding what's driving the dysregulation, and that starts with reading your dog properly.
This workbook is the part of the work that comes before training. Reading your dog. Seeing where their waterline sits. Noticing what lifts it and what brings it down. Without this layer, training doesn't stick.
Five minutes a day for seven days. At the end you'll have a record of what your dog is actually like and what shifts them. That record is more useful than any single session.
Get the workbook
Instant download. Open it in Preview, Acrobat, Notability, or GoodNotes. Type into the fields on your laptop or iPad. Reuse it as often as you like.
Buy the workbook — $25 AUDPDF delivered by email. Works on Mac, Windows, iPad, and iPhone.
Front matter
Five minutes a day. Watch without trying to fix anything. The frame that makes the seven days actually work.
Method primer
Short summaries of the methodology and the four modes, with links to the full essays on the blog.
The waterline
The waterline model in plain language. The image you'll use to track where your dog actually sits, not where you wish they sat.
Day zero
Five fillable fields to capture what you currently think your dog is like. You'll come back to this at the end and see what's shifted.
Days one to seven
Sleep, today's waterline, which PACE modes happened, triggers encountered, one body language thing you noticed, one thing you'd do differently tomorrow.
End of week
What pattern emerged. What brought the waterline down. Where you caved. One small change for next week.
Running log
Five entries for the moments that mattered. Date, intensity, situation, what came before, how long until they came down.
The honest check
Are you enjoying your outings with your dog? What's your dog's quality of life? Most owners can't answer these without pausing. That's the point.
Owners whose dog is reactive, restless, or never quite settled, and who suspect there's something underneath it they haven't yet named.
Owners who've worked with another trainer and the gains didn't stick. The workbook gives you a lens to see what was actually changing or not.
Owners who are about to book a private session with me. Filling this in beforehand means we skip the first thirty minutes of me asking what's going on. You arrive with a record.
Owners who like to do the work themselves first.
Five minutes. The workbook is a tracking exercise, not a journalling exercise. The point is to observe, not to analyse.
Any device that opens a PDF with form fields. macOS Preview, Adobe Acrobat, GoodNotes, Notability all work. Laptop, iPad, iPhone are all fine. You can also print and fill by hand.
Instant download from a thank-you page after Stripe checkout, plus an email copy of the download link so you can find it again later.
No. It's the reading layer underneath training. Owners who do the workbook before a private session skip the first thirty minutes of context-setting in their session. The workbook helps you see your dog; private training helps you change what you see.
A dog's baseline arousal level. Triggers push it up. Whether a dog reacts depends on where the waterline was sitting before the trigger arrived. Training that ignores the waterline tries to manage reactions; training that lowers the waterline removes the reactions at their source. Full essay: Still Waters.
Yes. $25 AUD inclusive of 10% GST. A tax invoice is automatically emailed with your receipt.
Digital products aren't typically refundable once downloaded, but if the workbook genuinely didn't fit your situation, email happydogs@dionathetrainer.com and tell me what didn't land.
I'm a Melbourne-based dog trainer with a degree in veterinary science, a Masters in Early Childhood Education, and fifteen years across zoo, wildlife, and private dog training. My assistance dog Murphy and I work with clients across Melbourne and online.
I built this workbook because the first hour of every session is me teaching owners to see their dog. Owners who arrive with this filled in skip that step. The work goes deeper, faster.