Ready Steady Games™ — A New Language for Training Your Dog

Ready Steady Games™

Success Isn’t Perfection, Success Is Participation. So, Play Your Part.

Most of us spend our daily walks trying to stop our dogs.

We try to stop them chasing squirrels, stop them fixating on other dogs, stop them jumping up on visitors, and desperately try to stop them pulling on the lead like they're powered by a small nuclear reactor.

When you're standing on a wet pavement holding a tight lead while your dog is locked onto an empty crisp packet, remembering a six-step protocol off TikTok feels impossible. We default to applying more pressure, repeating commands louder, and setting more boundaries. Everyone gets frustrated—on both ends of the lead.

Ready Steady Games takes a completely different approach. Instead of asking "How do I stop this?", it teaches you to ask: "What conversation does my dog need right now?"

Written by professional dog trainer John Paul Maguire, this book moves beyond typical obedience and gives you a simple, shared language built around three predictable steps: Ready? Steady... Action!

What’s Inside the Book

• The 5 Core Game Conversations:
• Catch — Turns attention into play instead of a battle.
• Chase — Redirects movement and stops lead-tugging wars.
• Take It — Replaces frantic snatching with calm, predictable permission.
• Drop — Transforms possessiveness into voluntary, trust-based trade.
• Find It — Activates nature’s built-in reset button to lower stress and arousal.

When Life Happens: Practical tactics for messy moments—front-door greetings, café distractions, stolen household items, multi-dog spaces, and reactive triggers.

The Excitement Dial: A simple 0–10 observation tool to read your dog’s arousal, understand trigger stacking, and pick the right game for where your dog actually sits in that moment.

The 11 Hidden Principles: Why traditional commands fail when a dog's body or brain is unavailable, why rewards landing on the floor quietly cure jumping, and how games reveal natural behaviours rather than forcing them.

The 14-Day Action Planner: Includes printable daily tracking grids to log micro-sessions and build your dog's behavioral savings account.

Built for Real Life (And Real People)

This system relies on clarity, not athleticism. You do not need to be an elite athlete or have a "perfect" dog to play:

• Puppies & Adolescents: Channels high energy into focus and natural recall check-ins long before formal commands are introduced.
• Senior & Rescue Dogs: Low-impact enrichment where success is built into every attempt, even if treats boop off aging noses.
• Reactive & Over-Aroused Dogs: Interrupts hyper-vigilance and clears stress chemistry naturally through movement and scent work.
• Handlers Dealing with Pain or Fatigue: Allows you to deliver rich, fulfilling training sessions comfortably from a standing position or sitting on a bench.

About the Author

John Paul Maguire is a professional dog trainer based in Glasgow, Scotland, with over 17 years of full-time experience. He is a full member of the APDT UK (1366), a registered Animal Training Instructor with the ABTC, and founder of JPM Dog Training. His core belief is simple: effective training is about building bonds, not barriers.