Posts on pages…

I have seen a number of threads and I either don’t understand them or they don’t fit with what I want to do. Basically all I want to do is display posts on pages via the post category. So for example I have a page called Dogs and I just want to display the full posts (as they would look on the homepage) which have been put in to the Catergory Dogs on that page. I thought this would be simple but it appears not.

I have tried: http://digitalnature.ro/blog/extend-wordpress-functionality-with-shortcodes/ however it doesn’t work. I am not sure if this is to do with this part:

while ($posts->have_posts()): $posts->the_post();
// copy here the post layout from your theme's index.php file -- this is just a example ?>
endwhile;

or what as I don’t understand what layout I am meant to be using. The only other things I can find just display post titles as a list which is not what I want.

Does anyone know of a foolproof was I can do this or of a plugin which will achieve this?

Thank you in advance