Meet the Dogs be Dogs team - and the dogs who shaped us

My story doesn't start with a qualification. It starts with a mistake.

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She wasn't a difficult puppy. We made her difficult.

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Eighteen years ago, Ian and I brought home our first puppy as adults - a Labrador called Nika. I'd grown up with dogs. Ian had never had one. So we did what responsible owners do: we took her to puppy classes.

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The instructor told us to show her who was boss, and to take her food away while she was eating. Food. Away from a Labrador. Nika lived to eat - it was her sole purpose in life.

So we did it. She started eating faster. Then hunching lower over her bowl. Then freezing when we came near. Then growling.

The instructor's advice? Growl back.

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Said out loud, it sounds ridiculous. But when someone in a position of authority tells you to do something, you don't question it. You just do it. So we growled back - and our puppy started biting.

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Within a few months she had her adult teeth, she had bitten both of us hard, and feeding time was put her in the kitchen, shut the door and hope for the best. She would guard an empty bowl.

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It took two years, and the help of a qualified behaviourist, to make Nika safe around food again. Weeks of bad advice. Two years to undo it.

Now I know better, so I do better. That's why prevention is at the heart of everything I do - because so much of what goes wrong with dogs never needed to happen.

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Then Monty taught me about adolescence.

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When Nika was seven, we brought home an Irish Terrier puppy called Monty. He never read the Irish Terrier manual - show him a rat and he'd scream and faint.

As a puppy he was perfect. Easy to toilet train, chewed nothing, lovely with everyone.

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Then adolescence hit, and he was horrible. If there was a lamppost to pee on, I could wave steak in front of his nose and it wouldn't have mattered. Other dogs became the most important thing in his world, and his social skills didn't match his enthusiasm - he was stiff and square, and he rubbed dogs up the wrong way.

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We survived it, and he grew into a wonderful, well-adjusted adult. These days Monty works as my stooge dog, helping dogs who struggle around other dogs to rebuild their social skills. The nightmare adolescent now teaches others how to be a dog.

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And then there was Nero.

By 2019, Ian was deep into gun dog training, and we'd decided to rescue a spaniel (Nika was getting older then).

 

Then a puppy called Nessa joined one of my puppy classes and I had to google her breed: a Stabyhoun, a rare gun dog from the Netherlands.

 

Two weeks later, a post appeared in one of my training groups. A two-year-old male Stabyhoun, described as a project dog, was looking for a home. He had been booked in for euthanasia before his foster carer stepped in.

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Nero arrived with severe separation anxiety and was reactive to almost everything - dogs, people, bikes, cars, a carrier bag blowing in the wind. He was so stressed he was self-mutilating, licking his paw pads until he took the skin off them.

 

He was petrified of children. For the first six months, we couldn't have visitors. I worked closely with our vet, and he went onto behaviour medication from day one, because life simply had too many triggers for him to cope with.

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Nero is eight now. A few years ago I noticed that, almost without me spotting the moment it happened, he had become an easy dog to live with.

 

He's now children's best friend. He walks on and off lead, comes to the pub with us, and happily stays home alone when needed. He still tells adolescent male dogs not to jump on his head - and frankly, fair enough.

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If you're living with a dog who feels impossible right now: I have lived it too. That's why there's no judgement here.

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From rescuing the breed to preserving it.

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Susie, the woman who saved Nero, turned out to be far more than a foster carer. She's a dog trainer and an experienced breeder who raises her litters with Puppy Culture - and she had a Stabyhoun of her own.

 

When she planned a litter, the timing wasn't perfect. It never is. Nika was eleven by then.

 

However, here's something I tell every prospective puppy owner: the breeder matters. Really, really matters. What happens in those first eight weeks shapes the dog you bring home. I knew Susie would raise an exceptional litter, so I put my name down for a little girl.

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That's how Napa joined us - our second Stabyhoun. The Stabyhoun is a rare breed from the Netherlands, with only a small population worldwide. Napa passed all her health tests, and we made the decision to have puppies.

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I raise my litters with Puppy Culture, which means socialisation starts in my living room, not in the new owner's.

 

One of Napa's first boys now lives in the States - so as part of his socialisation programme, I took him to Gatwick to hear the noise, see the crowds and walk on those shiny floors. Both puppies from that litter are now well-adjusted adults.

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Then came Napa's singleton puppy, Elphaba - she was not going anywhere!

 

She's where everything I teach gets put into practice in real time.

So when I talk to you about the socialisation window, about what's normal and what needs attention, about how much those early weeks matter - I'm not quoting a textbook. I raise puppies. I live this side of it too.

 

The qualifications behind the stories.

• OCN Level 5 accredited behaviourist

• Accredited Animal Training Instructor (ATI) with the ABTC - the Animal Behaviour and Training Council, the UK's regulatory body for the sector

• Registered member of the APDT (Association of Pet Dog Trainers), membership no. 01425

• Full member of the UK Dog Behaviour and Training Charter

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All of which is a long way of saying: everything I do here in the Reading area is force-free, science-led, and accountable to professional standards.

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Force free doesn't mean boundary free - my dogs and my clients' dogs have structure, skills and manners. They just learn them without fear.

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Dogs Be Dogs is bigger than me, though. Meet the people who make it what it is.