DM Dog Training, Holme upon Spalding Moor.
I have built up years of real life and real world training.
I started out handling and training dogs in the prison service, which is about as far from a village training hall as you can get. It is work where the dog has to be right and the handler has to be right, decisions are made under pressure, and there is no room for guessing.
From there I went to Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, training assistance dogs which support people through daily activities and life saving alerts, and working my way up to Area Manager.
That is the background I bring to a family in a kitchen in North Yorkshire who cannot walk their dog past the end of the road.
Awarded by The College of Scent Dogs
Awarded by the IMDT
The family had a young cockerpoo and a little girl who had become frightened of him. Not of dogs in general. Of him, in her own house.
The work was not really about the puppy. It was about giving her a way of being around him that she trusted, and giving him a way of being around her that did not end in tears.
She ended up handling him herself, in a ring, in front of people.
She had lost her husband, and the dog had been his. A Malinois, far more dog than she had ever handled, and by the time I met her she was being pulled down the street and had stopped going out.
She was not going to give him up. That was not on the table, and I would not have asked her to.
She walks him now. She has made friends locally because of him, which is the part that still gets me.
If any of this sounds like where you are, start with a call and we will work out what is going on.