Training…

Carolyn has lived and worked with animals for most of her life. After training and working as a qualified horse riding instructor (and various other things!) Carolyn returned to her first love - dogs.

While she felt like she had ‘come home’, Carolyn was so often disillusioned by the standard of dog training that seemed to be the norm, and depressed by the lack of knowledge out there to help the public become good and responsible dog owners. As a result, she became passionate about bringing the principles of reward-based training into the eye of a public who still hailed Barbara Woodhouse as a goddess!

“Imagine you are trying to pick a school for your child, she says”. “Would you be impressed by a teacher who shouted, screamed and hit the pupils for not grasping the finer points of quantum physics? Or would you prefer a teacher who encouraged the children to enjoy learning, who recognised their own individual skills, and so helped them realise their potential to be exceptional adults?”

“Choosing a way to train your dog presents exactly the same dilemma,” she continues. “You either go for the old-fashioned approach of jerking on the choke chain and punishing mistakes (an approach that is sadly making a come back thanks to certain TV dog trainers), or you can cherish the relationship you have with your friend and treat him with the respect and love you would a child. Not really a tough choice? I don’t think so, but I still see training classes up and down the country whose instructors (generally sensible shoe-clad, large and lumpy women with pendulous bosoms who shout terrifyingly in a tweed skirt) inspire fear and despair in equal measures to cringing dogs and owners.

“Having neither a tweed skirt nor a pendulous bosom, I decided to buck the trend and make dog training both fun and fashionable. After many years of learning everything I could about dogs and the way they think (with grateful thanks to Dr Roger Mugford, animal behaviourist and ex-psychiatrist to the Queen’s Corgis, to the many others whose brains I have sucked, and especially to all the dogs and owners I have worked with - who taught me far more than anyone), I decided it was time dog training entered the new millennium - and the public consciousness.”

So not only is Carolyn a passionate reward-based trainer, but she is also dedicated to trying to make life better for as many of the nation’s dogs (and their owners) as possible. There is only one way to do that……. the media.