One Christmas when I was 8 years old I found a little Collins pocket book of dog breeds in my stocking. I took it everywhere and I learned every single dog breed and memorised everything about them!

I used to dream about owning some of the dogs in there like the Tibetan Spaniel, the Maltese and the Papillon.

I knew every dog breed by sight! A strange talent for a little girl!

I didn’t just love dogs, I was positively obsessed with them!

Growing up we had family dogs, Trixie a sweet and loyal Cairn Terrier then Kash, our beautiful, goofy Boxer and finally Totty, my very own little Terrier.. my Christmas present when I was 16!

I worked hard.

As well as dogs, I love all other animals and worked as a volunteer from the age of 14 in rescue centres, kennels and my local vets. I worked every chance I could get, every weekend and every holiday.

I was like a sponge soaking up every drop of information, assisting in consultations, watching operations and accompanying the vets on farm visits.

Later on, when I left college I worked in rescue with dogs and cats then ended up working at the same local vets as a receptionist!

Then I moved away. And had a break working with animals.

Fast forward 15 years!

After a while, I realised I missed my animals, especially dogs! There was a big piece of me missing.

In 2009 I decided to get Kiri my Jack Russell.

She was a cheeky little 8week old butter ball!

I knew about dog training. I thought… you need to show them who’s boss and everything will be fine.

It didn’t work out.

Even at the age of 2, her recall was AWFUL and she would run off with other dogs’ tennis balls!

I changed my tack.. I started to research a better way of training and implemented fun, positive reinforcement methods.

Kiri responded so well and we started to see a drastic improvement in her behaviour off lead.

I found my passion.

I leapt into a self study journey, devouring any science-based ethical information I could get my hands on. I enrolled with Compass and completed their Foundation course in Canine Behaviour Management and did courses with the Institute of Modern Dog Trainer and Chirag Patel. I took many, many webinars, classes and workshops. I read a ton of books and worked my way through copious amounts of articles. I re-educated myself on learning theory and the works of Pavlov, Watson and Skinner.

I talked to other dog trainers and behaviourists, and absorbed everything I could.

I then found myself taking dogs in to foster and a couple I literally transformed.

Bo.

One of these dogs was Bo. She came to me originally as a temporary foster dog advertised for free on social media. Her issues were insurmountable. She had severe resource guarding, body sensitivity and human-directed aggression. She wasnt toilet trained and had had zero training.

It took me 45 mins to get her out of the transporter’s car and into my house.. then we had another 30 mins of trying to get a collar on her. I used every trick in my book.

Luckily she loved Kiri straight away and soon realised that she was safe.

I very quickly realised that this was a dog needing a massive amount of work and was unsuitable to live as a pet in a home that didn’t have the knowledge that I had acquired. I couldn’t let her go. So she stayed.

I worked with her tirelessly and taught her many tricks to boost her confidence. I changed her emotional response to things that would scare her and we boosted our relationship through permission based handling, enabling me to communicate with her to work on her struggles.

We would meet other dog walkers in the park and they would comment on how well she was doing.

People started to ask me for help with their dogs.

This is where Halo Pups was born.