About Me

So, what do you want to know?

Born and bred in Sutherland, in the Highlands, I grew up in a rural community with lots of dogs and sheep and hens. I've always loved animals, but was thought to be very sentimental about them by the people around me for whom animals were more or less just property or resource. I remember my mam’s outrage when she discovered that when I ‘cleared the mice out’ of the corn barrel in our shed, I was letting them go at the bottom of our fields….(probably only to have to rescue them again the next day!) I always had a feeling that animals, like us, were just trying to live and surely had some rights too.

I came to Glasgow to study in 1990, and it was then that I got my first dog of my own. She was a brilliant wee Jack Russell, a rescue, and she changed my life for the better then, and for the next 17 years.

After uni, I trained as an English teacher and worked for a long time in education. I learned a lot from working with so many human pups over the years - kids are as funny as they can be challenging. But I definitely gained insight into how vulnerable we all feel when we are learning something new and so, humour and humility are key to my approach to training and teaching.

I made the decision to retrain as a dog trainer because of my own dog: Red, a ‘fox-red’ Labrador that we got during (but not because of) lockdown. I’ve heard it said that if you get a dog from a working line, it’s like getting five dogs in one - and that has certainly been our experience with Red!

Quite simply: Red demanded that we learn about her needs; how she learns and what she wants from us. She would not be put off!

Humans understand and value fairness, justice and kindness - but historically we have not always applied these values to the animals we brought into our homes. Humans want ‘pets’ for their beauty, their companionship and to enhance our lives; so it seems only reasonable that our side of the bargain should be that we learn about them and meet them at their level.

This is now called ‘force free training’ and force free training results in relationship.

And that is where the fun began! I was ‘in a relationship’ with an energetic, savvy, too-clever-by-half FRL who needed a lot of stimulation and a lot of training…but what was fascinating was that she loved being trained and she loved ‘working’. If her needs weren’t being met, boy, would she let me know! Not by being destructive - but by a relentless campaign of expressing her needs! She would bring the full range of her toys and the stuff we used for training as if to say…. ‘so, which would you like to do??’

I was fortunate to train with Irish trainer, behavourist and all-round dog guru, Nanci Creedon [The Dog Academy, Cats and Dogs at War ] and through her excellent program, I have learned about the science of what dogs need, the complexity of breed-specific outlets; how dogs learn and what it is they want from us. Most importantly I have learned that dogs are individuals who want to form relationships with their people and that, if we see them like that, we are on the way to having a better time with them and giving them the best life we can.

There are a lot of voices out there telling you how to train your dogs. But what can be helpful is to quieten the noise and pose a couple of simple questions: what does your dog need? How can you meet those needs in a way you can be proud of?

Welcome to Good Dog 2 Great Dog.