I nearly lost use of my hand to an angry hound
IT WASN’T a case of “once bitten, twice shy” for TV’s selfappointed “Dogfather”.
Fearless dog trainer Graeme Hall almost lost the use of his hand when he was savaged by an angry German Shepherd... and he’s still devoting his life to helping naughty hounds.
In his Channel 5 series, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, Hall, 54, shows off his methods for dealing with aggressive dogs, pups with anxiety, and a Bassett hound that lives and eats off a breakfast bar.
But it can go very wrong. He recalled: “A German Shepherd I went to see four years ago had been rehomed, and was barking very aggressively.
“They brought him in to see me and he just went for my left hand. He bit hard, at the same time the owner pulled on the lead. The effect was to rip it [my hand].
“It was off to A&E. I ended up in the operating theatre. The bites just missed a tendon and nerve and I nearly lost the full use of that hand. It was a close call. That really made me think differently and I will now put a muzzle on the dog, but I still get little bites here and there.”
Hall, a former executive for cereal firm Weetabix in Warwickshire, started taming terriers 10 years ago.
He has been compared to 1980s TV dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse but says his style is very different. “She heralded an era of ‘Let’s not blame the dog. Let’s work out what the people are doing wrong’. That connects a little with what I do, but it’s more nuanced than that. I’m an old dog with new tricks,” he quips.
“It’s OK to tell dogs off as long as you do it the right away and you’re not abusive.”
When Hall left Weetabix he planned to be a management consultant. “I had two Rottweilers and set about training them. Then someone from a dog training company said something that changed the course of my life, ‘Why don’t you become a dog trainer?’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because you’re good with people’. That’s what hooked me, as he said it’s a combination of being good with people and good with dogs.”
Hall, who has a Labrador boxer-cross called Lily, added: “If you want dogs to behave well, then praise them, especially when they’re quiet, otherwise they don’t know.”
Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, on Channel 5, Tuesday, 8pm