‘HAVING A DOG IS A TWO-WAY PROCESS’
Choosing the right dog can be difficult, admits expert trainer and author Louise Glazebrook, but she tells RICHARD BARBER it’s crucial to put the effort in as owning a pet is a serious long-term commitment
LOUISE GLAZEBROOK has been obsessed with dogs for as long as she can remember. “Being with dogs makes me tick,” she admits. “I used to walk all the dogs in the village where I grew up in Cambridgeshire. “My paternal grandfather had Labradors, my uncle had gun dogs, my mum’s parents also had dogs.”
Louise, 41, lives in east London with her husband Kyle who is in the building industry, and their two children.
“We got together in sixth-form college. His family had four spaniels.
“When I finished university in Roehampton we started fostering dogs which needed permanent homes.”
Their first full-time dog was an English bulldog called Cookie which, by the time she was two, was totally deaf. “She was incredible – I called her my angel dog. I tried to learn as much as I could about dogs which had lost their hearing.
“In those days deaf dogs tended to be put down, so I started teaching her eye contact and hand signals.”
After university Louise got a job in the toy industry doing research on
‘Dogs bring their own personalities’
children’s play. “I didn’t know it at the time but it proved to be a really useful foundation for working with dogs.”
In her spare time and financed by her job, she signed up for courses to study dog training and behaviour.
“But I still regarded dogs as my hobby. I couldn’t see how they could become my career. Away from work I was volunteering at stray kennels.”
Then a London dog warden she befriended recommended that Louise get dog-grooming qualifications. “It wasn’t what I wanted to do but it did teach me a lot about handling dogs.”
Gradually, through word of mouth, she began to acquire clients who had dogs with behavioural problems.
She combined that with giving puppy classes – six to eight at a time – in the upstairs room of a pub in Hackney.
Just before she fell pregnant with her second child, she landed her first TV series on BBC Two, Six Puppies And Us, courtesy of a client from puppy classes. Half-a-dozen featured owners were shown by Louise how to overcome doggie bad habits. “I was the resident canine behaviourist.”
Other series have followed, the latest involving a dozen dogs and owners.
“The programmes demonstrate how much work goes into owning a dog.”
She is now a regular on Steph Mcgovern’s Packed Lunch magazine programme on Channel 4 and has appeared on This Morning with Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford.
Now she has written a book to steer people through the minefield of choosing the right dog to join their family for the next 15 years. She describes The Book Your Dog Wishes You Would Read as her “love letter to dogs”.
Make no mistake, she says, all dogs are different. “Dogs bring their own personalities to the planet. Having said that, most bad behaviour stems from misunderstandings we humans create, such as poor breeding.”
She regards puppy farms and dealers as the greatest culprits. “They’re horrific – not just from a welfare point of view in terms of medical and health issues, but also the behavioural problems that spring from that.”
It is why, in Louise’s opinion, it is much better to go on a waiting list with a responsible breeder. “People who ring up and ask for a certain breed in a certain colour and are told one will be available in a fortnight should beware.”
Much more sensible is to build up a relationship with a responsible breeder. Although, says Louise, people do need to choose the right breed and be certain their situation is suitable for the chosen puppy.
“People don’t realise how much sleep puppies need. If they’re between eight and 12 weeks, which is when they’re usually separated from their mothers, they only need to be awake an hour at a time. Just like babies. Keep them awake longer and I call it baby shark: they literally become feral because they’re so over-stimulated, so overtired and they can’t switch off.”
There are other ways you can minimise problems. “If you’ve bought your puppy from a breeder based in the
countryside and you live in a city, allow more time to acclimatise the animal to what will be an environment with alien noises and traffic and smells.
“Choosing your breed and type of dog is of paramount importance. The work you put in will pay dividends.”
FOR ALL HER calm common sense, Louise gets nipped all the time by teething puppies, she says. “On one occasion I was dragged to the ground by an adult dog. He wasn’t getting what he needed and was over-exuberant. He jumped up, got hold of my arm and, before I knew it, I’d hit the deck. Luckily, he was on a lead and I managed to hook it over the spike of a fence so that I could shrug off my coat. I didn’t shout at him.
“I just stood for a few minutes while he calmed down.then I gave him a toy, something new on which to focus.
“The size of dog isn’t an indicator of personality or how much exercise they need. Some small breeds like a Jack Russell need more exercise than a giant breed like a Mastiff.”
Choosing the right dog should not be left to chance. “If you want a rescue, avoid websites like Gumtree and Pets4homes. They’re unregulated so you could be told anything and you’ve no way of verifying the facts.
“If you’re buying from a breeder, it’s
important to be clear about the temperament of the dog you want. I’m a big fan of the Instagram account Puppy Love Campaigns, that exposes puppy farmers and dealers.
“There’s a lot of money to be made out of breeding and selling dogs these days so you want to be sure that what you’re being offered is the real deal.
“I’d always recommend face-to-face contact. The pandemic has only made the problem worse as everything tends to happen online.”
Unscrupulous dealers are full of tricks. A favourite is to place a litter from a puppy farm in someone’s home to make a potential buyer think they were born and bred there. As soon as
they’ve selected their puppy the litter is returned to the grim conditions of the puppy farm.
A high-profile example of someone not being rigorous enough in their research was Love Islander Molly-mae Hague, who bought a Pomeranian puppy imported from Russia.
But nothing can diminish Louise’s love of dogs. “It gladdens my heart when I see someone walking a dog and there’s eye contact. It makes me sad when the owner is listening to a podcast and there’s no interaction. Having a dog is a two-way process.”