My Story
Over the years with my own dogs I developed a passion for dog training. I loved being able to work as a team with my dogs in order to overcome the hurdles that life would throw at us. From basic life skills such as toilet training to unnecessarily complex obedience such as being able to heel offlead in a busy town centre I loved the process. When my dogs weren't successful I was obsessed with working out how I could help them improve. When my dogs were successful I would feel immense joy. Dog training was an addiction to me and I couldn't get enough. I was either training my dogs, thinking about training my dogs or searching for information to improve how I was training my dogs.
I was so focused on myself and my dogs that it was like there was nothing else in the world. Eventually I stopped and looked around at what other dogs were doing and I realised that I might just have the best trained dogs around. I'm a pretty competitive person and I got curious as to how my training and my dogs stacked up against others. So I started to look at what local trainers were doing and how well trained their dogs were. To my surprise I couldn't see any local trainers doing anything impressive to me at all. There was certainly nothing on the level of what I was doing with my dogs. This made me realise that I was doing something different to the other trainers around. Where others would run into difficulties and make excuses or give up I had pushed forwards and found solutions. I was training my dogs in a way that actually works.
The success of my training meant that my dogs were able to fully enjoy life. They were happy dogs who were mentally and physically fulfilled through play, training and being offlead at all times. I decided that I wanted to share my training with others so that their dogs could have the same freedom that mine do. This led to me deciding to found Cross Canine Training.
My Approach
I believe that my approach to dog training is what sets me apart from others. While others focus on making things easy for themselves and try to avoid hard-work I throw myself into dog training with all my heart. I believe in full power training and giving dogs everything I've got to offer because otherwise how can I expect it of them?
At the same time I don't just see dog training as Sits, Downs, Stays and Recalls. I know that there is so much more. At it's core dog training is about communication, motivation, engagement and most importantly fun. By focusing on these fundamentals we bring out all of our dogs energy which we can then control and channel into the behaviours that we want. It is embracing our dog's nature and allowing them to express themselves that creates meaningful results. The people that try to sanitise dog training and supress a dog's true self are the ones that ultimately fail because at the end of the day a dog will always be a dog.
My Education & Qualifcations
Prior to working as a dog trainer I worked as a secondary school maths teacher. My experience as a teacher has been massively beneficial to me as a dog trainer. Teaching is about effective communication with individuals of different abilities, experiences and motivations in order to help them be the best they can. It works best when students are engaged and enjoying the experience, but at the same time there are rules that need to be enforced. Dog training is exactly the same except it's easier because dogs are a lot less complicated than teenagers.
My approach to dog training is informed by a combination of science and real world practice. The science informs the approach, but ultimately what works in practice cannot be disputed. As a result I constantly seek to improve on my knowledge and understanding by participating in courses, attending lectures, listening to podcasts and experimenting myself. My educators include Haz Othman, Michael Ellis, Emma Renton, Stefan Schaub, Ivan Balabanov and many more.
I am formally qualified as a Shield-K9 Certified trainer. The Shield-K9 trainer programme is one of the most rigorous qualifications that exist in the dog training world. In order to become certified individuals must pass a complex scenario based written test and also demonstrate the practical ability to achieve an extremely high level of functional obedience with a dog. I was the first person in the UK to successfully achieve this certification.