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Our Story
It all started with a Border Collie...
My love of dogs started many years ago when on holiday with my family in Switzerland where the hotel dog, a Border Collie called Tschingel, wouldn't let me stop playing fetch with him. I would sit in the hotel lobby for hours with him and felt like I'd made my first four-legged best friend. His presence was so calming, a feeling that we as dog lovers are very familiar with. From this, an obsession with dogs began, with a huge soft spot for Border Collies!
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Fast forward a few years, I volunteered at a few kennels and adored meeting all the dogs and taking them for wanders around the grounds. We also fostered dogs growing up, from Border Collies to Jack Russells. Eventually, just as I was about to enter my teenage years, we brought home our very own Shetland Sheepdog and I knew for the first time what people are talking about when they refer to their "heart dog".
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University then came around so I spent five years living in the city, and after all those years I was longing for the mountains and having a dog by my side again. We moved to The Peak District and in 2021, my Husband and I brought home our first puppy - Buddy the Border Collie, and what a ride it's been. I'd done all the research on bringing home a puppy and we had big plans for him to become an adventure pup with long runs in the mountains. Whilst this has become the reality, a series of attacks from off-lead dogs, all unprovoked from Buddy's end, led to Buddy becoming fear-aggressive with other dogs, and our adventures in the mountains look very different these days. I had to throw myself into learning how we can make his life just as good as it was going to be, and how we can reduce his stress and anxiety whilst keeping him and others safe.
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Through all our challenges however, my passion for dogs developed even more and I decided to combine my two greatest loves - being in the outdoors and spending time in the company of dogs. As a result, Fjell Canine Company was born.
The Future of Fjell Canine Company
Through trying to help my own anxious boy, I discovered a whole community on Instagram known as "The Reactive Dog Community". It left me feeling much less alone and it also introduced me to the world of dog training and behaviour. One thing that has always stood out to me is how similar these wonderful creatures are to ourselves. I studied Psychology at university and it became very evident to me that the way in which we teach ourselves to cope with emotions such as anxiety, such as learning how to change our emotional responses to different situations, is the same way in which we should be teaching our dogs. Through this, they should also be afforded the same kindness and understanding as we give each other through these difficult emotions.
I also know, from personal experience, just how much our own human emotions can affect our dog's behaviour. That is why I believe that in training dogs, we also need to be affording their human just as much kindness and understanding, and working in partnership with both dog and human, to help them live a better quality life together.
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It is this realisation and my passion for these wonderful beings that has led me to want to finally put my degree to good use and use it to hopefully qualify as a Clinical Animal Behaviourist in the future. I can't wait to become a part of the journey in helping our dogs feel more understood.