Here’s a short interview by The Finchley Vet!
Green Dog Walking are a local North London dog walking company that The Finchley Vet is pleased to be able to recommend. We thought we’d ask Joe, who is the founder, some questions!!
Where is your favourite local place to walk dogs?
Hampstead Heath is our favourite park to walk in, we’re always discovering interesting new areas to explore with the dogs!
Do you have one tip to share on improving a dog’s recall?
We find consistency and reward are both very important for any type of dog training.
One tip to improve a dog’s lead walking?
Make it clear that you’re walking the dog, they’re not walking you! Change direction whenever the pull until they realise they need to be walking with you. Halti’s can be very effective for stronger dogs.
Tell us about the experience of the most challenging dog you’ve ever had to walk and why.
We’ve had a few over the years! Often stronger, larger dogs that don’t have the best recall. A Golden Retriever called Alfie comes to mind as one of our trickiest! He was a large 1 year old so fully grown but still had the brain of a little puppy. He wanted to jump up at everyone and roll in everything he could find. With a lot of consistent group walks and persistent training from our walkers, he eventually became a lot more relaxed and learned to control his excitement around strangers. We’ve been walking him now for around 3 years and he loves his daily outings!
Tell us about one of your favourite dogs to walk and why.
We have too many favourites! Whippets as a breed are definitely up there though, they bring so much excitement and energy to the groups with their cheeky personalities!
Any tips on how to quickly and easily clean a dirty dog after a walk?
We find preventing them getting TOO muddy is the biggest trick, but that’s not always easy, particularly during the winter months. There are lots of decent coats out there that will help too.
How many steps do you end up walking in a busy day of dog walking?! (or most amount of steps walked in a day?) (the recommended government amount is 10,000!)
Well some of our walkers do around 5 hours of walking each day so I would expect they’ll be hitting the 20,000 mark each day. It’s a great job to keep fit!
