Banbury woman helps children get confident around dogs

An animal expert has made it her mission to help children become more confident around dogs.

As pet ownership rose during the pandemic, Oxfordshire dog trainer Ellena Nunneley said she noticed some young people were having "increasingly negative experiences" with dogs.

Ms Nunneley believed some owners were to blame as they had not trained their animals properly.

She now runs free classes that teach kids how to read dogs' body language.

Pet ownership rose during the pandemic, with an extra 3.2 million households across the UK buying a pet from March 2020 to March 2021.

But Ms Nunneley, who founded Banbury-based Swift Dog Training in 2013, said that meant some people had taken on dogs without training them correctly.

"There was a puppy boom in lockdown and a lot of people got dogs on a whim, with no real understanding of how much time they would have to put in," she said.

Ms Nunneley began seeing the consequences of this and reported seeing a lot of "out of control" dogs.

She added some some children looked "terrified" and had no understanding of how to interact with the animals.

"We are passionate about keeping children safe and teaching them the correct way to behave around dogs," she said.

The dog trainer has since offered her free services to families in Oxfordshire.

"Children tend to copy behaviour, so as the adult you must always ask the owner if their dog is OK to say hello to first," she said.

Ms Nunneley also teaches children how to read the dogs' body language.

She said: "If the dog turns and moves away, that should always be an option for a dog."

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