Who am I?

Hi, I’m Doug and I’m here to explain where this all started and how I found myself devoting my professional career to the unwavering loving animals we call canines.

This brief history piece is aimed to provide some clarity and quench your curiosity, so let’s get started!

So, where did it all begin?

After nearly a decade in the British Army conducting military operations worldwide, I had developed a feeling there was something else out there. I had wanted to finally start a family for some time and I knew being in the military wasn’t optimal for this.

So taking the plunge, I put in my 1 year notice and started resettlement to prepare for this next chapter in life. During that time I spent a lot of time at home writing my CV properly for the very first time and searching for new and exciting opportunities.

During this time, I decided I had always wanted to do the right thing and rescue a dog, feeling like we were going through a similar transition we would have a strong bond and a mutual situation getting used to a new life.

So we contacted a household named charity (which will stay anonymous) and started the procedure for rescuing our next family member. I had grown up around large breeds, predominantly Leonbergers and thought I had what it takes to successfully rehome a Large breed. We met a two-year-old boy called Bear who was by all accounts according to the charity a GSD/Caucasian Shepard mix with no bite history and no prior trauma.

This was the green light we needed and proceeded to bring him home after two visits and slowly introduced him to our family. That’s when it all started to go wrong… The best way I could have described him was being constantly “instinctive” and completely independent with no training or socialisation at all. A perfect cocktail for disaster.

Destructive behaviour, an uncontrollable aggressive guarding instinct, and zero impulse control led us to reach out to a local trainer. We were excited to understand our boy and eager to start. However, after our first couple of sessions, we were wondering when the “training” would begin.. we honoured the initial consultations as we respected the fact that a trainer would need context and some history but this very quickly turned into very expensive social chats in fields. There was no sort of training plan in place with no goals or tasks to go home with and little to no communication in the form of replies. It seemed very distant unless there was money involved... Shock!

We were simply stuck and did not know what to do with Bear, who was at this time about halfway through pulling up our downstairs carpet! We reached out to a Facebook Caucasian Shepherds owners group. It was a long shot, but we had exhausted our other options at this point. But this provided more than we could even imagine…

We received a message from a user claiming to have met Bear! What are the odds!? Like anyone else, we requested proof and sure enough, we received photos of a dog who was indeed Bear!

This is where we learned that everything we were told about Bear up until this point was false. It turned out that Bear was an Akita/Cane Corso mix bought by an 80-year-old lady living in a one-bed flat, who was rescued very malnourished, and in a very bad shape.

Bear was subsequently rescued by a woman and her daughter but was returned the next day by this Facebook user who had contacted us. Bear was locked outside on his first night out of the shelter in what was described as a thunderstorm after supposedly biting his new owner’s arm.

We were infuriated by the charity for not sharing this information with us before we decided to rescue him. We followed up with Bear’s handler at the charity and they confirmed all these things to be true.

Shocked was an understatement… it was a very dangerous action, not disclosing bite history. We decided not to take things further with the charity.

Inevitably after a couple of months, it ended badly. We were forced to put Bear down as he became aggressive and unfortunately bit a family member quite badly.

I was distraught, I had lost my companion. Being in our very quiet household surrounded with nothing but pictures of my newly deceased dog I began to wonder why...

The realisation of how naive and outright reckless I was, just because I had large dogs before.

Each dog is different, with different personalities, different experiences, and different souls. Some are more inclined to like and do the same activities such as mutual breeds. But each dog is unique.

I made a vow that day to do my best to keep dogs out of shelters and more importantly keep them alive through the use of professional dog training. Losing Bear was hard but I’m glad we provided a loving home for him and I’m sure he would be grateful and thrilled to hear I have made this my calling.

I created LANCELOTDOGS to help as many owners as possible, to enable them to provide a loving caring environment to their Canine family members through the use of professional instruction.

If you have made it this far I am grateful! I wanted to be completely transparent and give as much detail as possible, I hope you understand.

Thanks for reading,

Doug

If you wish to start your new relationship with your canine companion, take a look below!