More About Me

A little backstory…

I started my business in 2010 with one goal – help people with their dogs.

Initially, I did this by offering dog walking, which quickly evolved into home-based daycare & boarding by client request. I then caught the ‘training bug’ & became obsessed with dog training & behaviour, particularly clicker training & positive reinforcement. This informed the way I looked after the dogs & puppies in my care & it wasn’t long before I had a local reputation as “the girl with all the happy, well-behaved dogs”.

For the past 15 years, this has been my business model – home-based daycare & boarding with training programmes built in. I love my job & am so proud of the business I’ve built, but recently I’ve been thinking about a change.

Deciding to focus on puppies

Since having my little boy in 2024 & utilising so many amazing resources to help us navigate becoming first-time parents, I realised that there wasn’t really an equivalent for first-time ‘puppy parents’. The helplines, local support groups & accessible courses just don’t seem to exist (yet!).

I started looking at my business through new eyes & thinking about how I could tweak things to provide the best possible support for puppies & their owners. I already have a wonderful group of friendly, well-trained dogs who have been under my care for years – could I help more puppies by offering a training programme that combines home-based daycare with one-to-one training tailored specifically to them? The existing dogs could help puppies with their social skills while I built their foundational life skills – working one-to-one with the puppy in the daycare (trained for you) & alongside their owners in their own homes (train together).

My “Puppy Start Right” programme was born!

I am so excited to offer this programme for local puppies & their owners. Already, my first few puppies are growing & thriving & I can’t wait to add more to the Patchwork Puppies family.

I feel strongly that puppy classes just aren’t the right environment for puppies to learn meaningful life skills – getting out into the real world with me & their ‘mentor dogs’ to guide them really allows the Patchwork Puppies to build the skills & confidence that they need to thrive in today’s world.

I also feel that owners don’t get the support they need from puppy classes (this is something I hear a lot from my clients). Putting together bespoke education sessions & training plans for people is something I truly love. There is nothing that beats that ‘Aha moment’ when everything clicks into place & suddenly you have a deeper understanding of your puppy. With deeper understanding comes deeper connection & that is where we want to be coming from when we work with puppies.

Like what you’ve read?

I understand that it takes a big leap of faith to commit to working with someone new, especially when it comes to trusting them with your precious puppy. This is why the first step I suggest is for you to message me on WhatsApp. We can get to know each other a little & you can decide whether you think we would work well together or not – no hard feelings if you’re not ready to sign up after talking with me, I promise!

You can use the button below to start a WhatsApp chat…

Or find out more about my programmes using this button instead…

I hope to hear from you soon!

Niki x