NORFOLK’S ‘DOG WHISPERER’ PUBLISHES A BOOK

You may have heard of TV personality Cesar Millan who calls himself the ‘dog whisperer’, but Necton’s Annie Turner, 58, a breeder and horse trainer who once owned 64 dogs is known as Dr Dogology to friends.

Annie Turner, is known as Dr Dogology to friends (44395159)

This year Mrs Turner published a new book Whispering Dogs: from the beginning which serves as a comprehensive manual to tell owners how to train their puppy by bringing out their natural instincts and abilities.

Mrs Turner was inspired by her father. She said: “My father spoke to dogs in a very calm manner instead of shouting at them and this has stuck with me over the years.”

The self-taught dog physiologist started off her career training horses for endurance and would take her six border collies out with her as she rode.

She noticed that when crossing roads she had to ensure that the dogs would stay by her side, so she devised a unique way of training her pets so that they would be obedient and even managed to get her collies to stand on their hind legs against the horse when they reached the roadside.

Following this Mrs Turner started to study pack behaviour and the innate instincts of dogs over the years. She managed to train all of her dogs to obey voice and whistle commands.

One of her most impressive feats to date is managing to train a deaf spaniel dog to hand signals, it took her18 months.

The author said: “He became the most obedient boy we ever had.”

Annie Turner’s book Whispering Dogs: from the beginning is out now(44395931)

Her secret to training dogs? Mrs Turner said: “Training working gundog breeds and agility dogs can prove somewhat challenging and very testing at times, however, this is dependent on the breed but said that it is most rewarding when certain dogs with disabilities can be trained as well just by firstly observing them and bringing out the dog’s natural ability, pack animal and hunting instincts and how the dog would think in the wild.

“Being able to bring this out in the dog will give me the ability to mould and train dogs to be obedient at all times. My dogs would trust me in what I am telling them to do and look at me as their pack leader.

“Training dogs has come easy over the years even when the most problematic dogs came to me for retraining and educating.”

The book took Annie over a decade to complete and publish and she said: “I am very grateful to Austin Mcauley publishers for giving me this opportunity.”

The book Whispering Dogs: from the beginning is now available on Amazon and in WH Smiths, where the hardback copy has sold out.

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