Doherty Dog Services

16/10/2025

Comment the word CHEW for my list of perfect chews for your puppy and to save your furniture! 🐶♥️

16/10/2025

Some wonderful dogs looking for new homes. ♥️

13/10/2025

Behind the scenes at our team photoshoot with Jess Millar photography yesterday. Spring Rise Canine Care Services was the perfect spot for it!

12/10/2025

Sadly, our lovely dog walker Beth is leaving Doherty Dog Services! As such, we are looking for a new dog walker to join our team.

Here's a little bit more about the role:
🐶 10-2pm Mon -Fri with the potential to increase hours
🐶 £12.50 ph plus daily mileage allowance
🐶 Uniform provided
🐶 Canine first aid training provided plus ongoing training and support in understanding dogs

We need a driver with their own vehicle that is large enough to safely transport 4 medium to large dogs. Experience with dogs and reward based training methods would be ideal but not essential as training will be provided. Covering Folkestone and surrounding areas.

Email [email protected] and let's chat and see if you'd be a good fit to join team DDS! Arranging interviews from this week with start date of Monday 27th October 🐶❤️

09/10/2025

How to teach your puppy to hate the crate

It was all going well. We'd bought our gorgeous little spaniel puppy home on my lap, me bubbling with excitement at how amazing life with this little ball of fluff was going to be. We were going to get home, have some sofa cuddles, give him his dinner and then he would go into his crate and sleep through the night until we were ready to get up with him in the morning.

Bedtime rolls around, and we pop Duke into his crate for the first time and we shut the door behind him. Then we went to go to bed ourselves. But before we'd even got our PJs on, the barking started. We'd read the best thing to do was to let him 'cry it out', so we tried to just ignore him and hope he'd settle down soon.

But the barking didn't stop. It just went on and on and on. Duke got more and more distressed, and so did I. I tried going down and reassuring him, but as soon as I left the barking started again. He was frantic. Even though it felt wrong, I really thought I was doing the right thing by leaving him in that crate and hoping he would get used to it. After a couple of hours, I gave in and slept on the sofa, Duke curled up by my feet.

The next night, I was adamant that it would be better. So what did I do? The exact same thing, of course (I know, I know- 2025 me is nearly too embarrassed to write this story!) I put him in the crate, hoped he would be ok, he wasn't ok, I gave up after listening to him barking his little puppy head off for ages and we both ended up sleeping on the couch. We did this night after night for weeks. Did I change anything? No. Did Duke feel any better about the crate? No!

Eventually, I decided that the crate just wasn't going to work for him. I just put a bed on the floor on our bedroom floor and he slept soundly for the first time since we'd bought him home. For a while I thought that it was the crate itself that was the problem. Crates aren't a bad tool when you teach your puppy that it's a safe place for them. And that's where we went so wrong with Duke's crate. We never taught him that it was a safe place for him.

If you want to crate train your puppy, that's great. There's loads of great reasons to do so. But the really important thing to remember is that you have to train your puppy to be comfortable going in there, when you don't need them to go in there. And that principle is true for all the training you'll do with your pup for the rest of their life- you have to train for the moment, not in the moment.

Soon after that, we got rid of Duke's crate altogether and 7 years later, we've never looked back. He rests on a few different spots around the house and on the sofas. So if you want to crate train, great, go for it. But if it doesn't feel like the right thing for you and your pup, that's fine too. There really is no one size fits all with puppy training.

09/10/2025

How long should you keep your puppys crate?

07/10/2025

I've spent the past 6.5 years helping dogs and their owners overcome many different training problems - barking at lunging at other dogs, anxiety around strangers, aggressive behaviour and so many more. I now work with puppy owners like you around Folkestone, helping you socialise your puppy so that you're actively preventing many of these issues developing later on.
Grab my Ultimate Guide to Puppy Socialisation to get started, link in comments 🐶♥️

05/10/2025

03/10/2025

Would you ever get two puppies at the same time? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments! 🐶♥️

03/10/2025

Just got or about to bring home your puppy?

Grab Your Ultimate Puppy Socialisation Guide here!
https://mailchi.mp/.../grab-your-ultimate-puppy...

30/09/2025

There are just two spots available on my Ultimate Puppy Training Programme for November! Message me or email [email protected] and let's have a chat about how I can help you overcome the overwhelm of life with your new puppy 🐶♥️
P.S. have I introduced you to Rodney yet? He's one of my September intake babies and isn't he just gorgeous?!