My Story

I have always loved dogs since I can remember. I know its very cliché but all I remember is collecting anything dog related and covering my bedroom with it! Dog postcards from any time I went on holiday, paying 20p for a dog ornament at a boot fair which usually had a chip somewhere, cutting up calendar pages once the month was finished, magazine pages, any birthday cards. And not forgetting the 101 Dalmatians duvet set and painting my bedroom furniture white with black dog stencils. The list goes on. Obsessed is probably a massive understatement.

So of course, I obviously had loads of pet dogs growing up. Wrong! Every birthday and Christmas, I would write notes to my parents asking for a dog. 'Please can I have a dog, I won't ask for anything else ever again!' But to no avail. Instead, my wonderful Granny would let me 'share' her Cairn Terrier Freddie. She was very generous and let me have the 'bottom half.' He was a year older than me so we very much grew up together. However in January 2008, we lost him and it was really hard not having a dog around.

It was in October that year, when I was 15, that we decided to get Cooper, a labrador; very much a larger dog than we were used to. But he turned into being the best family dog you could ask for. He was the happiest, kindest and most loyal dog. He truly was my best friend and one of my favourite things to do was to head out for a nice, long walk with him. So, it has baffled me why I didn't go straight into a dog career.

However, after 9 years of teaching, it was time for a change and in April 2023, I left the profession and dived head first into starting up my own business. The name was easy; it was always going to be named after Cooper and in September 2023 when we said goodbye to him, it made it even more special knowing that I will forever have a memory of him. When I told people I have started up my own dog business, I got comments such as; 'well it's about time!' and 'I'm not sure why you didn't just do that 10 years ago!' I think this gave me the reassurance that I was definitely going down the right path and I was going to love these dogs so much! And so Cooper'c Canine Services was born and I haven't looked back since!