Who We Are

Carol Donovan and Stuart Ashworth have both over 30 years experience working with dogs and started working together over 20 years ago to provide help to all animals but especially cats and dogs.  After many years of working in this area with your pets, and the local Veterinary Surgeries, we have  a team of like-minded professional people who care about your dogs  as much as you do. The team is all fully supervised and very experienced in the many needs of our canine  friends. We have full professional indemnity insurance and naturally covered by public liability insurance.

 Qualifications: We are fully qualified canine behavioural trainers. As experienced pet nutrition counsellors, we worked closely with the founder of the Association of Pet Behaviourist Counsellors and the Association Pet Dog Trainers which were set up to help improve pet dog and cat knowledge and to help promote responsible dog and cat ownership. We attend many courses and seminars to keep up to date with dog training and  behaviour. We  have worked closely with other aggression specialists around the country to keep up to date on latest  methods of retraining. Stuart is a Smithfield Trained Master butcher who has diversified and is our expert in pet nutrition.  You would be surprised how many times just looking at the diet of a dog, you can help the dog to start the relearning process. However, having been privileged  to have had up to 9 dogs at one time in the family unit, and helped many thousands of dogs over the years, our best teachers are the dogs themselves.  Every one is unique but many of their pack characteristics are similar.  We are  fully committed to the Responsible Dog Ownership Campaign  - started in 1990 and still going strong.

Work Experience: Following on from many requests for help, WALKABOUT was established in 1998 and we already have many thousands of satisfied clients. Following on from our dog walking and training classes we have built from there. We currently have very successful training centre in  Finchampstead,  where we are able to help build owner’s confidence when problems occur or to help the new puppy owner ensure that their new puppy gets the best start in life. We also run socialisation courses for the puppies and older family pets and do a lot of work in supporting new owners of rescue dogs. 

We know that many clients want to attend classes with their dog but due to family and work commitments are not able to.  With this in mind we have a number of other options from training the dog ourselves on a daily basis to private tuition at a number of venues to suit the owner.  We are one of a few organisations in the country who use their own teaching dogs to help other dogs learn or relearn their basic canine skills. All of our work is designed to help and support the owner (and their veterinary surgeon) cope with their pets with increasing pressures of today’s society.  We want to help prevent misunderstandings and perhaps prevent a re homing situation or even worse, euthanasia.  With this in mind we keep costs down and offer affordable training, yet offering what both our client and their dog needs.

 We now offer workshops at  Farnham, Farringdon, West Byfleet and Farnborough during the day (including Saturdays and Sundays) and have clubs throughout the area to which we direct the owner and their dog as part of their retraining programme. We have sites around the area to ensure that we can help as many people as possible. If they cannot get to us, we can travel to them and have a wonderful team of volunteers who bring their dogs along to help and support the new dog. Our residential training is just as popular using our friends and colleagues at Spangleberry to kennel the dogs who need that bit of extra support.

International Help: click here for more info on how we can help you

We have a partnership with a rescue centre in Playa del Carmen, Mexico  http://www.peanutpetshelter.org and regularly raise money to assist with the care and rehabilitation of street dogs. Caroline and her family visited in December 2008 and worked with the 67 dogs currently at the centre and there are plans to revisit again in 2010. This experience helps Walkabout deal with the many rescues that come to us with problems, and helped enormously with a  litter of 8 puppies we rescued from a breeder in September 2008 who were badly under-nourished and sadly severely under socialised. These young dogs are now seen regularly helping other young puppies learn how to relate to dogs.  We also help and support friends in France, help to rehabilitate dogs in other parts of Europe ,Canada, Northern Cyprus and of course in Australia where our family lives.  This wealth of experience allows us to build our knowledge and in turn help our more local clients. Remember the best teacher is a dog.

Family Experiences: We have all owned dogs  for many years.  Between us, we have had over 30 dogs, many of these  at one time (Stuart had 5 and Carol 4), which has given us the opportunity of studying the family pack. Of course they have given us lots of love and laughter, but they have also exposed us to a wide variety of problems and our experiences will be able to help you. We currently have a number of German Shepherd Dogs of varying ages having come to us as puppies through rescue organisations.  We regularly work with the rescue centre's to help rescued dogs settle into their new home.