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I have always been drawn to the misfits
Hi, I’m Alice.
I’m Italian, I love pizza, animals and learning. And for as long as I can remember I have had an odd pull towards the animals nobody else wanted. The difficult ones. The misunderstood ones. The ones people had already given up on.
I still do. I just get paid for it now.
Why reactivity
I have worked with dogs for over ten years and a great many of them have been reactive. Two of them were my own. Oliver, years ago, and then Bucky, who taught me more about reactivity than any course I have ever taken, mostly by putting me through it first.
So when you tell me you crossed the road before anyone saw you, or turned back up the path because there was a dog coming, or stopped walking at normal hours because it was simply easier, I am not going to look at you blankly. I have done all of it. I hated how powerless it made me feel, and that feeling is the reason reactivity and aggression became my specialism rather than one more service on a list.
I was supposed to be a vet
Here is a secret. I never planned to be a behaviour consultant. As a child I wanted to be a vet, and I did not pass the entry exam for veterinary medicine.
It was the best thing that could have happened.
I joined the Animal Welfare and Husbandry degree course instead, and fell in love with something I would never have found in a veterinary surgery. Looking at the whole picture. Preventing rather than curing. Understanding how everything fits together.
Your dog is an ecosystem, and so are you. Behaviour, health, sleep, nutrition, genetics, the house they live in and the week you have had are all connected, and when one part of that is out of balance the whole thing stops working properly. Most training looks at the behaviour on its own. I look at everything sitting underneath it, because that is almost always where the answer is.
What I studied, and where it took me
My degree covered animal behaviour, breeding, genetics, selection and nutrition. From there I went on to study large carnivores in zoos, and I have written scientific articles on the sociality of polar bears, leopards and tortoises. Tortoises, it turns out, are trained using the same principles we use on our dogs, which I still think is wonderful.
Alongside all of that I spent years working with another reactivity specialist, working through webinars, books and courses, and testing everything on Bucky long before it went anywhere near a clientās dog.
Where I work
I am based in Southampton and work across the city and the surrounding area. One to one behaviour work happens in your own home and out in the real world where the problems actually live, and I run small puppy classes at Woolston Community Centre.
Say hello
What working with me is actually like
I keep things simple. Let me deal with the complicated part. You get clear steps that fit around the week you actually have, not the one you would need to clear your diary for.
I work with the whole family rather than only the person holding the lead, because everyone in the house affects the dog whether they intend to or not.
I do not do quick fixes and I will never promise you one. What I do promise is that you will leave every session understanding more than you did when you arrived, and knowing exactly what to do next.
And I am on the other end of the phone in between. Whether you need help, want to tell me about a win, or need to let off steam because another loose dog came flying at you while its owner shouted that it was friendly, I am there.
Expect to learn a lot. Expect to enjoy it more than you think you will.
