Badly-behaved dogs are often unhappy – as are their owners. Fortunately Graeme ‘The Dogfather’ Hall is on hand to make life easier, writes Emma Higginbotham.
For Graeme Hall, being stopped in the street is a regular event, but the affable host of Channel 5’s Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly insists he doesn’t mind. “It comes with the territory,” he says. “They go ‘Hey, you’re that guy! Can I ask you a question?’ and I’m not bad at doing fairly quick answers.”
It’s no surprise that people want to talk to the good-humoured Yorkshireman. Also known as ‘The Dogfather’, Graeme is famous for his whispering ways with problem pooches, and for proving that it’s often not the pet that needs training, but the owner. Moreover, he’s easy to spot, given that he’s toweringly tall and usually wearing a dapper cravat (“me and Anton Du Beke are single-handedly bringing them back”).
Is every naughty dog curable? “You can always improve things, and sometimes the transformations are remarkable,” he says. “Other times we don’t cure a problem, but we find a way that you can manage it, so your life is a lot happier, and so is his.”
Originally from Selby, the 56-year-old, whose motto is ‘any dog, any age, any problem’, has worked with more than 5,000 misbehaving mutts over the years, from domineering Great Danes to destructive Dachshunds. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t have a dog as a child (“my dad always said ‘It’s too upsetting when they go’,”) nor for most of his adult life.
What’s more, dog training is very much a second career. He joined Weetabix as a graduate trainee, and worked for the cereal giant for 21 years until life blew him in a very different direction. In his early 40s he got a Rottweiler puppy called Axel, followed by another, Gordon, nine months later. Puppy classes became a fascination, and after getting involved with Schutzhund, a sport for protection dogs, a trainer persuaded him to take up training himself. Before long his reputation had spread, and in 2016 a call from a TV production company changed everything.
While Graeme accepts that it’s unusual to come to dog training so late, he sees it as an advantage. “I didn’t have four decades of doing it the conventional way, and just accepting that’s the way it was. So naturally I thought ‘Right, could this be done differently? Is there a better way?’”
There was. And the key to canine bliss, it seems, is calmness.
“Most problems are a symptom of a dog being more excited than we can cope with, or they can cope with,” he explains. “He’s barking his head off because he’s excited. He’s thinking of biting someone because he’s excited. Even ‘Oh bless her, she’s scratching at the door because she’s got separation anxiety’ – that’s not calmness. Reducing excitement and not revving them up is the way forward.”
Giving praise at the right time also makes a huge difference, as often we tell them off after the bad behaviour, which confuses them. “Dogs just go from moment to moment. So if they’re barking and then they go quiet, it follows that in that moment we should be going ‘This is a good moment, well done, good boy, this is nice’.
“You can flip between the two. You see me doing this on the show, where it’s like ‘Ah! No! Good boy. No! Good, good’. As long as I get my timing right, the dog thinks ‘There’s a pattern here. Every time I bark he doesn’t like it, weirdly, and every time I’m quiet he loves me for it. Right, I’ll just do that.’”
What’s also important, adds Graeme, is to focus on the positive. Well, mostly. “All bad is bad, and all good is bad,” he says. “If you’re doing nothing but telling your dog off, that ain’t going to work, and actually if you’re doing nothing but praising your dog, and he’s taking the mickey out of you and doing stuff you’re ignoring, that’s not going to work either. You need a balance. It’s the same with humans: we need rules, and we need to know there’s a consequence if we break them.”
Graeme, who also has a podcast called Talking Dogs, is now revealing his methods – and the science and psychology behind them – in a book, All Dogs Great and Small. Packed with laugh-out-loud (and occasionally tear-jerking) anecdotes, this is no ordinary dog training manual.
“I wanted explain to people how you do it and why it works, but in a way that’s entertaining,” he says. “I can’t do one-to-ones with everybody, but by writing a book I can help lots of people all at once, and that’s really the thing that drives me – helping people.”
At home with his wife in the Cotswolds, Graeme now has a rescue Labrador/boxer cross called Lily as, sadly, Axel and Gordon died a few years ago. Is it worth having dogs even though, as his dad said, it’s “too upsetting when they go”?
“Yeah, of course it is,” he says. “Ultimately it is really sad, but grief is the price we pay for love, and it’s a price I’d pay 10 times over.”
::All Dogs Great and Small by Graeme Hall is out now
The Dogfather says...
Have a clear tone of voice: “Dogs can be clever at learning keywords, but they’re pretty rubbish at understanding whole sentences. They rely on the sound of what we’re saying to decipher what we’re trying to tell them.”
Rewards don’t have to be edible: “In the human world we often reward good behaviour with a kind word, a smile or a pat on the back. This works well with dogs, too.”
Let them know who’s boss: “‘I’m just popping out to walk the dog,’ we say. Wrong. You’re not walking the dog. You’re going for a nice walk around the neighbourhood, and you’ve decided to take your loyal friend with you.”
Don’t give up when ‘teenage’ puppies start misbehaving: “Nine times out of 10, these things resolve themselves. You’ve just got to ride the storm, send out the right signals and be patient.”
Do consider a rescue dog: “People say rescue dogs are forever grateful to their loving owners. It’s not very scientific... but when your new dog snuggles up and contentedly falls asleep on you for the first time, then you’ll know: she’s found her home. And it’s not bricks and mortar. It’s you.”
An edited version of this interview featured in Waitrose Weekend in February 2021 (c) Waitrose