David Cavill

He got into all of this by accident, and by his own account under mild protest. A dog bit him when he was eight, and he still describes himself as a cat man underneath. A few years into their marriage Angela decided it was time they had a dog. They started with Finnish Spitz and bred several successful litters. Together they own the Toveri kennel name, one of the UK’s most successful breeding prefixes.

For eleven years he and Angela jointly managed Bell Mead, Battersea Dogs’ Home’s country kennels at Old Windsor. He was also deputy to the Home’s Director General. Bell Mead boarded more than 120 dogs and eighty cats, housed 180 of Battersea’s own, and was the country’s most prestigious kennel staff training college.

He judges almost forty breeds at Championship level, and is passed for Best In Show and for the Working, Pastoral and Utility groups. Ask why he does it and the answer turns out to be aesthetic. He compares it to the way his father would sit in front of a painting for twenty minutes. In a whole career he has seen only two or three dogs that answered their breed standard completely.

He trained as a teacher and taught for more than twenty-seven years, which is the thread running through most of what came after. He founded the Animal Care College in 1980 and wrote its courses in kennel management, dog breeding and small animal qualifications himself. The College still runs many courses under new ownership, for dog training, kennel and rehoming staff, groomers, breeders and judges.

He is a working writer and broadcaster. He published the weekly Our Dogs and owned Dogs Monthly from 1992 to 1997. He writes regularly for Kennel and Cattery Management, and had a weekly pet slot on Saga Radio for four years. He has written six books, starting with All About Mating, Whelping and Weaning in 1981, and his latest is on judging.

A good deal of his work has been about standards. He was a trustee of the Pet Care Trust for twenty years, and Chairman of its charitable arm. He was vice-chairman of the Kennel Club Breed Liaison Council for six years. He was independent Chairman of the Pet Education, Training and Behaviour Council until 2021, and is now its President.

He has also launched a set of independent not-for-profit registers, among them the National Register of Dog Trainers and Behaviourists. His reasoning is plain. Anyone at all can call themselves a dog trainer, and an owner has no way of telling from a leaflet.

He is not, for the record, a convert. By his own description he has been owned for many years by a succession of cats. The latest is Mr Brooks, a black cat of considerable presence.

For HowPets he writes about sourcing a puppy. What a responsible breeder will show you, what the paperwork should say, and what a puppy-farm advert looks like. The thread through all of it is the line he closed his interview with. Do the research, whether you are choosing a breeder, a groomer, a trainer or a rescue dog.