Crufts is only days away, and there's always lots of great doggy people in attendance. Dr Roger Mugford will be one of them, and you can hear an interview with him in Episode 48 of DogCast Radio.
‘Founding Father’ of pet behaviour therapy,
Dr Roger Mugford, shares his expertise with Crufts visitors
Top animal psychologist, Dr Roger Mugford, will once again be offering free advice to visitors on the Company of Animals’ stand at Crufts on any aspect of canine behaviour.
Roger is generally thought of as the ‘founding father’ of pet behaviour therapy, introducing the concept to the veterinary profession over 30 years ago. He set up The Company of Animal’s Training & Behaviour Centre in Surrey in 1979 and paved the way with positive reward-based training techniques.
Since then Roger’s referral practice has seen more than 50,000 animals, establishing it as the leading authority in the field.
When the Queen needed a behaviourist for her Corgis, Roger was called upon and in 2002 successfully defended Princess Anne’s Bull Terrier, Dotty, in court.
Over the past decade Roger has been dedicated to helping the great number of dogs who have fallen foul of the ill-conceived Dangerous Dogs Act. He has appeared as an expert witness in hundreds of court cases brought under the 1991 legislation – about half of these were breed-specific prosecutions and half were dogs being dangerously out of control in public.
Roger has always been highly critical of breed specific legislation as a way of tackling the problem of dangerous dogs because it is based on how a dog looks rather than how it behaves. He has repeatedly spoken out in support of bull breeds and thinks that adding more breeds of dog to the list of those already banned will only make the situation worse.
The worrying trend for ‘status dogs’, dog fighting and the use of dogs as weapons in gang culture is on the rise and Roger has chosen to take a step down as Managing Director of Company of Animals to spend more time acting as an expert witness in court cases, trying to bring this escalating situation under control. Roger’s extensive experience working with aggressive dogs has put him at the forefront of this area and
it’s likely he will be consulted regarding any changes to legislation.
In working with a vast array of pet behavioural problems at a grass roots level Roger has been inspired to invent training and behavioural products, many of them multi-award winning, including Halti, Pet Corrector and the Car Safe Harness.
Roger is a patron of Dogs for the Disabled, a trustee of Cancer and Bio-detection Dogs and was awarded The Blue Cross Welfare Award in 2005.