My passion for dogs has started since a very young age in my native small island of Malta. In May 2012, one fine afternoon, I was touring around a souq in Kuwait and came across 2 young german shepherds that were standing in a dog sales shop.  I knew that no matter what they costed, I was not going home without them.  The owner had agreed to sell them to me and that meant for the first time ever in my life that I am the owner and end responsible of two souls.  That was the moment that started it all. At that time, living in an apartment in the middle of an Arabic city with 2 german shepherds was the most abnormal thing someone could do in the conservative state of Kuwait.  I knew that the first two weeks I had to work very hard to have the dogs neutral to the environment as quick as possible. Both dogs were learning quick and adjusting very well but people would simply not stop running away when they see me walking with my dogs, they would also start screaming from a distance, sometimes I would even find the police waiting me out of the building to question me about my dogs. I had met all the police staff shifts in just a couple of weeks, that’s how often I got reported. Dogs weren’t even mentioned on an apartment contract so by all law means, I could live in my apartment together with my dogs as long as my dogs did no harm to people. But the worst thing that I had was neighbourhood kids throwing stones at me and my dogs from a distance almost on a daily basis. That went on for months but having my 2 german shepherds meant everything so I knew I had to come over that. My heart was starting to be heavy but I had a goal – ‘’that was to prove everyone that my dogs were nothing to be afraid from'.  In a little less than a year, things started to settle, people were starting to greet us, neighbourhood kids stopped throwing stones and even started asking if they could pet my dogs.  Shops started to even allow me inside with my dogs, that whole little islamic community changed and my dogs were finally being accepted. I even started to have new friends again!! That experience gave me the courage to do more. I realised then what was my purpose in life.

In April 2013, a friend of mine offered to give my dream a chance. That dream was to open a dog educational centre for kids and a dog boarding facility for abandoned dogs. I had saved some money from my jobs and together with my friends help we had that summer our first kennel in a farm in the desert about 45 mins away from the city. I had employed 2 local dog obedience trainers to start to learn everything I could about dogs.  The first dog that came to our kennel was a Caucasian Ovcharka – a very aggressive dog owned by one Royal family. It was the most unpredictable dog I have ever encountered (till this day) so that became my side challenge every evening when I am alone on the farm. I spent hours observing his behaviour and trying to learn every detail I could about this dog. With that came my first goal and that was to learn to be able to read dogs. With the other dogs, I did dog socialization programs and a few months after that we even upgraded with a second dog kennel. All in the meantime, I kept training my own dogs, everyday with some of the new experiences I was gaining as I went ahead. Families from all over the country would come in the weekends to our facility where they could spend the whole day watching and learning about dogs. From that many people were becoming interested to start owning dogs and were asking our help to train their dogs so we appointed 2 obedience trainers from abroad to help us with that. Our educational centre was quickly becoming recognised and a success so we upgraded it with an agility field, an indoor pool and a grass garden field were dogs could practise heelwork, obedience and sleeve bites. The rest is history. In 2017 I travelled to the United States for a dog training course for 6 months and after passing all my practical exams I returned back to Kuwait with my 2 new Belgian Malinios as a certified trainer to continue with my mission. I started to offer pet training services, group classes training and long term IPO sport - board and trains.  Everyday as I was working, I could see that I have achieved my mission of all that I planned to do for the community of Kuwait. Some students were so enthusiastic to work also dogs so they did become dog trainers themselves and had even opened one of the middle east biggest indoor dog training facility to help elevate the love and passion for dogs in Kuwait. As an individual I knew that I had completed my purpose and in Kuwait so I moved on to Bahrain where I was called by dog boarding kennel to help with training. I decided to give it a 6 months of my time and then move on to focus on a professional dog sport career that involves bitework because as a trainer I felt that my training was good but could always be better. So after much research I found out about Bart Bellon and his training method called the “NePoPo®”.  I decided to sign up for the upcoming Silver School in Holland.  My other goal was to be able to one day participate in a dogsport competition but that wasn’t possible in my region so I made a plan to return back to Europe to work on my 2 new goals. The biggest coincidence was that I knew that in Holland they had their own sport called the KNPV which I desperately wanted to be part of and the Silver School of Bart Bellon happened to also be in Holland.  On the 3^rd day of my school, I met with Sudesh Ramsoebhag who is a long time KNPV sport competitor and together with him, I joined the sport and the past 5 years we worked on Personal Protection Dogs NL that is today servicing two continents of Police and Military departments with the NePoPo® dog training method. I am currently training with my 2 personal dogs “little Tanzo’’ and ‘’Little Senna’’ in the KNPV towards the PH1 title and also training two protection dogs “Henkie” and ‘’Topaz” as a demo dogs for our seminars.  I look forward to keep proving the NePoPo® dog training system and to participate in the KNPV nationals together my both dogs.