Some time ago, I wrote an article offering advice on choosing the right dog. Well it’s a pity I didn’t take my own advice.

Don’t get me wrong, Frank (my dog) is perfect. I just chose the wrong breeder, which I eventually found out when I hired a dog trainer.

Having been brought up with collies, corgis, lurchers, border terriers, Jack Russells, Staffordshires and boxers at one point or another, I knew the basics in pet care. But it still took me two years to choose one of my own.

Living in the city can be a slow suffocation for someone reared in the country, so I felt it may have been a tad selfish keeping an animal. But I longed for one and my mother said if I didn’t get one quick, I’d end up ill. (She maintains dogs lower your blood pressure).

I trawled the shelters and pounds looking for a suitable dog but they only had the larger kind. My house and garden would only accommodate a smaller dog like my mother’s stray mongrel who have both lived happily together for years.

My mother’s dog is a Tibetan/ terrier mix and when I researched the Tibetan breed I knew I had found my ideal dog. Tibetans are renowned house dogs, bred as watch dogs and companions for the monks in the Himalayas.

When I got past the bit where they also used to keep the monks’ beds warm and turned the cogs of the monks’ prayer wheels (God bless them)– I knew Tibetans were the breed for me.

I scoured the internet looking for Tibetans but to no avail. Then one day, I found them advertised in the ‘Buy & Sell’. I rang and spoke to a nice-sounding lady who invited me down to the country to have a look at her Tibetan pups.

I must have visited her house about four times before I eventually committed to the idea of taking one home. Being the smallest, Frank was the last in the litter and already I adored the little paws of him.

But as soon as I took the wee pup home, his behaviour seemed a bit bizarre. He was constantly barking and scaling the walls of the sitting-room. Not only that, when it came to feeding, he would take one mouthful then run off as if you were about to steal his food off him.

But, most worryingly of all, he had got into the bad habit of eating his own poo and as a result was violently ill. According to the vet, it is not unusual for ‘lap dog’ pups to eat their own poo but no matter how many chunks of pineapple I chucked into his food it still didn’t act as a repellent.

And that wasn’t the end of it. I became a virtual prisoner in my own home as I worried about him each time I left the house. Whether I was at work or out having dinner, I was fretting about my pup getting sick or imagining him barking his lungs up as he scaled the sitting-room walls. In the end, I enlisted the help of a dog trainer (or animal behaviourist as they prefer to be known).

Now, this wasn’t a decision I came to lightly. The session was going to be expensive and I had to vanquish all feelings of guilt about my granny barely having enough money to feed her ten children let alone pay to heal a pup’s psyche.

And if my granny were alive today, she would know what to do with the pup, because alongside rearing a large brood, she ran a farm full of animals. A pup making strange would have been the least of her worries.

Within five minutes of observing Frank, the dog trainer could tell me that she suspected he came from a puppy farm. I was shocked. The woman I got him from seemed like a dog nut (as it turns out she was, but not in a good way)– she would never house them in unacceptable conditions or be underhand. I even had all the paperwork.

“Did you see where she bred them,” asked the trainer. “Didn’t get past the front door,” was my reply. The trainer’s nod confirmed “puppy farm.”

I felt very stupid and angry with myself. The country blood in me would never allow me to ask to enter somebody’s house unless invited. It was bad manners! But had I known I had a right to see my pup’s living conditions, I would have been in like Flynn.

The scaling of the walls signified that Frank had been kept in a kennel. Running off with his food meant he obviously had to fend off a lot of other pups in order to eat. And eating his poo meant he was copying his mother. Apparently, in puppy farms, mothers eat their puppy’s poo to keep the place clean and to destroy evidence in case predators come sniffing around.

I forgot my guilty feelings about the expense of the sessions. If nothing else came out of it, at least the breeder was now being investigated which I’m very happy about.

It’s early days yet, but already Frank seems to be a much happier pup. Animals don’t have a voice, so they can only communicate through behaviour. And look how insightful my wee pup’s was. Puppy Power!