My name is Caitlin Mclaughlin, I am 20 years old, there has always been dogs in my home from day 1, they were just pets, a house dog. When I was 8 my parents after much research went for a larger more energetic breed than they had ever owned before. Even with all the research they did it didn’t prepare them for what they got, this dog bounced, chewed, ran 24/7 and didn’t understand a word that was said to him, many a tear was shed. My mum searched for ways to build our relationship with him and give him an opening for his energy and intelligence. We started with general obedience classes, and there we got an opportunity to have a taster of what agility was, this started both my mum and I’s obsession with agility. But sadly there was no trainers or classes in this area, so every week we travelled to Belfast for training.

My mum continued agility with our ‘crazy’ dog and I began with my ‘stubborn’, and sniffy terrier, Tobi. It wasn’t easy but we loved the challenges and the feeling of achievement when it started to come together. We soon started competing at Kennel Club shows when I was around 11. During my time competing, at 13 I qualified for and competed in the Northern Ireland Crufts ykc team, and then later again with my next dog Niamh when I was 18 in ykc individual jumping and agility. These were amazing opportunities for me to do with my dogs.

Due to there being no training here and having to travel to Belfast so often, me and my mum decided to set up Barking Paws agility five years ago in Eglinton to give others the joy of doing agility. This has proven to be very popular and I found great satisfaction with sharing my knowledge and experience with others and seeing them progress. These classes helped me realise my life’s passion is dog training and that has led me to pursue getting my qualification to be a Kennel Club Agility judge. I am also in the process of completing my training to become an IMDT dog trainer.

My current dog Niamh is a Lagotto Romagnolo she is 6 years old currently competing at grade 3 level, after having a break from training and competing due to COVID and uni, I am now focused on progressing even further. She is an amazing dog that would do anything for food, agility is her favourite thing in the world and it has really helped her confidence as she is quite a nervous dog. During COVID she missed agility so much so we got interested in tricks training where she amazingly achieved her beginner, novice, advanced and expert tricks training titles.

Although my main passion and services will be private agility I also will be offering general obedience, lose lead walking, recall, tricks, relationship building and puppy classes.