My Pet Story - Cat Lady to Dog Obsessed!

It’s really hard to believe that I haven’t always been a ‘dog person’!

In fact, I actually used to be pretty scared of dogs.

Like a lot of children who haven’t been brought up around dogs from a young age, I used to find dogs (of any size, shape and breed!) pretty frightening. Now of course I realise that fear simply came from not understanding their behaviour…

Petplan Pet Insurance asked me to share my pet story, so here goes!

From age 0, I’d grown up with at least 2 cats in our family – at one point we had three at once, but mostly I was used to having a couple of small furry friends around. I loved cats and always openly disliked dogs (when you’re a child it feels like the two can’t really co-exist – you have to be ‘Team Cat’ OR ‘Team Dog’!).

So it did seem like rather a random, spontaneous decision to get a French Bulldog once I had my own house!

What happened was, once I’d moved back from college etc., I had a new-found love for Cornwall and being outdoors in the countryside and at the beach. Going for walks was my new hobby, and I was missing a furry companion to join me – so I got thinking about getting a dog.

I did tonnes of research before getting Pepper, but I was still apprehensive of getting my first dog. I’d never even had any friends of family with dogs, so I was starting for literally 0 experience.

It was a huge learning curve of course; dogs are SO much needier than cats (who can essentially take care of themselves if they have enough food and water), and puppies need constant attention.

But with the extra work you have to put in with dogs, you get a hell of a lot of extra love back! This is one thing that has definitely made me ‘change teams’ over the years… you get so much more out of having a dog.

Of course, if you’ve got a super needy, loving cat, this is different (and congrats to you – most of the cats I’ve ever met have been too independent to care about me!). But in general, dogs do tend to feel more like a family member than cats too – perhaps because you can take them with you and experience more things with them?

Now that Pepper is 3 years old, she’s calmed down a lot and I can’t imagine life without her. I’ve learned so much about dogs in general as well since having her, and I am now that girl in the street who starts squealing whenever they see a cute pup walking along!

Luckily for me, my boyfriend Alex is also dog-obsessed, and even has his own 7-year-old Collie-cross-Labrador, Maizy too! Her and Pepper are best friends now, and play together all the time – it’s so cute to watch.