Dog owner community platform Honest Hounds has been recognised with the accolade of Start Up of the Year for Scotland in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
The business gives dog owners access to behaviour guidance, education and safe practice and is the idea of founder Jessie Montague, who was unable to find help and support as a new dog owner when her pet Vizsla had a serious behaviour crisis with associated aggression that eventually led to hospitalisation.
What started off as an online support community based in her front room to provide a “truthful” balance to social media myths about dog ownership has evolved into a fully-grown business with a number of membership tiers, employing a full-time behaviourist and a core team of affiliates as well as offering mentorships for trainers, residential training and organised dog walks for new owners. The platform also has a CPD-accredited mental health team to make sure that nervous owners are supported as well as their pets.
Montague told PBW News: “When we first had Vizsla, after a lot of vet trips and faced with a lot of aggression, I had to admit that we didn’t know what we are doing so I wrote a long Instagram post about how we were struggling.”
She says that she received an “insane” number of replies to the post and, after spending countless hours replying to all the messages, realised that there was a real untapped need in the dog owning community.
“I wanted to create a space for people who were struggling, and I thought that if one single person finds it useful then it’ll be worth it.”
To date, Honest Hounds has supported more than four thousand dog owners across the UK as well as helping customers in Canada and Germany.
