05/05/2026
I had a dream and a dog who had shown me what was possible. What I didn't have was a pool…. or a plan. Or any real idea of how hard the next chapter was going to be. It started with a search. Months of driving around Devon, viewing houses with land - trying to imagine a pool where there wasn't one, in a place I hadn't found yet, for a treatment most people in Devon had never heard of. There were days when I wondered what on earth I was doing. 🐾
Canine hydrotherapy was barely a whisper here in Devon in 2013. People looked at me with kind, slightly confused smiles when I explained what I wanted to build. A swimming pool. For dogs. For their health. “Like... on purpose? We have rivers you know.”
Planning permission came first. Anyone who's been through the planning process knows it is not for the faint-hearted. Drawings, surveys, documents, waiting, responding to questions, waiting some more. Drinking a lot of tea and trying not to catastrophise. When the approval finally came through, I was relieved, excited and a little daunted by the prospect of the build.
Coordinating architects, pool engineers, plumbers, electricians. There were weeks where the progress felt invisible, where the gap between where I was and where I needed to be felt enormous. There were problems I hadn't anticipated, costs I hadn't fully planned for. But then everything started to come together.
When I opened our doors in 2013, we were (and remain) the biggest canine hydrotherapy pool in Devon and Cornwall. However, there was real work to be done in explaining what we were - not just the treatment, but the why. Why does a dog benefit from hydrotherapy. Why it works. Why swimming in a river is not the same.
Building something from nothing is one of the hardest things a person can do. But when it works - when it becomes a place where dogs get better, where owners rediscover hope, where tails wag on the way in and not just on the way out - there is no feeling in the world like it.
Thirteen years on, we are still here. Still growing. Still learning. Still doing it for Lulu.
See you soon.
Duncan
