Natasja Lewis: Nightsabre Dog Training

I aim my services at dog owners who have trouble with their dogs on the walk. The dogs might pull on the lead. It can be dogs not coming back when called. Or people can have trouble with off-lead control—like the dog running up to other people and other dogs and jumping all over them.

So that's what I do and how I help people.

My book came about because I realised that one of my most-asked questions is “how do I stop my dog from pulling on the lead?” So I thought, “Well, I can do something about that. I can write a book about that.”

Which is exactly what I did.

I had lot of help from Vicky in how to structure the book and how to present it, through her Published in 90 Days course and through her book How The Hell Do You Write A Book.

"I wanted to help more people" 

I realised I could help a lot more people if I wrote a book about a problem, rather than just teaching it in my classes because I've only got a limited number of spaces in my real-life classes. By writing the book, I'm able to reach more people and help them with that specific problem.

I started by just sitting down and writing it—and it was shite. After I'd written the first draft, I looked back at it and thought, “Nobody's going to understand what the hell I'm talking about.” I needed some help.

Luckily at that time, I was in Dom Hodgson’s business group. He and Vicky put together a package so we could access Vicky’s course. But actually before that, what really helped me was Vicky’s book writing workshop at Dom's bootcamp, which helped me with the structure of the book. I came to the conclusion that I really had to rewrite the whole thing, which is what I did. I really thought about who my audience was. Because I wanted to write it for dog owners and not dog trainers, I had to completely change the language I was using. It was written in dog trainer speak; it's now in plain English.

Would it be worth it?

I thought Vicky’s course was a lot of money, and I did wonder how much would actually be applicable to me—but as I took the plunge and started working my way through it, I quickly realised that actually it doesn't matter what you're writing about as long as it's not fiction. It really helped.

I found it very useful, especially little things like how to set up your document for your manuscript. Exactly how much the margins needed to be. I thought that was brilliant because I wouldn't have had a clue without that.

I really want to thank Vicky for all her help with this book and some other bits and pieces as well. She’s given me some really good ideas about how to push the book out there and make sure people find it.

And also her support. Whenever I posted a message on the site, Vicky was always there giving me advice, telling me just to push through and get on with it. That's just what I needed. So thank you for that.