Just a Dog Podcast is a dog welfare podcast for dog guardians, dog professionals and anyone who wants to understand dogs better. Host Nadine Burzler talks to scientists, vets, behaviourists, breeders, trainers and rescuers about the beliefs we inherit about dogs, from breeding and training to rescue and everyday life, and asks what science knows and what anecdotal experience tells us about how dogs think and feel. Each episode looks at the gap between what we know about dogs and what we actually do, and what it would take to close that gap.
New episodes every other Monday.
Dog whelping UK | Inside the unregulated world of dog whelping and canine fertility clinics | Part 1
Nothing in this episode is advice. If your dog is pregnant, speak to your vet.
Stan Airey says he has been helping dogs give birth for over 50 years. He is not a vet and has no formal qualification, and even if he wanted one, it doesn't exist because professional whelping is not a recognised profession in the UK.
And yet there are over 400 known canine fertility clinics in the UK, some of which also offer whelping services. Most of these clinics are not registered as veterinary practices.
Anyone can do this job.
Some clinics and independent contractors even offer caesareans and artificial insemination, both of which are classed as acts of veterinary surgery and are illegal for any layman to perform. Yet they do.
Part 1 of my conversation with Stan, who runs the whelping and fertility service, Call the Midwoof, is out now.
This episode is important because this is a new industry that needs regulation. Anyone can decide from one day to the next to start a business like this with no veterinary oversight, no qualifications, no standards to uphold and no one to answer to.
And Stan agrees.
In this episode, Stan shares some of the puppy births he has attended, he tells stories about the people who hire him, and he describes in detail the side of breeding he calls "horrendous".
Want to add to the conversation? Leave a voice note here and your comments could be included in a future episode:
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29 Aug 2026
Dogs at work | What content creators can learn from Hollywood dog trainers | Julie Strang | Cue the Dogs
Julie Strang is a Hollywood animal trainer and founder of Cue the Dogs. She has trained animals for film and television since 2000, including Dog, John Wick 3 and 4, Fallout, and Lioness, as well as more than 200 national ad campaigns. She now teaches guardians how to train their dogs for the camera and get paid for brand work.
In this episode, we talk about how dogs get cast, who owns them, where they come from, what a day on set is like for them, how much rest they get, how they are trained, and what happens when a dog doesn't want to work.
We also talk about what changes now that the same work is happening on phones at home.
If you have ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes with dog actors in films and adverts, or whether it's fair on the dogs, this episode is for you.
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Julie Strang is based in Charleston, South Carolina, and lives with Lana Five, a Belgian Malinois she met on the set of Dog in 2020.
Find Julie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cuethedogs/ (https://www.instagram.com/cuethedogs/)
New episodes of Just a Dog Podcast every second Monday.
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13 Aug 2026
Animal rescue burnout | The signs of compassion fatigue rescue workers miss | Jessica Dolce
Most people arrive in animal welfare believing that if they work hard enough they can save everybody.
Jessica Dolce spent 20 years working with dogs, from dog walking in Philadelphia to animal sheltering in Maine, before her own burnout sent her looking for the language to describe what was happening to her.
She now teaches that language for a living, as a Certified Compassion Fatigue and Grief Educator, an instructor in the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida, and the person behind The Compassion in Balance Program.
Her training sits on a Master of Science in Adult and Higher Education alongside certificates in pet loss support, QPR suicide gatekeeper training and mental health first aid, and the organisations she works with range from private rescues to the ASPCA, Animals Asia, Humane World, the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and hundreds of animal shelters worldwide.
Our conversation covers why the choice between looking after yourself and looking after the animals is a false one, what compassion fatigue actually is and why almost everyone uses the term slightly wrong, how moral injury builds quietly in shelter work, and what people who spend their days examining evidence of cruelty do to stay well enough to keep going.
At home in the U.S. there are two dogs, Billy and Turtle, two cats, Hazel and Bear, and four naughty ducks.
Links
https://jessicadolce.com (https://jessicadolce.com)
The Compassion in Balance Program (https://www.compassioninbalance.com)
Building Compassionate Badassery Boundaries (https://www.jessicadolce.com/building-compassionate-badassery-boundaries), self-study
Compassion Fatigue Strategies (https://www.jessicadolce.com/compassion-fatigue-strategies), starts 26 October 2026
Also mentioned: Jessica's Dogs in Need of Space project, Patricia McConnell's The Other End of the Leash, and Dr Jamie McNally's paper on moral injury in animal shelter workers.
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