It’s a dog’s life for Sandra

Pets04/12/202580 Views

For 34 years, Sandra Bevan’s life followed a very well-worn script. Every weekday she’d rise at 6:15am, iron a neat blouse, catch the 07:42 train into Union Station, Toronto, and take her place behind a polished desk in the HR department of a large insurance company. To look at her — composed, tidy, and reassuringly organised — you’d never imagine she was harbouring an itch she couldn’t quite scratch. “People kept saying I was lucky,” she recalls. “Nice salary, safe job, good pension — what more could I want? But inside, I felt like I’d sleepwalked into a life that didn’t really fit.”

Then two things happened that changed everything. First, one of Sandra’s closest school friends died suddenly from breast cancer. They were exactly the same age: 58. “Her death knocked me sideways,” Sandra says softly. “She’d always been the brave one, the spontaneous one. I kept thinking, what if _I_ don’t get a ‘later’? What if this is it?” Barely three months later, her company announced a merger and Sandra’s role was made redundant. Instead of panicking, she felt a strange sense of freedom. “It was the push I needed. I got a payoff. And I got time to think.”

At first, she filled her days pottering about and helping neighbours. One morning, her next-door neighbour asked if she’d mind walking his boisterous spaniel while he recovered from surgery. “That dog, Freddie, dragged me half-way round the park,” she laughs. “I came home muddy, exhausted… and exhilarated.” Soon, other neighbours asked if Sandra could “take theirs along too”. Within six weeks, she was regularly walking five dogs and had lost half a stone without trying. “I bought my first pair of wellies in 30 years,” she grins. “That felt oddly symbolic.”

A new world

One rainy afternoon later that summer, Sandra sat in her kitchen and typed local dog behaviour course into Google. “It was like tumbling into a new world,” she says. “I watched everything I could find about training methods. Did an online course. Read books about canine psychology.” She went on to complete a qualification in dog behaviour — armed with nothing more than notebooks, curiosity and a new-found confidence she never knew she had. “I hadn’t studied since the 1980s. I was terrified but weirdly alive.”

In 2019, she officially launched her business, Paw & Order: Positive Dog Training, advertised through a home-made flyer dropped through letterboxes. Her first client? Freddie the spaniel, of course! From there, word-of-mouth took over: puppy owners sought help with toilet-training for their pets, frantic rescue dogs required confidence- building, and nervous owners needed reassurance more than anything. Sandra began running group classes on Saturday mornings and private sessions during the week, working outdoors in all weathers. “I swapped stilettos for steel-toe-cap boots,” she jokes. Instagram followed — mainly so she could post photos of her “students”, but also to educate owners about body language, enrichment and gentle guidance.

Mentoring

Three years later, Sandra’s new venture is thriving. She now collaborates regularly with local vets who refer patients with behavioural issues. She offers Zoom consultations nationwide. She mentors young would-be dog-trainers. And in a twist of irony, she now regularly delivers CPD sessions for vets — the sort of professional training she once sat through in her corporate days.

“I never thought I could reinvent myself at almost sixty,” she says. “But I realised there’s no law that says our working lives end at 55. I was scared of starting again, scared of what people might say but people love a trier. And the joy I get now, watching a once-anxious dog finally relax, or a young family bubble with pride because their pup finally sits on command… it’s priceless. It’s worth more than any head-office job title.”

Her advice to others who feel stuck? “Don’t ask ‘What do I know?’, ask ‘What do I love?’ If you still have the passion and the energy, then it’s never too late. Your second act might just be the role you were born to play.”