A TRAINEE teacher from Farnworth has swapped teaching children for teaching her pet dog as part of a new TV series.

Katie McMyler, 24, will star alongside her five-year-old daughter Mia and their English bulldog Ronnie, in Channel 4’s ‘Puppy School’.

The show invites owners to a special doggy school based at Chatsworth House, in Derbyshire, to help them contend with the challenge of bringing a puppy into their lives.

Included in the Puppy School’s curriculum are exercises to develop a dog’s IQ and social skills, as well as helping the dogs successfully settle into their home.

Each episode of the four-part series will focus on different dogs and their owners, and is overseen by three expert trainers.

Katie bought Ronnie to be a companion for her young daughter Mia, but he was biting the five-year-old and disrupting Katie’s teacher training studies.

She said: “He was just an absolute whirlwind. He still is to be honest.

“He was biting Mia’s feet and really hurting her.

“I saw about the show when my friend tagged me in something on Facebook, when Ronnie was about nine or ten weeks old.

“Within about three weeks of applying they’d asked me to be on it. It all went really quick and I didn’t have too much time to think about it.”

Filming at Chatsworth lasted three days and then the trainers visited owners’ homes a few more times over a three month period to see if they had managed to keep up with the training.

“He’s calmed down,” Katie added. “He’s still hard work but he doesn’t bite now.

“One of the trainers came to our house and taught us how to stop him biting.

“He’s part of the family now, we wouldn’t change him for the world. Him and Mia are joined at the hip.

Katie is nervous about her television debut and said she was not “confident enough” to be on TV but her daughter is the absolute opposite.

She said: “It was a while ago now and you forget about the cameras when they’re filming. It only really sunk in that we were actually going to be on TV when I saw the advert last week.

“Mia cannot wait, she’s been telling absolutely everyone and taking newspapers into school to show people.

But the golden question is, who is harder to teach – children or dogs?

“It’s completely different,” Katie laughed.

“Teaching kids is harder but at least they don’t bite.”

Puppy School will air on Channel 4 at 8pm on Friday.