AN animal expert will be able to teach old dogs new tricks after winning support...from a dragon.

Dog trainer Joe Nutkins has won a competition run by a Dragons’ Den multi-millionaire Theo Paphitis.

But first of all she thought her winning moment was actually a vision brought on by tiredness.

Joe, of Dog Training for Essex and Suffolk who lives in Great Oakley, was packing up from a training session on Monday evening when she caught a glimpse of a notification on her phone from Mr Paphitis.

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Putting it down to tiredness, she text her husband, John, saying she had seen something saying she’d won and needed to lie down as it had clearly been a long day.

It was only when she returned home from the Ardleigh-based paddock where she runs her business that John called saying she might want to check her phone again.

“I opened Twitter to see nearly 50 notifications congratulating me and then I was like ‘Oh my goodness, I really have won’,” she said.

“I have to admit I did think ‘What if he’s mentioned the wrong account?’ and so I kept on re-reading it.

“I’ve wanted this since last year but sometimes I miss the weekly application window if I’m working or have just lost track of time.

“It’s weird because he had done so many dog businesses and begun to venture into different business areas, so I kind of thought ‘Oh well, he’s obviously had enough of dogs’.

“It made for even more of a surprise when I finally realised I had won.”

The support comes after an extremely difficult year for many small businesses.

Joe relies almost entirely on in-person training and has had to adapt to training dogs to work over a Zoom call for the past 16 months.

She will now benefit from having access to advice from Mr Paphitis, an annual event and sponsorship – all for free.

“It means so much,” she said.

“The struggle we’ve had over the past year having to pay rent on a business space I couldn’t go and use has been tough.

“Recently we’ve had people no-showing which, for a small business which has been struggling, could have been our rent money. There’s a huge knock-on effect.

“Having Mr Paphitis’ input on how I can improve and change things will be fantastic.

“I love the dog training but the business side of things is really hard.

“Put me in a class with dogs and people and I can do it, but when it comes to the administration side I think I’ve still got things to learn.

“If I can learn to run the business better and spend less time doing the office stuff then it means I’ll have more time to help people and their dogs have better lives. It’s a really exciting opportunity.”