Sue Potter has trained animals from greyhounds to hedgehogs for film and television. But her heart is in training wayward pets to become models of decorum.

Emily Flanagan meets the dog whisperer.

BY the age of four, Sue Potter was bringing stray dogs home on pieces of string. By nine, she was spying on police training their German Shepherds. At 14, she was bringing home her first dog obedience prizes.

But it was not until a back injury forced her to leave her job of 25 years as a lithographer at Durham Chemicals in Birtley, County Durham, that Sue Potter devoted herself to dog training full-time.

The odds are you will have seen her work on the silver screen or television. Whether it was the hedgehog and deer that appeared in Return to the Secret Garden, the wolfhounds in Elizabeth I, or the 180 dogs that appeared running over hilltops in the Winalot Prime adverts.

"I've always had an affinity with animals. When I was nine, I used to climb up on to the Northern General fence and watch the police train their dogs," says Sue. "I was just fascinated that they could give a command and a dog would sit.

"I got my first dog after I saved up my pocket money and just went out and bought one. I was 14 at the time and it just started from there. He was called King of the Romans because I lived on Roman Avenue and I've still got his old scrap book with all his prizes in. My mam wasn't very happy when I first brought him home, but then I got her interested in obedience training and she trained her own dogs to win."

Some of the rosettes Sue has earned in 41 years of competing line the walls of the static caravan from which she runs her business, Actadog, in the grounds of her home in Pelton, near Chester-le-Street.

Arranged in the colours of the rainbow, they cover every inch of space from ceiling to floor, stuffed behind the fridge and hanging from shelves. Such is Sue's success in obedience training, that Pelton's own dog whisperer is the only person in Britain ever to be asked to judge both the agility and the obedience championships at Crufts.

She has qualified 13 different dogs for the internationally famous championships and trained four Crufts obedience champions.

From obedience training, it was a natural progression to animal acting.

Sue regularly gets calls in her cramped caravan from film or television directors, all wanting a piece of her expertise.

When I ask what films and programmes her animals have appeared in, Sue puts her head in her hands as she tries to recall just a few of them.

Spender, Sherlock Homes, Heartbeat, GBH and Touching Evil are among the television programmes she has been involved with, along with the films Purely Belter, Enemy at the Gates, King of the Road and Elizabeth I. She has also notched up numerous adverts.

Some were more problematic than others. "Winalot Prime wanted 180 dogs running across hills and mountains," Sue recalls. "At first I was a bit taken aback. But then I thought, well me and a friend often go up to Waldridge Fell and have about 18 dogs running about, so multiply that by ten and it's possible.

"Because dogs are pack animals, I just got three or four lead dogs to respond to a whistle and run when I opened a pen, then all the other dogs just followed, because it was a chase element."

But training a hedgehog? "Every animal is trainable. It's just like training a dog. I just got it to respond to a buzzer."

Her latest assignment involved providing a greyhound to become the star of a film about an apparently hopeless racing dog, called Cerberus. Sue had to train the dog to lie down when a racing track starting trap opened and the hare raced past.

She searched across Britain and Ireland for a dog that fitted their description and came across her star in kennels just a few miles from her home, in Willington, where it was being looked after on behalf of the North-East Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue.

After a couple of weeks training, she took him to the Irish location for the film, Man About Dog, which is due for release in May.

Despite the starry circles Sue moves in, she says the rewarding part of her job is helping the general public train their dogs. She stresses the problem is never the dog, but the way it is being handled.

"It's very rewarding to see a dog with a problem walk out that gate with it solved, or if you get a call-out to a little old lady's house and you come away and the dog is doing what they want it to do and they are so pleased.

"These are the rewarding moments. It's not the big things in life, it's just the little things."

* Sue Potter can be contacted on 0191 370 2305