Dog Training Centre

Ben Fogle spends a year following 63-yearold Rizia as she swaps city living and life as a B&Ber in Edinburgh to follow her dream of living in the Scottish countryside and starting her own dog training centre in the beautiful Pentland Hills in West Lothian, with help from her two grown-up sons fireman Josh and builder Kyle, who are spending every spare hour helping her start up her dream business. Ben meets lifelong dog-lover Rizia a week after she has left her life in Edinburgh. She had to isolate during the pandemic, which meant she could no longer run her B&B and pay the mortgage. But Rizia has turned adversity into opportunity and sold her house to buy a 27- acre derelict farm in the heart of the Pentland Hills, where she plans to create a seven-acre outdoor dog training area, a covered indoor training area, a flower-growing business and build her forever home. When Ben meets her on a snowy day in winter, Rizia has just moved to her new home and is living in the back of a van that she shares with her two German Shepherds. The site has no electricity or running water. What's more, the buildings are in ruins and have been vandalized, with broken glass and debris everywhere — making Ben declare Rizia more optimistic than even he is for envisaging her dream life here. Work starts straight away, with heavy equipment clearing the site of 50 tonnes of debris, and then sons Josh and Kyle painstakingly continue by hand to make it safe underfoot for dogs in the seven-acre outdoor training area. Then they set about putting up a kilometre of fencing, and they need to build a car park and access roads for clients as well as a polytunnel for flowers. Rizia has dog training qualifications and experience, but to attract clients to her remote setting, she needs to gain specialist advanced certificates. After a long winter (when temperatures remain freezing until May), she has to decide whether to spend her remaining savings on building a house or an indoor training area. When Ben returns a year after meeting her, where will he find Rizia living? Will she have the advanced qualifications she needs? And will her business be making enough income for her to live off?