For the Love of Dogs, with Turner & Bell
Our pets have been a huge support for us during these challenging times, and we wanted to investigate exactly why spending time with our dogs can improve your wellbeing, lift your mood and calm your anxiety. Who better to ask than a company that normally works with eight dogs in their office every day? Turner & Bell, one of our lovely Friends of Joules make colourful, comfortable and hard-wearing accessories for dogs, made with the finest Italian calf leather. We spoke with Sue Bell and Chris Turner of Turner & Bell about their daily dog walk with their eight four-legged friends.
Q: Do you agree that walking your dog can make you a happier person?
Sue: “Absolutely! My husband is a vet, and he always tells people that you’re not normally going to go out when it’s pouring with rain but when you have a dog you run around in the rain like they do, full of joy, and it just makes you feel a lot happier. They have a massive effect on your wellbeing.”
Chris: “It really does get you out and about too; we go out with them all at lunchtime for just 20 minutes and we have a blast. It just makes you take that time to get away from it all.”
Q: What made you want to start creating accessories for dogs?
Chris: “Well, Sue and I have been working together for the past 28 years in the leather business, supplying leather shoes to high street retailers.”
Sue: “The dogs have always come to work with us, and we noticed that you could only ever get brown and black leather accessories for your dog. So with our background in fashion, we decided to start designing leads and collars that had a bit of fun with the colours and the designs we chose.”
Chris: “I also took inspiration from my equestrian background, using traditional saddlery techniques to make sure the accessories were as durable as they were detailed.”
Q: What is it like having eight dogs with you?
Chris: “It’s actually great. If you had one or two it would be just as good, we just happen to have eight with us! It can be manic, but they do all calm down eventually. It’s hard to be stressed in a room full of dogs.”
Sue: “If we’re having a proper, serious meeting then we’ll take the dogs down to the kitchen – we are sensible!”
Q: Where are your favourite places for a dog walk?
Chris: “Well we are very lucky to be in the countryside and have fields surrounding our office, so we just tend to walk them here.”
Sue: “We do go away with the dogs too, in previous years we’ve been to Scotland; the Lake District is a lovely place for walks, and Cornwall too. In fact, all of our leads are named after beaches in Cornwall and all of our collars are named after hills in the Lake District!”
Q: What do you love most about your job?
Sue: “It’s so nice to design and develop products that you can actually see people going out and using them, and to get good feedback from dog owners. It really has opened up such a lovely relationship with our customers; when they see we have dogs too and our dogs are our models, they just love to share photos of their dogs with us and tell us about how they love our leads and collars.”
Friends of Joules is our online marketplace for a contemporary country lifestyle. We have partnered with 100s of creative people and businesses like Turner & Bell to bring you 1000s of perfect products for you and your family (four-legged family members included of course!) in just one place.
Nikki Harris
11.04.2020 at 08:20Love this article!! Thank you for championing dogs, I have a black and white springer spaniel, in his senior years so getting a lot of TLC!! I love my dog to bits, he’s an amazing companion!! Thank you again x
Caroline Schofield
11.04.2020 at 11:04Your collars and leads are amazing – it is lovely to have such a lovely choice of colours. Many thanks
Lucy Stothert
12.04.2020 at 08:51Love this blog and missing my dog . Been inspired by Turner and Bell’s enthusiasm and beautiful photos to buy some colourful leads as pressies for my many doggy friends xx thank you