This morning was the kind of morning where the sky looked as though it was auditioning for a role in a disaster movie, while the wind appeared to have developed a personal vendetta against my hair. It was one of those horrible January mornings when you open the curtains, see the rain coming down sideways and immediately start wondering whether you could reasonably argue that dog walking is actually an indoor profession. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, which would normally mean I had no client dogs to worry about and could enjoy a slightly slower start to the day, but today I had one client dog booked in, so there was no escaping it. With a resigned sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and went to wake the kids, already knowing that the weather was going to make the whole thing considerably more entertaining than any of us had asked for.

As always, the first thing I did was make coffee, because no sensible decisions are going to be made in my house before coffee has entered my bloodstream. I don't really drink coffee for pleasure anymore; it is more of a life-preservation strategy. Without it, I'm basically a zombie with organisational skills, which sounds useful until you realise that the organisational skills are only being used to organise the chaos. Once I'd had a few mouthfuls, I was at least sufficiently conscious to begin preparing for the morning ahead, and I reminded myself that the plan was very simple: walk the dogs, survive the weather and avoid disaster.

It sounded perfectly achievable.

I should have known better.

Today's cast of characters consisted of Alice, my black mongrel, who was still carrying a frankly ridiculous amount of leftover Christmas energy and seemed to have absolutely no respect for personal boundaries, common sense or the concept of simply walking somewhere without turning it into an adventure. Then there was Nicolas, my crazy Cavalier, who has never met a puddle, leaf or suspicious-looking blade of grass that he didn't feel required further investigation, usually from a safe distance while making it very clear that he wasn't happy about any of it. Shiva, my German Shepherd, was also joining us, and she was by far the calmest member of the group. Shiva has the air of a dog who knows exactly how ridiculous everyone else is and has reluctantly accepted that she is the only adult in the room. Finally, there was the client dog, an overexcited, somewhat overweight dog who appeared to believe that gravity was merely a suggestion and that any obstacle placed in its path was there specifically for it to climb over, under or through.

We set off, and almost immediately the rain began falling sideways, which is never a particularly promising start to a dog walk. Alice, naturally, was absolutely delighted. She spotted a puddle and launched herself into it with the enthusiasm of an Olympic athlete who had just discovered water for the first time, sending muddy water in every direction. Nicolas saw what she'd done and reacted as though she had deliberately thrown herself into a vat of poison, barking at the puddle as if it had personally insulted his family. Shiva simply continued walking, completely unfazed by the weather or the nonsense happening around her, and I could almost imagine her looking over her shoulder at us and thinking, I don't know these people.

We carried on across the field, getting wetter and muddier with every step, until we reached the hedge at the bottom. This was the point where the morning took a fairly sharp turn from an ordinary wet dog walk into something resembling a low-budget canine action movie.

Alice suddenly stopped.

She was staring intently into the hedge.

I couldn't see anything. Neither could Nicolas or Shiva, and frankly, given the weather, I wasn't particularly interested in finding out what was lurking in there anyway. Alice, however, had spotted something important, something fascinating and apparently something worth risking life and limb to investigate. I barely had time to register what she was doing before she charged straight into the hedge.

And then the client dog decided to follow her.

The next few minutes descended into complete chaos. The client dog somehow managed to wedge itself halfway into the thick hedge, leaving me standing there wondering how on earth a dog that size had managed to get itself into such a ridiculous position. Alice immediately decided that this was fantastic news because, as far as she was concerned, a dog stuck in a hedge was clearly an invitation to begin some sort of wrestling competition. Nicolas stood nearby looking increasingly concerned about the whole situation and making his objections known in the only way he knows how, while Shiva simply watched the proceedings with an expression that seemed to say, I've tried to tell you all that I'm the sensible one, but nobody listens.

I eventually managed to start untangling the situation, but just as I thought we were getting somewhere, the client dog wriggled free and somehow managed to slip its collar.

Of course it did.

For a brief moment, there was that horrible silence where you realise something has gone wrong but haven't yet fully processed just how wrong it is. Then everyone suddenly sprang into action as the dog decided that being liberated from its collar was the most exciting thing that had happened all morning and set off as though it had just been released from prison.

Gabe and Ben, who had volunteered to help me that day, immediately found themselves promoted from helpful assistants to members of the emergency canine retrieval team. They were chasing leads and trying to work out which dog was going in which direction, while I was attempting to keep track of everybody else and simultaneously trying to avoid losing my coffee, which by this point had become the single most stable relationship in my life.

I was juggling leads in one hand, coffee in the other and trying to keep an eye on Alice, the client dog and Nicolas, who was probably wondering why nobody had thought to simply go home. Shiva, meanwhile, had apparently decided that she had fulfilled her responsibilities for the day and was standing there looking at me with the weary expression of someone who had been dragged into a family argument that had nothing whatsoever to do with her.

The client dog was having the time of its life. It had escaped the hedge, escaped its collar and had apparently decided that it was now a free spirit with no contractual obligations whatsoever. Alice was running around enthusiastically, because obviously another dog being loose meant the possibility of even more fun, while Nicolas was protesting about the whole thing from a safe distance. Gabe was chasing after leads, Ben was laughing, and I was becoming increasingly convinced that this was precisely why sensible people choose careers that involve sitting at desks.

Eventually, after a combination of gentle coaxing, bribery, strategic lead grabbing and a fair amount of sheer determination, we managed to retrieve everybody. There was no single heroic moment where everything suddenly came together; it was more a gradual process of grabbing one dog, securing one lead, finding another dog and repeatedly checking that nobody had disappeared back into the hedge. Somehow, though, we got there in the end.

Every dog was accounted for, every lead was recovered and nobody had been eaten by the hedge. Most importantly, my coffee had survived.

By the time we finally headed home, we were all absolutely drenched. The dogs were covered in mud, my clothes were wet through, the kids were laughing and the car was about to become a mobile swamp. I was cold, tired and seriously beginning to question why I had never invested in a wetsuit for dog walking, because there comes a point where waterproof trousers stop being a useful piece of outdoor clothing and start being an optimistic suggestion.

Alice, naturally, didn't seem remotely bothered. She was absolutely delighted with the whole experience and looked as though she'd had the best morning of her life. She had no regrets about the puddles, the hedge or the general chaos and was already looking around for her next opportunity to cause trouble. I, on the other hand, was mostly thinking about getting home, getting dry and finding somewhere warm to sit down.

Meanwhile... YouTube

Once I'd recovered from the morning's adventures, I did what I often do on a weekend and had a look at my YouTube channel. I've had the channel running since 2008, back when YouTube was still relatively new here in the UK and the idea of regularly filming dog walks for clients seemed like a fun little extra rather than the beginning of something that would eventually become a huge part of my life.

The idea originally came from Mike, who was my only dog walker at the time. He suggested that it would be great to film the dogs on their walks and give the videos to the clients, so they could actually see what their dogs got up to while they were out with us. It seemed like a really good idea at the time, and that little suggestion ended up starting a journey that I could never have predicted.

For quite a while, the YouTube channel became a really useful way of sharing the dogs' adventures with our clients, but, as social media evolved, so did the way we communicated with them. Eventually, the client community moved over to Facebook, where it became much easier to share updates, photographs, videos and all the day-to-day things that happen when you have a business full of dogs. YouTube therefore gradually changed direction rather than disappearing, and instead of being primarily a place for clients to watch footage of their own dogs, it evolved into a place for me to tell stories, share dog-related experiences and create training videos that sit alongside my website.

I actually really like the way it has evolved because it means the videos are no longer just something for the people whose dogs I walk; they have become another way of sharing what I've learned over the years, explaining dog behaviour and training, telling some of the ridiculous stories that inevitably come from nearly twenty years of working with dogs, and giving people something useful that they can take away and apply with their own dogs. The YouTube channel and my website now work together, with the videos providing another way for people to find information, learn about dog training and get a feel for the sort of work I do.

And every now and again, one of those videos goes completely mad.

The Missing Potato Puppy incident was one of those moments.

That particular video had recently gone rather bonkers and had brought around 10,000 new subscribers to the channel, which was already something I couldn't quite get my head around. I was used to filming dogs, editing videos and uploading them, not watching thousands of strangers suddenly appear because one particularly memorable puppy had apparently developed an interesting relationship with a potato.

So today, while having a look at the channel, I noticed something that made me stop and look twice.

40,000 subscribers.

I genuinely couldn't believe it.

There I was, sitting at home after spending the morning wrestling dogs out of hedges in the pouring rain, and apparently 40,000 people had decided that they wanted to follow along with my dog-walking adventures, training advice and general canine chaos. When I think back to 2008, when Mike suggested filming the walks simply so our clients could see their dogs having fun, I could never have imagined that the little channel would eventually reach this point.

It feels quite surreal when you stop and think about it.

What started as a way of giving clients videos of their dogs eventually moved with the times, with the client community finding its home on Facebook, while YouTube developed into something much broader — stories, training videos and useful information that now sit alongside my website and form another part of what I do.

And somehow, after all those years, 40,000 people have subscribed.

I'm not entirely sure what they all think they're going to see, but if today's hedge incident is anything to go by, there will never be a shortage of material.

Perhaps the hedge will make the next video.

Although, knowing my luck, it will probably be the video where Shiva finally decides that she's had enough of us and applies for a quieter family.

For now, though, I'm just incredibly grateful. Forty thousand subscribers is a huge milestone, and it feels especially lovely because the channel has grown gradually over so many years, alongside the dogs, the business, the website and all the ridiculous things that seem to happen when you spend your working life surrounded by animals.

So, after a morning involving sideways rain, muddy puddles, an escapee dog, several tangled leads and a hedge that nearly claimed a canine victim, I'm ending the day feeling rather pleased with life.

I may be cold, I may still have mud somewhere on my clothing that I haven't found yet, and I may need to seriously reconsider my choice of waterproofs, but I have dry socks, a strong coffee, a house full of dogs and 40,000 YouTube subscribers.

That's not a bad Saturday at all.