Ealing Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We will be profiling some of these businesses and organisations regularly in a feature called 'UP CLOSE in Ealing.'

Today we caught up with Shubendra (or as most people call him, Ben) Naidoo, the Ealing owner of Alphas Canine Care.

Shubendra (Ben) Naidoo is originally from North London but moved to Ealing in 2014, when he was still a teenager.

He started working as a dog walker in order to make some money during his GCSE and A-Level exams.

His dream at the time was to become a vet and he needed 18 months of experience working with animals and thought that dog walking was a great way to get that experience, as well as making some money on the side.

Slowly but surely he was being recommended to more and people through word of mouth and his clientele became too vast for him to handle alone and started hiring helpers.

That's when in September 2019, he officially launched Alphas Canine Care, a company that provides dog walking, training, boarding and day care for our four-legged friends.

He told Nub News: "I just kept getting more and more clients and I needed help, especially during exam periods so I started hiring people.

"We've grown from one dog every couple of days, to around 140 clients right before the pandemic hit and now we have four paid members of staff as well as some volunteers, such as my mum, who always helps in any way she can."

Naidoo has realised that although the dog day care and training market is very popular in the US, the same can't be said for the UK.

"There's definitely a gap in the market for this sort of business here and if people put the work in, they can become very successful.

"But it's important to remember that this sort of job is hard work, just because you're a dog owner, doesn't mean you can do it, each dog behaves differently and every time you're out on a walk, you're dealing with the environments and you have to make sure you're taking care of the local community," he added.

As with most industries, the coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected Alphas Canine Care, but the 24-year-old is grateful that they're still deemed an essential business and are allowed to keep working.

He said: "We're still allowed to take dogs on walks, but only if their owners are essential workers, or they're vulnerable and are self-isolating.

"In a way by keeping our industry open, the government has managed to reduce the amount of people that are out and about, as one dog walker can take up to six dogs on a walk.

"So instead of having six different people each with their own dog, you have one dog walker with six dogs."

Naidoo is also very proud of the work Alphas Canine Care does in the community, running environmental walks that include litter picking and also running charity fundraisers, raising money for local dog welfare charities such as Dogs Trust in Harefield.

"It's very important for us to engage with the local community and give back in any way that we can, these public parks are our workspace, and we want to see them well maintained and looked after," he added.