Kate Clapperton
Rippletrix Border Collies, Sheffield · Kennel Club Assured Breeder · Veterinary Physiotherapist
Kate has bred Border Collies for nearly forty years and writes the way she talks — funny until suddenly serious, and always on the side of the dog. Her pieces cover puppy rearing, the working collie brain, and the daily reality of living well with a pack. Every pup she produces is fully health tested to the recognised breed panel before leaving the yard.
Visit the Rippletrix hub — the bloodline story, puppy library and CPD videos →16 pieces, newest first
- 26 August 2026 · 4 min read
Isn't it funny how owners resemble their dogs?
Kate Clapperton has heard it a hundred times — 'those collie types are mental, aren't they?' — and has started to wonder whether decades spent living alongside Border Collies have merged handler and dog into one routine-obsessed species. The Kennel Club Assured Breeder and veterinary physiotherapist on the paper diary she can't do without, the exact order the pack comes out of the van, and why a strict pecking order at the food bowls turns out to be her earliest illness alarm.
Read the piece → - 24 August 2026 · 9 min read
The health and lifestyle of my own dogs
Kate Clapperton lives alongside a pack of Border Collies, some retired, some still working, and credits a shared need for routine as much as any bond of affection. The Kennel Club Assured Breeder and veterinary physiotherapist on the off switch, the feeding order, the diary that runs her life and theirs, and why a household built on structure is what lets 23 dogs, one clinic and one very full life work at all.
Read the piece → - 23 August 2026 · 10 min read
The pain of losing a dog and how we deal with it
Kate Clapperton has lost more dogs, by her own count, than most people will ever own — and forty years of carrying that weight without letting it harden her against the next one. On the shelf of boxes that holds four decades of ashes, the belief that keeps her going, and why she has no patience for anyone who tells a grieving owner to buck up and get on with it.
Read the piece → - 21 August 2026 · 10 min read
Preparing your puppy for a trouble-free transfer into your household life
A puppy's routine for life gets set in its first weeks — how it uses a cage, how it eats, how it copes with being left, how it travels, how it meets the rest of the household. Kate Clapperton, Kennel Club Assured Breeder and veterinary physiotherapist, on the unglamorous groundwork that decides whether a puppy settles quickly or spends its first year unlearning bad habits.
Read the piece → - 15 August 2026 · 12 min read
Working breeds don't show pain?
A farm collie once tore himself open on broken fencing, took thirty stitches, and three days later escaped the farmhouse to go and fetch the cows in. Kate Clapperton — veterinary physiotherapist and Kennel Club Assured Breeder — on what drive does to a dog's pain signals, the health tests that separate a well-bred working collie from a badly bred one, the owner placebo effect she sees weekly in clinic, and why lameness is never the only sign worth watching for.
Read the piece → - 11 August 2026 · 7 min read
Fur babies, or how we humanise our dogs
Kate Clapperton would like you to call her dogs almost anything — her pack, her bunch of collies, her group of nutters — anything but fur babies. The Kennel Club Assured Breeder and veterinary physiotherapist on why the term makes her cringe, what a big daft Labrador actually feels when the tennis balls start flying, how dogs learned the head tilt that opens the treat tin — and why the kindest thing you can do for a dog is remember, cheerfully and firmly, that it is one.
Read the piece → - 2 August 2026 · 11 min read
Games to enhance and nurture a Border Collie's natural instincts
The Border Collie is wired to control movement — and when that instinct is starved, it comes out as car-chasing, ankle-nipping and shredded cushions, and too often ends in a rescue kennel. Kate Clapperton, Kennel Club Assured Breeder and veterinary physiotherapist, on why ten minutes a day of the right mental work beats hours of ball-throwing — with her own list of herding games, garden tasks and house games that feed the instinct instead of fighting it.
Read the piece → - 25 July 2026 · 14 min read
Installing confidence in your puppy, from birth onwards
Every puppy will one day meet something that frightens them — a vet's table, a muzzle, a cone, a night in a kennel away from their owner. Kate Clapperton, veterinary physiotherapist and Kennel Club Assured Breeder, on preparing a puppy for all of it from birth onwards, so that when the frightening thing arrives it is already familiar — the breeder's long list of early exposures, the 'nosy box' and the 'necky warmer', and why a confident dog is made long before its confidence is ever tested.
Read the piece → - 16 July 2026 · 9 min read
The suitability of harnesses for dogs
A phrase Kate Clapperton hears often in her physiotherapy clinic — 'oh, he doesn't let me put a harness on'. Nearly forty years of practical fitting later, here is what a good harness actually does, what a bad one does to a dog's shoulders, and the three-finger test every owner should do this week.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 8 min read
Dogs are omnivores
Fats, proteins, carbohydrates. What a dog actually needs, why they're not the same as us on the metabolism side, and how food becomes movement — from AAFCO feeding numbers to the ATP-to-ADP conversion inside the muscle cell. Kate Clapperton, veterinary physiotherapist and Rippletrix Border Collies breeder, on the nutrition science every owner should know.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 5 min read
How a dog jumps
Every dog uses the same sequence of movements to clear a jump — regardless of breed or size. Kate Clapperton, veterinary physiotherapist and Rippletrix Border Collies breeder, breaks down the biomechanics of the canine jump: what the front legs are actually doing, why greater angulation absorbs landing shock, and how the centre of gravity moves. Written for handlers, agility owners, and anyone who has watched a Border Collie in the air.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 6 min read
How to read a canine semen sample
Motility, morphology, concentration, colour — the four things a fertility analyser reports back on every ejaculate, and what each one tells you about your stud dog. Kate Clapperton, veterinary physiotherapist and canine fertility clinician, walks through the semen sample from collection to result. Written for stud owners, breeders considering AI, and anyone paying a stud fee who wants to know what they're actually paying for.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 6 min read
The puppy pack I still send with every litter
When Kate Clapperton qualified as a Kennel Club Assured Breeder, every puppy she bred left home with a proper information pack — socialisation chart, exercise-by-age table, feeding schedule, worming record, vaccination record, poisons list, and breed-specific advice. As Kate understands it, the scheme doesn't run in quite the same form any more. She never stopped sending the pack. This is why.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 4 min read
Using ultrasound in a canine pregnancy
Why every breeding bitch benefits from an ultrasound scan — for early diagnosis, viability, gestational dating, monitoring foetal development, and (critically) after the whelping to be sure nothing has been retained. Kate Clapperton, veterinary physiotherapist and canine fertility clinician, on the practical use of ultrasound in the breeding programme.
Read the piece → - 10 July 2026 · 5 min read
When to mate: the four stages of a bitch's season
Proestrus, estrus, diestrus, anestrus — and the split season that misleads a lot of breeders. Kate Clapperton runs a canine fertility clinic alongside Rippletrix. Here she walks through the four stages of the cycle, when a bitch is actually fertile, how cytology pinpoints ovulation, and why a single blood test can catch you out.
Read the piece → - 9 July 2026 · 11 min read
Top Tips for a Perfect Border Collie
Nearly forty years of Border Collies, condensed into the recall, off-switch, toilet-training and hard-wired-behaviour advice Kate Clapperton — Rippletrix Border Collies, Kennel Club Assured Breeder and Veterinary Physiotherapist — gives to every new puppy owner. Written in her voice, with the puppy's own point of view running alongside.
Read the piece →
The GenoVaq journal publishes practitioners under their own bylines, unedited beyond copy. A marketplace has a commercial reason to want you to buy an animal — the people writing here do not.