Television vet Dr Chris Brown visited Wodonga’s Belvoir Dog Park on Tuesday with canine scientist Mia Cobb, offering advice to children on the best way to interact with dogs.

“It’s easy talking to kids about animals because there’s already a natural interest and a natural love in it,” Dr Brown said.

“Today’s all about allowing them to shape that love into a really important, really useful message, which is how to approach dogs or how to let dogs approach you, really.” 

About 120 students from Bandiana Primary School listened eagerly and the time for questions ended long before all inquiries could be answered.

Many hands went up when Mrs Cobb asked who had been scared by a dog and the group practised standing still and quiet so an approaching dog loses interest.

Dr Brown said his toughest case was surgery for a goldfish in Cairns about four years ago, done out of the water on an operating table.

“The goldfish made it,” he said. 

“Fatty the goldfish lived on for another three years.”

Mrs Cobb will be rehoming hundreds of goldfish over the next year after she moved into a Yarra Valley property with a swimming pool full of unintended pets.

“Apparently the former owners put six fish in there four years ago, and we’re able to identify those because they’re quite large, and then everything else is subsequent generations,” she said.

Although beautiful, the fish are a little out of place.

“We’d like to return it to being a swimming pool, not so much of a scuba diving experience,” Mrs Cobb said, smiling.

Dr Brown, the son of a vet, said when he was a child he rebelled against doing what his father did.

“But I got to the point where I realised that was actually what I did love and what I’d been around my whole life, so in the end it was an easy decision and I didn’t have to explain it to Dad too much,” he said.

Mrs Cobb said sessions like the Wodonga visit consistently created interest.

“People are always keen to talk about dogs and we can slip some science in there as well,” she said. 

Mars Petcare organised Tuesday’s event, part of a wider project aimed at making Australia more pet-friendly.