Who’s responsible for the death of Penny the puppy?
After her seven-month-old cocker spaniel was killed in a hit and run while in a dog minder’s care, Jen Geggie learned more about Dog Nanny Nikki’s troubling past
Dear readers — Many of you will be familiar with just how much joy a new puppy can bring. For Michael Geggie, who’s autistic, his cocker spaniel Penny was more than just a pet; she was a lifeline. Penny was in training to become his service dog, and from the time the family brought her home, the two immediately shared a special bond. “She was his soulmate,” Michael’s wife, Jen, tells The Post. So when Penny was struck and killed in a hit and run last November, while in the care of a dog minder named Nikki O’Donoghue, their world fell apart.
In the weeks since Penny’s death, Jen has been hearing from other former clients of O’Donoghue’s — and she’s been shocked to learn that a woman who’d presented herself “like Mother Earth” had been filmed in 2021 whipping a woman in the face with a dog lead, leaving her with a black eye. In speaking with some of those former clients, The Post has also heard allegations of dog poo left on someone’s doorstep, a vehicle damaged, a signature forged, multiple dogs allowed off lead in O’Donoghue’s care after explicit instructions they must remain on-lead at all times, and more. The council is currently investigating. The Geggies can’t bring their beloved dog back, but can they get justice for Penny?
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By Shannon Keating
Last November, Jen Geggie and her family were celebrating her mum’s 60th birthday in the Lake District when she got a call from a withheld number. It was 7:30am and Geggie was still groggy from sleep. She’d been planning to head home just after breakfast to take her seven-month-old cocker spaniel puppy, Penny, to a vet appointment. When she picked up the phone, a man’s voice asked her: “Hi, love, do you have a little brown dog?”
Yes, Geggie told him, confused.
“I’m really sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but she’s dead. She’s dead on Childwall Road.”
Geggie didn’t believe him at first. No, no, she told him, she’s not on Childwall Road – she’s with a dog boarder in Wavertree. The man asked her to confirm her address, and whether the dog’s name was Penny; he was reading the tag on her collar.
Geggie immediately called the dog minder who was caring for Penny that weekend — a woman named Nikki O'Donoghue. She didn’t answer. Then, O'Donoghue called her back.
“Hi, Jen,” O’Donoghue said. “I can’t find Penny.” That’s when Geggie knew.
Geggie’s dad drove them back home right away; she was too frantic to drive. As they were approaching the road where the man said he’d found Penny, Geggie got another call from someone who lived opposite to where Penny had been found. The neighbour had heard “a loud bang and a yelp” at 6:30am and didn’t know what it was at first, since it was still jet black outside. Geggie stayed in the car while her dad attended to the dog’s body.
If Penny had been killed in a hit and run at 6:30am, that meant she’d already been missing for well over an hour by the time O’Donoghue called. O’Donoghue told Geggie that she’d been at Northway Park that morning, in a gated dog park about a mile from where Penny was found, when someone left the gate open and Penny bolted.
That didn’t sound like Penny to Geggie – “She’s never been known to bolt.”
Geggie’s first priority became finding the person who’d hit her puppy and sped off without reporting it. Had the person alerted the authorities, “I would never have been angry with the driver,” Geggie tells me. “If anything, I’d have consoled the driver – it was dark, accidents happen, it could have happened to anybody.” But driving away and leaving her puppy to die on the side of the road? “How could somebody do that?”
She posted on the social media forum Nextdoor, trying to solicit doorbell footage from anyone in the area. When someone asked her why the dog had been off her lead, Geggie told them that Penny had been in the care of “a dog nanny” at the time. Almost immediately, O’Donoghue got in touch and asked Geggie to take down the post; she goes by Nikki the Dog Nanny and worried that the post incriminated her.
“I thought: I haven’t heard from you,” Geggie remembers. “You’ve disappeared. And you’ve now reached out to say take that post down.” Geggie told her she wouldn’t delete the post entirely, but she did edit it to say “a dog sitter” instead of “a dog nanny.” Not appeased, O’Donoghue again asked Geggie to take the whole post down. “That didn’t sit right with me at all,” Geggie says.
Even though Geggie hadn’t meant to identify O’Donoghue in her post, “people put two and two together”. Someone sent her a news report about Nicola Grant, also known as Nikki O'Donoghue, that included footage showing O’Donoghue whipping another woman, Emma Clay, in the face with a dog lead. Was this the same woman who’d lost Penny? In 2021, O’Donoghue appeared at Liverpool Magistrates' Court after pleading guilty to assaulting Clay and causing actual bodily harm; she was spared jail time. After the attack, Clay, who was left with a black eye, told the Echo she was afraid to leave her home.
Geggie was aghast. “I was like, Oh my god, who is this woman? She’s an actress! She’s come across like Mother Earth, and then I see footage of her being violent. If you can be violent like that with a human, you're capable of being violent with a dog.” She’d had no idea about the assault over a year ago, when she first hired O’Donoghue to care for her elderly dog Rosie, having found her on social media. O'Donoghue had rebranded her business from Diamond Doggy Care to Nikki the Dog Nanny. Tragically, Rosie died just a week before Penny. “From two dogs to no dogs,” Geggie says. “The house’s emptiness was unbearable.”
“What hurts me the most,” Geggie says, “Is she’s not taken any responsibility.” She unfollowed O’Donoghue on social media, too upset seeing her post Christmas memes within 24 hours of Penny’s death. “I couldn’t bear the pain of seeing her acting like nothing had happened.” Geggie says O’Donoughue never did any kind of induction, and that Geggie had never signed any contracts — and yet, according to Geggie, O’Donoghue has “since forged a document we never signed to say Penny was allowed off lead,” therefore relieving O’Donoghue of any liability for harm that came to Penny in her care.
Geggie has since sent the council handwriting samples from both her and her husband to show that the signature on the document doesn’t match either of theirs. A city council spokesperson told The Post: “We can confirm we have received a complaint about a dog care business and an investigation is ongoing,” but they did not give any further details. When reached for comment, O’Donoghue told The Post that she needs to discuss the allegations with her lawyers, but did not respond to a list of written questions detailing the allegations in this article or multiple follow-up calls.
Over the past fortnight, The Post has spoken with a number of O’Donoghue’s former clients. One, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, says their dog was returned to them injured and smelling of urine. O’Donoghue told the client that their dog had been vicious and attacked another dog, but that she would continue walking her as usual. When the client refused to continue booking O’Donoghue’s services, and posted about the incident on Facebook, they soon had “dog poo on my front door and damage to a vehicle”. While they acknowledge it’s impossible to prove who was behind the damage or the dog faeces, they think that other people who have since been coming forward to share their negative experiences with O’Donoghue suggest a worrying pattern.
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