By now, millions of dog lovers will have seen the new BBC2 programme The Underdog Show. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a brief synopsis…

Eight celebrities have teamed up with eight of the dogs in our centres and now have to undergo a crash course in dog training. Each week (for six weeks), the celebs have to undergo tasks which demonstrate their dog handling skills – all under the eye of three watchful judges. A vote at the end of each show decides who stays in the competition and who is in the dog house.

I have to confess that I had a few sleepless nights, worrying that our dogs would misbehave - but I needn’t have worried. The first show was a resounding success and I couldn’t have been more proud of our wonderful dogs – I know that I wasn’t alone in shedding a tear or two.

Sadly, the first show saw the departure of Claudia the Afghan and her handler, Theo Paphitis. I’m sure that Afghan owners will forgive me for saying that Claudia was never going to find the competition easy – although she is completely gorgeous and added plenty of glamour to proceedings. But the great news is that Theo has now adopted Claudia – a fantastic rags-to-riches story for a dog that was wandering the streets not so long ago.

And that’s one of the many reasons that Dogs Trust was delighted to take part in the show – it gives us a great opportunity to showcase our wonderful dogs in front of millions of viewers. We’re sure that by the time the series ends, we’ll have found homes for these eight dogs and hundreds of others from our centres up and down the country.

The show also gives us an opportunity to dispel some myths. Many people believe that re-homing centres are deeply unpleasant and that the dogs in them are “damaged goods”. Underdogs gives us a chance to show that our centres are wonderful places and that, despite their backgrounds, our canine residents make fabulous companions.

And, crucially, the show demonstrates what fun training can be. For, if more people trained their dogs properly, we’d have fewer dogs in our centres.

So who’s going to win the show?

I’m going for Ginger…or Albert…possibly Casper…maybe Cookie…Bruno perhaps…or Robson…or Chump even.

The real winners, of course, will be thousands of abandoned dogs in Centres all over the UK, not forgetting the thousands of people who’ll visit those centres to find their new best friend.

Keep watching the programme - BBC2, every Tuesday at 8pm – but have a hankie or two at the ready!