A Different Kind of Field Assistant
There is a particular kind of stillness required in wildlife photography.
The kind that asks you to wait — sometimes for hours, sometimes for days — for a single, unrepeatable moment. The kind that demands patience, restraint and a quiet respect for the creatures you are there to observe.
It is a discipline Mylo knows intimately. As an award-winning wildlife conservationist and photographer, he has spent years perfecting it — crouched in dew-soaked grass, pressed against camouflage netting, breathing slowly while a chimpanzee locks eyes with his lens or a snowy owl turns its head a fraction too late.
But recently, a new companion has joined him in the field.
One with floppy ears, an irrepressible nose and an enthusiasm for wildflower meadows that occasionally threatens to derail the entire operation.
His name is Falkor.
And he is a Cocker Spaniel puppy with a rather serious job ahead of him.
The Luck Dragon
It would be easy to assume that a puppy named Falkor — after the luck dragon from Michael Ende's beloved novel The NeverEnding Story — was chosen for sentiment alone.
And perhaps, in part, he was.
But the name carries a deeper resonance for anyone who has spent time in conservation work, where hope and perseverance are not abstract virtues but daily necessities. Falkor, in Ende's story, is a creature of extraordinary luck, yes — but also of loyalty, warmth and an unshakeable belief that the journey, however long, is worth making.
It is a fitting name for a dog whose life is just beginning, and whose path will wind through meadows, hedgerows and coastline in the company of a man who has dedicated his own life to protecting the wild.
Beside his high-spirited, gentle-natured Cocker Spaniel, Mylo is already there.
The Man Behind the Lens
To understand why a puppy is being trained for conservation work, it helps to understand the man he belongs to.
Mylo — known professionally as SnapsByMylo — is not a typical photographer. He holds a Masters degree in Wildlife Biology & Conservation, and his work exists at the precise intersection of science and art. In 2026, he was honoured with the prestigious Best British Wildlife Photographer award from The Great British Business Awards, and later that year received a Global Recognition Award for his contributions to wildlife photography, conservation education and leadership — an accolade given to only 5.8% of 15,000 applicants.
He is a Marine Conservation Ambassador for the Cold Water Club Foundation, a proud member of the British Ecological Society, and the founder of the Dying To Live Conservation Trust, which channels proceeds from his print sales directly into habitat restoration, biodiversity recovery and wildlife education.
His images have been featured by BBC Earth, National Geographic India, Yahoo News and MSN, reaching millions of people with stories of endangered species and fragile ecosystems.
Every photograph, in Mylo's philosophy, is an act of advocacy.
And every act of advocacy, it turns out, is better with a dog at your side.
Training for the Wild
Cocker Spaniels were bred to work. For centuries, they have been prized as gundogs — flushers and retrievers with an instinctive ability to move through cover with surprising stealth, their low-slung frames and feathered ears designed by generations of selection for exactly this kind of terrain.
It is this heritage that makes Falkor such a promising candidate for conservation fieldwork.
The training is gentle and gradual. There are no harsh commands, no rigid drills. Instead, it is built around the same principles that govern Mylo's photography — patience, observation and respect for the animal's own nature. Falkor is learning to settle. To hold a position. To watch the world with the same quiet attentiveness that his owner brings to every encounter in the field.
There are setbacks, of course. He is, after all, still a puppy.
A butterfly will sometimes prove more interesting than the task at hand. A particularly fragrant patch of clover can delay a training session by several minutes. And there is no denying that a young Cocker Spaniel's enthusiasm for running through tall grass is, on occasion, at odds with the requirement to remain unseen.
But these are not failures. They are the education of a working dog — and, perhaps, the most endearing part of the process.
Lessons From a Puppy
There is a particular irony in the idea of training a dog for conservation work, when so much of conservation work is, in fact, about learning from animals rather than teaching them.
Watch Falkor in a meadow and you see something that is easy to forget in the seriousness of environmental advocacy — the simple, unselfconscious joy of being present in a landscape. The way a puppy experiences a field of wildflowers is not so different from the way a photographer should: with full attention, with curiosity, with a willingness to be surprised.
Mylo has spoken often about patience as a lens — the idea that wildlife reveals itself only to those willing to stay. In Falkor, he has a companion who is learning that lesson from the very beginning, and who reminds him, daily, why it matters.
Because conservation is not only about data and decline curves. It is about connection. It is about the relationship between a person and the natural world, and the quiet conviction that the wild is worth protecting — not because it is useful, but because it is irreplaceable.
A puppy in a meadow may not save a species. But the spirit of curiosity, loyalty and perseverance that he embodies — the very qualities that drew his owner to this work in the first place — might just inspire someone else to care.
The Road Ahead
Falkor is still young. His training is in its earliest stages, and the path ahead is long — through fields, along coastlines, into the kind of quiet, patient observation that defines a life in conservation.
But if there is one thing that the story of Mylo and SnapsByMylo has shown, it is that small beginnings can lead to extraordinary things. A single photograph can reach millions. A single trust can restore a habitat. And a single, determined person — with a floppy-eared companion at his side — can make a measurable difference for wildlife.
The luck dragon, after all, was never really about luck.
He was about showing up. About staying the course. About believing that the story is never truly over as long as there is someone willing to keep going.
Falkor, it seems, is ready.
