Michele Hanson hates camping and admits her beloved boxers are out of control. No wonder she wasn't looking forward to four days at a dog training camp. And then it started raining . . .

Here I am at doggy boot camp. It is raining. Our tent is rather cramped. We are in a large square field in Capstone Country Park, Kent, and all around the edges are pitched the tents and caravans of about 50 people and 40 or so dogs. Nearly all the tents are bigger than ours. I am here with my friend John Clayden and my two boxer dogs, Lily and Violet. Clayden and I have been friends for 50 years. We think we know each other. He loves camping, I hate camping.

The dogs need camping, though. That is really why I am here – to socialise the dogs, because their behaviour is fairly grim. They tend to gang up, dash ferociously at other dogs and pin them to the ground by their necks, which is not ideal. They weigh 4st each and I am sick of being pulled over, into ponds and flat on my face. But it's not their fault; it's mine, because they've been badly brought up. By me. It is me who needs the training.

But this isn't really a boot camp. "Here in Britain people think of a dog trainer as strict and humourless," says Dima Yeremenko, who has run this camp for nine years. "But really the point of this is to have fun, while you learn a lot. Like going back to school." As a child in Ukraine, Yeremenko always wanted to work outdoors – to be a farmer rather than a cosmonaut – and took his first dog class at 12. He trained the dogs who rescued people in the 1988 Armenian earthquake; and he takes a rehabilitation class for difficult dogs at an RSPCA rescue centre. I once watched him train crows that happened to be hanging about while he trained my dog. He saved his own dog from death row, after it was sentenced for bad behaviour, and trained it to perfection. He seems able to train any dog to do anything – better still, he can train them to want to be trained to do anything, and so far, the only occasions on which my dogs have behaved perfectly have been in his presence.

But for weeks I have lived in fear of this holiday. Would I be able to sleep in a tent? Would the dogs sleep at all? How would they cope with a mat on the hard ground when they are used to their own sofa? And the rule here is that they must be hand-fed with mainly dry food as a reward to assist with training. No lovely bowls of dinner. But because my dogs have delicate stomachs, they are used to cooked chicken, with pasta (or rice and potatoes) and gravy, plus a little dry dog food – a dog version of chicken soup. I dare not own up to this. People will think us namby-pamby townies. And worse still, Clayden has tried out and rejected the two-bedroom tent lent to me by my daughter. He doesn't think it's up to scratch, so he has brought his teepee instead for me and the dogs, and a mini-tent for himself. Our accommodation seems rather basic.

The first night is rough for me, not bad for the dogs, but heaven for Clayden, because at 11pm, my bedtime, two beautiful blonde Ukrainian singers come to our tent door asking to borrow Clayden's guitar. They want to sing with it round the enormous, roaring campfire. Fabulous. To Clayden this is now not a dog boot camp, but a dog Glastonbury. He is off like a shot, and from my blowup mattress in the flapping teepee with the fidgeting dogs, I can hear the heavenly Ukrainians singing nearby and Clayden singing along. He has a top-notch voice himself. How romantic. For the first hour. Not so romantic for the second hour, because I am desperate for sleep. The singing finally stops, but after that comes the deluge.

The tent flaps wildly all night. No sleep for me, just a tiny snatch before dawn. Then it is time for a walkie. It is still raining. Heavily. I paddle off over the sodden fields and through woods to the lavatories. Why did I come here? I must have known this would happen. How can anyone like camping? And I can't even make myself a cup of tea.

But soon the other campers are up and about, and cheery. It is like the spirit of the Blitz – everyone united by adversity. "It isn't rain," says Kathryn, a yoga teacher who has lived in Canada, "we call it liquid sunshine." No one whinges, and under an awning, mid-site, there is hot tea and coffee and a choice of cereals. Better still, everyone is tremendously kind and helpful; someone promises to help us move our tents to a quieter venue; someone else lends me a warmer fleece; and someone else – I will never forget this person's goodness – gives me two temazepam, so I need not spend another sleepless, tormented night like the last one.

The other good thing about dog camp is that no one here minds if your dog misbehaves. At home in the local parks I am often a pariah, banished to deserted areas, scowled and shouted at, shunned by many other dog walkers. But here I am accepted, supported and understood. I am given advice, not bollockings and vets' bills. So when Violet barges into another dog's tent, starting a fight (even with her muzzle on) for the second time running, Eric the other dog owner is still smiling, even with his tent door shredded. Now and again a dog spat breaks out. Everyone remains mellow. They understand dog behaviour. Here is Bailey, with his owner Pam. Two other dogs approach and Bailey's tail wags furiously. Is he being friendly? No. "That means two seconds to blast off," says Pam, in a relaxed way. Blast off is somehow averted.

Perhaps this isn't so bad after all. Everywhere we go, the dogs come too: to the breakfast tent, to lectures, to restaurants, to the barbecue, to dog-dancing demonstrations, on the egg-and-spoon race, to yoga, to the lavatory, to bed, and to daily hand-feeding training. Mine aren't much good at this at first, having lost their appetites. Perhaps they are overwhelmed or overexcited, but look at all the other dogs, sitting down, standing up, heeling, twirling around. We are all rather cramped together under the canopy, in the rain, but no dogs are squabbling, not even mine.

Then it's clay pigeon shooting. With dogs. This will hopefully inure them to loud noise. The sun has come out. Better and better. My dogs are not keen on the shooting so we retire to the site cafe. After lunch we head to the shops for supplies, and it is here in Sainsbury's car park, while Clayden gets the shopping, that my lack of sleep catches up with me, and I crack up. I never have been much cop at waiting patiently. It is now boiling hot, too hot for the dogs in the car. There are no seats in the car park, so I have a little breakdown, throw myself on to the verge and weep loudly, like a madwoman. With dogs.

This is how you really get to know your friends. When you holiday with them. And dogs. Clayden finds me screaming with a tomato face. He is not thrilled. This is not a side of me with which he is familiar. We drive sulkily back to camp, just in time for a riveting three-hour lecture on dog stress. Dogs also need their sleep, says lecturer Amber Batson. In some ghastly experiment, years ago, some dogs that were deprived of sleep for a week died. And then she explains how dogs communicate. They give a series of little warning signs before they do anything frightful: lick their lips, blink, turn their heads away, curl their lip a little, then a bit more, lower their ears, wrinkle their foreheads. Well most normal, pointy-nosed dogs do. But mine don't. Their large flobby chops, squashed faces, floppy ears and wrinkles make normal dog communication almost impossible. This is their tragedy. So I need to be extra quick at spotting these warning signs and then distract them, turn them the other way, offer them a quick biscuit or a flick, a little jab, some praise – anything to prevent "blast off".

At least our new location is heaven and our new neighbours are tremendously welcoming. And here, with my darling temazepam, I have a heavenly sleep. Which is lucky, because the dogs are first up again in the morning, at 6.05am. Horrid. Then we have a shocking event. My dog Lily stops for a poo. But whatever is that coming out? Something smooth and pale. What can it be? A section of intestine? No. It's the finger of a latex glove, probably discarded by the decorators at our house last week. I pull it out carefully (a dog owner needs to be fairly robust). And that becomes a sort of turning point for us. Once Lily has passed the rubber glove, she perks up tremendously. Our mood lightens. No wonder she had been feeling peaky and gone off her food. Soon she feels peckish again, so the morning hand-feeding session is a roaring success. Soon my dogs are sitting, twirling, lying down, rolling over, going backwards and forwards, catching. Some sleep and the glove have worked magic.

But there is now a new snag. Violet has bonded with Clayden. Her behaviour when with him is close to perfect. With me, it is hopeless. If he goes out of sight she is inconsolable. She stares after him in a tense way and will concentrate on nothing else. I feel that she is a turncoat who will do anything for a man.

Along comes Richard, a campsite neighbour. He and his dog Roxy, a handsome German shepherd, have just attempted the Good Citizen Dog Obedience Test. Did she pass, we ask. "No, she was crap," says Richard. But are they downcast? No. How could they be, with such fabulous accommodation? Their tent is the most spacious: living room, three bedrooms – one for him, one for storage, one for guests – awning with kitchen unit (two gas rings), and dog's swimming pool (actually a kiddies' paddling pool). Lucky Roxy. And what does she have for dinner? No dreary hand-fed dry food for her. She is on a raw meat diet. She eats her lamb shank on a comfy black-and-white duvet in the spacious back of a Subaru hatchback – her very own private banqueting hall.

Yes, what I had suspected from the beginning is true. My accommodation is a slum dwelling. Everyone else can make themselves tea without crawling on the floor, and one needs a cup of tea and a sit down now and again, because it's all go here – one class/activity/lecture/demonstration after another: tests and awards, loose-lead walking, agility and obedience training, hand-feeding, races, walkies, barbecues, dinners and lunches in cafes and pubs, even yoga class with Kathryn, with dogs.

We stick it out for three nights and four whole days, but then, sadly, we have to come home. Yes, I did say sadly. Because by day three I have begun to love it. With a luxury Versailles-style tent, I could have stayed for weeks. Clayden has been in heaven. To him the campfire singing was a magical experience, and this is the most delightful group of people he has ever met on a campsite. But what sort of difference can dog camp make to me and my dogs? "You can modify a dog's behaviour," says Yeremenko, "but you can't change its character. But you wouldn't want to, would you? You just correct a problem and replace it with a good habit. You learn to live with a dog that's less than perfect."

That would be good enough for me. But am I getting there? The big test is when you get home and try it when Yeremenko is not around. So I do. I have kept up the hand feeding and distracting, and it seems to work. My dogs are calmer and rather well behaved. They have stopped lunging, pulling, dashing and growling. I take them for a walkie with my friend Rosemary.

"That was almost pleasant," she says. A result. I'd better buy a decent tent. For next year.

Dog training: a 10-point guide

1 Learn about the way dogs think. Read, watch, keep up to date with research

2 Hand-feed your dog its dinner as a reward when training

3 Use encouragement not fear

4 Don't hurry. The dog will soon want to learn more

5 Always have new tricks up your sleeve; do not let the dog feel that he/she knows it all

6 Use clear and consistent commands. Always use the same word for the same thing

7 Cut down on food rewards as the dog progresses

8 Never lose your temper

9 Make training fun

10 Never give up

You can find out more about Dima Yeremenko's dog camp and training at goodboydogschool.com