For years, people have tried to find a solution to this issue. James and his dogs were the only ones who could solve it

Twenty years ago, James Webb and his wife packed up their lives in the UK and made the move to Australia.

They knew they wanted to work with dogs, so they started Sydney's first formal dog walking business.

Years later, that business brought them an opportunity that they never could have predicted.

Webb owns and operates Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a dog walking and doggy day care service franchised around Australia.

For years, Webb and his team simply offered dog care services, but that all changed after he received a phone call from the manager of Sydney's Opera Bar back in 2018.

Webb tells nine.com.au that the Opera Bar manager at the time was tasked with finding a way to keep the seagulls at bay and they were struggling to find a solution.

The manager contacted Webb and asked if a dog could be trained to keep the seagulls away.

"No one else was doing it, so it wasn't like something he could just go online and search for a seagull patrol company," Webb recalls.

"So I brought my own dogs at the time... we did a trial period for I think a month, and we just got rid of every single seagull there, and it was a game changer for them at the Opera House."

At first, Webb wasn't sure exactly how it would work, but he explains that he's now gotten the "Seagull Patrol" down to a fine art.

It started with just Webb and his three dogs, but it has now expanded to up to 40 dogs and 15 handlers across Sydney and Melbourne.

Webb says the number one thing he looks for in a patrol dog is a genuine interest in chasing birds.

"If the dog doesn't enjoy doing that, the dog won't enjoy being there," he says.

"So that's always the starting point. Then you've really got the dog 90 per cent trained the second you go down there.

"And they don't want to harm them, they just enjoy chasing them."

He explains that some of the dogs are like "a wild animal you've just dragged out of the woods" on their first day of training, so it all comes down to putting that natural interest on cue so that the dog understands to only chase the bird on command.

"We can tell the dog whether to go creep slowly towards it, or run towards it, or bark at it, or whatever we want it to do," he explains.

"There are all these different scenarios, because obviously you don't want a dog barking at a seagull if you're right next to someone who's drinking a glass of champagne. So you have to have it all under control."

But it's not just about training the dogs. Webb says he has spent so much time training these dogs to keep the seagulls away, he has accidentally begun to study the birds' behaviour.

"I honestly think personally I have spent more hours staring at seagulls and watching their behaviour than anyone else on Earth," he laughs.

He explains that there's often a "boss" seagull that he's now able to identify, and that he can almost predict where they're going next, recognising that they flock to prams knowing that food will fall, or people picking up their jackets knowing that there's soon going to be unattended food on the table.

"So we're watching the dogs' behaviour, who's watching the seagulls' behaviour as the seagulls are watching the human behaviour and the dog's behaviour," he explains.

"It's about learning animal behaviour generally rather than just dogs."

James has three border collies at the moment: Muffin, who was the original Seagull Patrol dog and is now retired at age 13; three-year-old Sidney; and 10-month-old Bonnie, who is currently in training.

Other Seagull Patrol dogs come from the dog walking business, and some handlers work with their own dogs.

Each dog does a maximum of two shifts a week and will never work two days in a row. Shifts are four hours long with a break every hour, which sometimes involves a quick swim if they're working at the Opera Bar.

And if the temperature is above 30 degrees, Webb cancels the shift for the dogs' safety.

Ever since its inception, the Seagull Patrol has not only become the perfect way to keep birds away from outdoor dining areas, but the dogs have also become a tourist attraction of their own, thanks to exposure on social media.

"Literally, it did get to the point where people were literally coming down just to see the dogs," he laughs.

"They've come in, and they've told us, 'Look, we've just come in to see the dogs'."

With people constantly wanting to pet and take photos with the dogs while they were on shift, Webb has had to impose the rule of keeping every chat to around 30 seconds, or at least trying to.

"If it's a rainy day, then obviously there's not much going on, so we spend a bit more time. But we do have to limit it because otherwise, you just spend the whole day talking, you wouldn't be able to do your job.

"These dogs have become an attraction in themselves at the Opera House."

Produced in partnership with CareerOne.