We have a dyson dc 07 animal the machine was

It could be the motor. I'm having to replace the brushes on my DC 05. It appears that you can only get brushes for the YDK motors in the DYSON, not the Panasonic motor. Which might be saying something about the YDK motors. What happens is that the carbon brushes wear down which is normal. However, the contact wire from the brush to its connector is set so that when the brush wears down, the wire is short enough to stop the spring etc from damaging the commutator. The end result is that you get an intermittent operation of the motor before it finally dies.
I believe all the DYSONs come with the option of both motors and you cannot really tell which motor you have until you take the thing to bits. You also cannot change motors without changing various other parts on the hoover. On my DC 05 the writing on the YDK motor tells you which one it is.
This website www. tasweb.org ,select the DC 05 option and scroll down tells you how to take the thing to bits. A search on google etc for your DC 07 may give similar results. Best of luck!