Youngs Dog Days and moreeeeee ...

Well, it has been another busy week. Last Sunday I was up in Birmingham giving a 'learning theory' talk organised by Mandy Melville-Love. Everyone was up for learning new things, which makes my job so much more fun. 

On Monday and Tuesday, the long awaited 'Young Dog Days' arrived. The weather was amazing, hot and sunny, which meant we could train outside on the Tuesday. The trainers were Dave Munnings and Sian Illingworth. These two trainers compliment each other so well and everyone raved about all their training sessions. 

It was great to see some dogs and handlers from my last beginners class taking part in this event. It can sometimes be a bit of a worry handing over students that have trained with you week in week out since they started their training journey. I am not sure why, I guess you just feel protective over them. However my last beginners group are really special, smart and sensible and Dave and Sian are such great trainers it was just a complete pleasure to watch them succeed and look so great! Below are some videos of them enjoying 'Young Dog Days' ...

Dappy and Olivia - Restrained Recall 

Sixx and Becky

Floozie and Nicola

Thanks to all those positive, smiley people that attended 'Young Dog Days', it is great to spend time with you :)

Thursday arrives and I was presenting part 1 of 2 of a practical shaping session in Newbury. This session was great fun in which we looked at increasing the dogs 'willingness' to offer responses and improve owners shaping skills. Cant wait till part two.

On to my own dogs ..... I have spent the last two weekends at UKA shows preparing my dogs for the upcoming season. Ahhhhhh I don't think I have ever felt as great as I did after Ditto's first ever run which was a steeple chase. Don't get me wrong, this was far from a paw perfect run, but I couldn't have been happier with her. She was focused and fast :D

Little Code had four wins over the weekends, clever pup and I trained all his agility runs :)

Next weekend is the first KC show of the year for me, Easter Celebration, and I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Long time no blog ...

So, last weekend I found myself dressed as a dog. After a few drinks celebrating at Olympia I voluntered to be the OJAC mascot. What a great excuse to act like a kid high on sugar for a few days!!! The event highlighted that the sport can be both competitive and fun at the same time.

The last few days I have had Theo, one of Dobby's sons, to stay. This young puppy is a mini Dobby. So much character, attitude and natural drive. His temperment is stunning. In my opinion, he is what all breeders should be striving for. Below is a video of him doing some training in Pets at Home. 

And a pic of him at his first puppy class being trained by Lucy Osborne.

Finally, I started to work through my list of things I wanted to train Cody before the season started. Tunnels under contacts - TICK! Waits - half a tick! Pull throughs and go-round's - TICK! I can't wait to start competing with code again , I have a few goals to aim for this year :)

Little Dit is steadily making progress. She is probably a little further behind in her training that I would have hoped at this stage. Mainly because I have had to put so much time in to teaching 'life skills' and I guess also due to the bad weather we had. I had entered Scunthorpe as her first show just for jumping classes to give us something to aim for. But I wont rush her and I think it is looking unlikely that will be her debut now. I really do have to thank Dave Munnings for all his help with Ditto, it has been invaluable. I was so happy with how Ditto behaved and worked at a Toni Dawkins group at Scrambles a few weeks ago. Focused, confident and drivey :) 

This weekend we had Lucy Osborne at D-Force for a training day. The sessions included young dogs, weaves and super see-saw. Everyone was looking awesome, I am so proud with how the D-force dogs are looking. Everyone loved Lucy's positive training methods :) 

I was how both my dogs worked in Lucy's training sessions :)

Off to cheer on my friends competing at Crufts this week, always a great motivator :)

Peace out xx