So much happens here at Chez Wylanbriar on a week to week basis that its crazy that i’m not ‘blogging it’ every second day, but I really wanted to write about a truely lovely day yesterday, saturday 2nd April, at Ashburnham Gundog Club, near Battle. Tania Stapley runs a superb beginners and novices gundog club there, taking many from complete newcomer to test winner or useful shoot member in a series of really carefully planned classes. Tania explained the ethos of the classes to me and the planning behind them and it is truely staggering. Thank you to Tania and her team for inviting me to examine their Bronze and Silver Kennel Club Canine good citizen test trainees.
I hadn’t done this before and was pretty nervous to be honest. But soon settled into the requirements, with some homework too of course ‘pre-appointment’! There were some really lovely dogs taking the tests, which basically are aimed at showing that the dogs involved have the good manners to make good companions in everyday society, and the owners are thinking, responsible owners who may not wish to compete with their dogs, but expect them to behave and know exactly their own responsibilities.
It was magic 😉 Some real character dogs from a young but perfectly able puppy, to a old hand who REALLY thought it was all a bit below them… A vast variety of shapes, breeds and sizes, and some REAL personalities temperament wise. Its fantastic to step away from the competition world for a few hours, and see how proud as punch people can be of their pet dogs achieving something seriously worthwhile that they have slogged for over several weeks.
It was well worth missing an Open test for! More on that in a minute!
The calm but nervous moments before we kick off:
The succesful Silver examinees:
The succesful Bronze examinees!
So this weekend didn’t end ‘there’. Al ran Fish in the UGS Kent & East sussex Open. He ran, just like a ‘pretty talented dog, handled by a man who has worked about 21 days in sucession and so hasn’t had any time to train at all….’ should run 😉 No zeros. No 20’s but 4 resectable scores and one bit of a pooch screw because he marked a Moorhen and not a dummy over a marsh 😉
BUT the light evenings are here, and Al can stop moaning now, and start training…. i shall keep his nose to the grindstone believe me! 😉
Next weekend is a cracker. I have the honour of judging the SEGS Novice at Sheffield Park on Saturday (whilst Al, of course, works… grin) and then we both on Al’s birthday, next Sunday, celebrate by running in the UGS West Sussex Open test with Bondy and Fish.
I could write a THESIS on the interesting things about training Bondy and Fish at the moment. They have their real strong points each and their real weaknesses… and neither have the same 😉 Just to make life interesting. Little Shimmer comes home Royal Wedding weekend, and Shiney is getting HUGE!! More excitement!
