Working
At the end of January the HTM and freestyle community descend on the Kennel Club building at Stoneleigh for the Rugby Dog Training Club’s show. As well as the intermediate and advanced classes in both divisions, this show also has the Crufts...
Although I often write about the PD stake in working trials, I don’t think I have ever explained it. So for those non-trialists that read my column I thought an explanation might make for easier reading.
‘During the war’, as Uncle Albert would say before boring everyone with his tales, or in my case, ‘At the start of the sport’ … we usually had an imaginary line between two stakes or vertical poles as a place the timing could be started and stopped.
As I am sure some of you have had some snow by now, and may still have a covering, I thought this would be a good time to revisit tracking, as there is no better way to assess your dog’s progress in tracking than on snow.
After spending my first column of the year paying tribute to the dogs we have lost, I now turn my attention to the human side of our sport and some of the people we lost during 2012.
In my last column I wrote about the first day of my Swiss adventure which was judging the Swiss open competition to find the team who would represent Switzerland at Crufts. Although this was one reason why I flew to Switzerland, I had also...
About this time last year I wrote an article that gave a brief overview of trials so that those of you that read my column would have some idea what the sport is all about. However, I realise that what I didn’t explain was the different levels or...
Agility competition made its annual appearance in London for the late December show that has been part of Christmas in the big capital for very many years now. In fact the first agility event was staged at that show by Pedigree in 1979, with Canny...
As I am sure you all know, it does not matter what plans you make, events have a habit of overtaking you and that is exactly what happened with us over the Christmas period.
As usual I will start the new year off by paying tribute to those dogs lost to us during the previous 12 months.
Having judged many times in the UK during 2012, I was looking forward to judging in Switzerland at the start of December. Although nowadays you can see routines from around the world via the internet, it still isn’t the same as being at the actual...
The last Championship trial of 2012 was the Scottish Kennel Club TD at Jedburgh, judged by Nigel Hines and, as would be expected, it had its fair share of very cold weather with some snow.
