A few competitions and wins later I decided that I would start my other dog called Jazz as she was easier to work in obedience than Sybil. I set my mind to it and over the winter trained her the various moves with a piece of music in mind. At her first competition I am glad to say that she won her class with her Great Escape routine.

Jazz then went onto win the intermediate class the following year at the National competition at Coventry performing her Mission Impossible routine.

Since then she has been in the Advanced freestyle, in 2003 she caused a stir in many ways with her My Old Mans a Dustman routine only beaten by 0.17 of a point. Then in 2004 she performed to the the track Thriller and i was thrilled that she won a first in the Advanced Freestyle.

Since these early days two more dogs have joined the canine crew and have both done well in competitions with Disco winning the Crufts final in 2006. In 2007 Disco was not able to attend Crufts as I had been invited to judge all the freestyle competitions at Crufts which was a great honour. Having achieved good results with my methods I have been fortunate to be asked to teach many workshops and classes. These have not only been in the Uk but also abroad which has meant that i have had to get a passport as I had never been out of the country until the last few years. I have taught in many states of the USA, Belgium, Australia, Finland, Japan to name just some. This has meant i have made many new friends in these countries which makes going to teach there even more fun.

Following on from the teaching I have produced training videos which only came about due to the lack of information about how to get started. Also i am privileged to have been asked to write the FIRST hard backed Freestyle book published in the UK which has become a bestseller.

Myself and the dogs have appeared many times at Crufts and Discover Dogs and I have been invited to show my training techniques in the Good Citizen ring.

So by this time I really wanted another dog but was not allowed anything other than another Westie so Toby arrived. Toby was a little easier to train but certainly having these males terriers at the start of my training career made me appreciate how hard some breeds are to teach. As Toby got older I started to get interested in teaching obedience, so at fifteen I took myself off (with my parents consent!) to a week long course with Roy Hunter. This man certainly introduced me to the fact that kind and fair handling got better results than the rather old style methods that I had seen used. He encouraged my instructing and introduced me other dog sports like working trials which I had not known much about. I think in the end I must of attended his week course about four times and had a lot of fun in the process. I was now put in front of classes and told to teach them as I had done a course! So this is how it all started. Toby by now was getting older and less interested in training so I entered what I called my wilderness years! .

In this time I borrowed dogs to train and also read every book I could find and attend every course I could go on to the stage where I have lost count on how many courses I have attended. The benefit of this I found was that I started to find the bits that I liked and disregard the methods I didn't like. Now all I needed was a dog to put these methods in to practice. This is where my first collie Gem came along, after more badgering of my parents I almost had a heart attack when they said I could have one!! They say that every dog you have taught you learn something well in Gems case she taught me a lot. She was not the easiest dog as she was dominant and I basically spoiled her a bit so not a good combination. Saying that I used the methods that I liked and I got the results I hoped for especially in the heel work exercise. Gem had her own ideas when it came to competing in the ring but she won me out of beginners which when you start that is your first goal.