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Back to Denmark

It was two years ago that I visited Denmark to judge and teach so I was looking forward to seeing how the sport had progressed. In the UK the sport has grown massively since the early days, with entries now getting to the stage where they cannot be all worked in one day. Denmark has not found there to be such a boom in the sport and the entry for the show I was judging at was in the mid fifties.

After a relaxing dinner on the Friday night I awoke early ready for a day of judging. The Denmark rules are similar to those in the UK but they have one main difference in their Heelwork to music classes. In Denmark they have all eight of the UK heelwork positions plus another two which are where the dog is in between the handlers legs facing forward and back.

There are three levels of classes and it was the top class that kicked off the day. The first dog into the ring was a black and tan Cavalier King Charles spaniel who performed a lovely routine to The maid on the shore. It is very hard to get a small dog to do lovely attentive heelwork but this handler has done brilliantly with this little dog. This team flowed around the ring with a nice amount of drive and it is probably the best small dog routine in HTM I have judged. They ended up third in this class but as the handler has only been competing for a year I think there is more to come from this team. The eventual winner was Helle Larssen with her Border Collie Littlethorn Avensis  who performed a ballet type routine to a song from Billy Elliot.

With the advanced class over it was straight onto intermediate HTM as the classes were being run in reverse order. There were five entrants in this class and it was topped by another Cavalier king Charles. It was another dog trained by the same handler that I mentioned earlier in the advanced class. Renate with her Cavalier Frida flowed around the ring with various HTM positions and the whole routine was aided by the handler’s smooth movement. Handlers of small dogs I feel often have a raw deal as judges get used to the preciseness of the Border Collies so don’t know how to judge the smaller dogs who cannot be as tight to the handlers leg. Having trained small dogs myself I have tremendous respect for anyone who gets smaller dogs to work as this handler has. When I am judging HTM with small dogs I look for the same things that I would from one in the obedience ring which means the dog holds a consistent position.

The last class in the HTM section was the first class which would be equivalent to the starters / novice class in the UK. Renate with her Cavaliers was obviously on a roll as she won this class as well with a routine set to Jennifer Juniper. All three Cavaliers Renate worked were a credit to her dedicated training as they all came out with wagging tails and the same lovely attention.

After a break it was the freestyle classes which started with the starters / novice level. The first team was a little Pomeranian cross who was performing to Pretty woman with her handler dressed in a complementary outfit. This team had also worked in the HTM starter class where they had achieved second place. Unfortunately this charismatic little dog got a bit excited and started to bark so her handler broke off and turned her back so as not to reward it. It was another Cavalier that followed but this time with a young handler Camilla who did a great job in keeping her dogs attention. Tarzan was the Cavaliers name and they moved around the ring with various jumps etc and did enough to scoop first place.

Onto the intermediate freestyle class where there were five entries with a mixture of breeds from a Welsh Terrier to an Akita. The winner was what looked like a smooth Jack Russell cross but is actually is a recognised breed which I think is called a Danish farm dog.

The last class was advanced freestyle where there was the largest entry of the day with eight teams. First into the ring were Annette and her lovely Border Collie Neo who is only two years old but is already performing in the top class and had recently taken part in the Nordic freestyle championships representing Denmark. This team produced a fast and furious routine which was set around a boxing theme.

It is always nice to see different breeds competing and I think freestyle is one where having a different breed can set you apart from the others. The next dog was a standard wire haired Dachshund called Addi who performed a flowing routine to a song from Zorro. Addi’s handler was dressed accordingly and she had done a great job of teaching this charismatic dog. This team certainly had star quality and beat off some good competition to win the advanced class with a score of 24.23

After a day’s judging it was nice to relax with the organisers at one of their homes where we were treated to meal which would not have been out of place in a top restaurant. Friends who know me often say I don’t eat enough so they would have been impressed here as I went back for seconds which is almost unheard of for me.

The following two days I was teaching workshops where we had great fun training the dogs and developing ideas. I enjoy teaching when the handlers are so receptive and it also has the added bonus of motivating me so when I got home I was even more fired up to get out and train my dogs

Sheepdog blog

Click here to visit Pogo's sheepdog blog page to find out how she is getting on with her new hobby

USA Workshops, Displays and Sheepdog work

At the end of September 2009 after a very busy six weeks doing displays in the UK I was up early ready for my flight to Albuquerque which was the first of two locations I would be teaching at in the USA. Although I don’t like flying I do enjoy having some spare time just to sit and think about routines working them through in my head. Sometimes when flicking through the iPod you stumble upon a piece of music which gives you a good idea and I was delighted to find a piece while I was sitting there for ten hours.

Those of you who have read about my other foreign trips will know that sometimes my luggage unfortunately goes astray. I always stand there hoping and praying that it will appear on the carousel. So having got to Houston a little late I didn’t have a lot of time to get my luggage and go to the next gate for the flight to Albuquerque. My worst nightmare happened when my suitcase didn’t appear and I was running out of time for the second flight. Asking an official they said to get the next flight then report it lost. This I did on the Friday but little did I know it would not be until the Monday morning before I saw my suitcase again.

After having a good night’s sleep it was straight into teaching the first day of the workshop for the Rio Grande canine freestylers. There were twenty four teams working in a very nice new venue which has only just been opened. As usual when I teach in the USA there was very few Border collies which I find refreshing. Many of the dogs were rescue dogs with very mixed parentage but there were also Miniature poodles, Aussies and a Chesapeake bay retriever to name just a few.

Living out in the desert this group have had to rely mainly on books and DVDs to get started in freestyle. They had done a good job on getting started and many of them had competed via video in various competitions. As usual we started by making sure the foundations of the dogs training were good and then moved onto developing moves which they had not done.

The first day went well and it was then nice to relax in a local restaurant with many of the participants from the workshop. On the second day the teams were a little tired after doing so much on the first day so I made sure there were different sections to the day where they didn’t always work their dogs. Very soon the workshop had finished and I was on a plane to Nashville to visit my good friend Brigitte who has the B star poodles.

Whenever I am in the USA I try and visit Brigitte as it’s nice to catch up plus of course do a little freestyle with her many Poodles. She had a new pup called Tibby a black miniature who is going to be a right little madam and we had a laugh coming up with a nickname for her as she has such attitude.

The few days with Brigitte sped by all too quickly and I then found myself back at the airport ready for the two flights to San Francisco where I would then be going to Santa Rosa to teach another workshop. As I checked in my luggage I had my fingers crossed that it would not disappear as it had done on the way over.

Greeting me at the airport was Chris from the Redwood dog dancing group who took me back to her house for a rest after the flight. Then it was an early start to get to the venue around an hour’s drive from San Francisco. It was great to meet some handlers that have attended other workshops I have taught and catch up on their progress. The group was much smaller than the one the previous weekend as they preferred to have a little more individual instruction. The venue was set up for dog training and had plenty of room for the teams to spread out.

There were some very nice dogs in the group with one male Terverun from working lines who really had great drive and a small Papillion who had a lovely attention. I had a lovely two days teaching this group who all very eager to learn and progress their own dogs. It was then off to the airport for the long flight home.

Back home and of course having had only had little Betty for a couple of weeks before I went I was eager to get on with some training. She is coming along really well and proving a very popular addition to the team although she is perhaps a little spoilt but you just cannot help it with her being so small.

At the end of October I taught a workshop for a RSPCA branch which was interesting as the handlers were using dogs that were in the kennels at the time rather than their own dogs. There was a very nice Staffie which was eager to learn and could easily of come home with me. Later that week I found myself at the airport this time to pick someone up, rather than go abroad myself. I had met Eve from Brazil while I had been in the USA a few years ago and after some emails earlier this year we arranged for her to come over to stay for a while so that she can learn more about freestyle. At present there are only a few people doing freestyle in Brazil and also very few people using positive training. As well as doing lots of training it was nice to show Eve around the local area and we had a good time over the week that she was here.

During October I did something which I have always wanted to do which was to take part in a sheepdog training day. To me this type of training is proper work and although Pogo is over four years old I thought I would give it a go just to see whether she had any ability. Attending a beginners day in Worcester I was a little worried about what Pogo might do as she has never been off the lead near the sheep. Being an older dog I was not expecting too much but Pogo had other ideas. I never thought my freestyle/obedience training would overlap with sheepdog work but of course I have taught Pogo to big circle clockwise and anti clockwise plus of course lie down when told. I dont think the other members of the course believed me that she has never seen sheep before as she moved from side to side and controlled the sheep. I was totally amazed and I suppose a little proud of my girl as she proved to be quite good. So the next stage is to go back and have another go so that I can film it to prove that I have a sheepdog !! Click here to watch and read more about Pogo's sheepdog training

An interesting event I had at the start of November was an afternoon cabaret event with Mary Ray. We have in the past done events together but this was the first time that we did the whole session together. Mary was on good form and we had fun developing moves and routines which got some good laughs. Some people had travelled a long way to see the event and I was amazed that a couple of people had come over from Italy to watch.

So now its Discover Dogs where Pogo is performing a routine both days in the main ring and the other dogs will be doing various training displays in the main ring and the training ring. After that there are various cabaret evenings and at the end of month I will be back to Denmark to judge plus teach a couple of workshops so no rest for the wicked !!