Christmas! Santa has been.....

All the doggies got a present each and Wizz got a bit overexcited and started unwrapping other doggy's and people's presents :-) Megan made some nice tuna treats for the dogs and cats to enjoy on this special day. The rabbit, Alfie, got some wild berry sticks, Zeb got a jolly ball and the sheep got lots of nice food.....

Today at the field

 "Come on girls!"

 Foooooooooooooood!! (they did have breakfast and loads of hay during the day, but they are greedy)

 Is she coming????

 YESSS!! Food is here!

 Rosemary

 Doris

Rosemary after eating :-)

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Getting ready for Christmas

This week are the last lessons at Black Jack DTC for this year. The lessons continue from Wednesday the 5th of January.

In the mean time our own doggies are getting ready for Christmas:

Gyp getting all wrapped up.....

Wizz helping to decorate the Christmas tree...

Violet asking Santa to stop at our house.....

Rogie is already waiting for Santa to arrive.....

Koda keeps thinking he hears the reindeers coming.....

We hope you will have a fantastic Christmas together with your doggies, friends and family. We look forward to seeing you all in 2011 :-)))

no agility club championships this weekend :-(

We were supposed to do our last competition of the year for agility, but it will not take place. It is postponed till further notice. This is why:

brrrrr - cold

The sheep do not seem to mind the cold, they do not want to go in their shelter and keep digging up the grass even though there is plenty of hay and dried food. They are also very curious about our new addition on the field and keep hanging around the stable in the hope to see a glimpse of him when he sticks his head over the stable door......

Perfect Christmas Present

Are you wondering what to give someone for Christmas? 
Why not buy them a Black Jack DTC gift voucher. This can be for any amount and you can even have it personalised. People can then exchange these vouchers for training DVD's, clickers, classes & private tuition.

new addition

We have a new addition at the dog training centre. A foal will move in with us in December. When he is older he will be used to socialise dogs with horses......More on our foal : http://derwenzebadee.blogspot.com/

Barrel Racing Training Session 30th October

On the last barrel racing session of this year we again had a large group of barrel racing enthusiasts. New people, but also a lot of people that had been to us before, worked together to get a better understanding of this new sport. The dogs loved it: many happy tails wagging and cheeky little grins of doggy's faces.....

I can't wait till next time! Unfortunately this won't be until spring 2011, but it gives us something to look forward to!

why the watch exercise is so important!

Dogs recognise their owner's face

By Victoria Gill  Science and nature reporter, BBC News The study was the first to measure how much dogs "prefer" their owners Scientists have shown just how much dogs rely on seeing their owners faces in order to recognise them. The researchers also measured how much dogs prefer to gaze at and follow their owners, rather than a stranger. In the journal Animal Behaviour, the team described how dogs had difficultly recognising their human "best friend" when the person had their face covered. The study sheds more light on how thousands of years of domestication has affected the behaviour of canines.  This is very likely to be a by-product of thousands of years of domestication  Paolo Mongillo, University of Padua Paolo Mongillo from the University of Padua in Italy led the study. He explained that, although many researchers have studied how dogs interact with humans, no one had yet investigated how the animals focused on one person in preference to another - or just how much companion dogs "prefer" their owners. Dr Mongillo's team invented an experiment to measure this. "We had the dog in an empty room and we instructed the owner and another person - someone unfamiliar to the dog - to walk across the room several times," the scientist explained. "The people walked in opposite directions, so they crossed many times in front of the dog and we measured how long the dog looked at one person versus another." The research team then instructed the two people to leave the room via two different doors and allowed the dog to approach one of the doors. "Most of the dogs gazed at their owners for most of the time and then chose to wait by the owner's door," said Dr Mongillo. ANCIENT CANINES More about wild dogs and wolves from BBC Wildlife Finder He described this as an "expected" result but something that no one has measured before. "If you imagine a dog in a real setting in a city or anywhere in the middle of a crowd or a crowded space, you can see how the animal must have adapted to give preferential attention to its owner," said Dr Mongillo. In the second part of the study, the scientists asked the people to cover their faces; the human volunteers then walked across the room with bags over their heads. During this phase of the experiment, the dogs were much less attentive to their owners. This revealed just how much the animals relied on human faces for recognition. Wild dogs rely on body signals and on cues from other animals in their social groups, but studies including this one suggest that domestic dogs are so attuned to human social groups that they are even able to recognise some human facial expressions. When the people covered their faces the dogs paid less attention to their owners "This is very likely to be a by-product of thousands of years of domestication," said Dr Mongillo. Studies of the genetic differences between dogs and their wolf ancestors suggests that canines were first domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago. Dogs and dementia In the same study, the team investigated the effects of ageing on the dogs' attention. They found that "aged" dogs - seven years and older - were less able to focus on their owner and also were less likely to choose the owner's door. SOURCES Visit Animal Behaviour to learn more about dogs and their owners "There have been studies to show that dog ageing is similar to human ageing in terms of cognitive impairment," said Dr Mongillo. So studying ageing in dogs could help our knowledge of human as well as animal age-related diseases. This article was copied from the BBC News website 24-10-2010

Barrel Racing Training Session

Last chance this year to come to one of our barrel racing training sessions. The session is held at 30 October from 12-2 pm at our outdoor training location at Black Jack Road near Swineshead.

http://www.blackjackdtc.com/trainingday.html

new seminar dates for Italy

Several new dates in 2011 at Power Dog Training Club in Ilassi, near Verona, Italy

5 & 6 February 2011 Dog Dance Seminar

2 June 2011 Barrel Racing Training Day

3 June 2011 Private Tuition in dog dance, obedience, barrel racing

4 & 5 June 2011 Dog Dance Seminar

In June there will also be a dog dance competition at Power Dog Training Club, where Hetty will be the main judge.

In September and December Clicker Training Seminars and in December Clicker Challenge. Exact dates to be announced.

Please contact Stefano Zanini for more information and to book your place.

Molly and Antonella during our last seminar in September 2010, photo by Elisa Carnevalli

demo in Italy

Photo of our demo in St Boniface. Picture by Maura Flisi.

Agility Club Championships 2010 - results so far

1st with 42 points: Kate with Buster
2nd with 36 points: Caroline with Jack
3rd with 34 points: Lucy with Max & Sarah with Missy
5th with 31 points: Steve with Sam
6th with 27 points: Gillian with Honey
7th with 22 points: Lily with Bailey
8th with 20 points: Adrian with Bramble & Laurel with Paddy
10th with 2 points: Laurel with Molly & Alison with Bertie
12th with 0 points: Peter with Georgie

(the points are from the first and second competition added together)

2nd agility club competition

Agility:
1. Caroline with Jacky
2. Gillian with Honey
3. Kate with Buster
4. Lily with Bailey
5. Lucy with Max
6. Laurel with Paddy
7. Sarah with Missy
8. Megan with Violet

Gambling:
1. Lucy with Max
2. Laurel with Paddy, Kate with Buster, Megan with Violet
5. Caroline with Jacky, Gillian with Honey
7. Lily with Bailey
8. Sarah with missy

Jumping:
1. Lily with Bailey
2. Sarah with missy
3. Laurel with Paddy
4. Megan with Violet
5. Caroline with Jacky
6. Kate with Buster
7. Lucy with Max
8. Gillian with Honey

Video of the Fun Day of 17 -7 2010

Italy

Doglive - Münster, Germany - demos and workshops in January 2011

22 & 23 January 2011 Hetty and Wizz will be giving 4 demos at Doglive in Münster, Germany. Hetty will also be giving two 90 minutes workshops each day. More information and to enter for the workshops, please have a look at www.doglive.de

Wizz, Koda & Hetty look forward to meeting you all at Doglive!!!!

Wizz qualified for Crufts semi finals

Wizz got a second place in advanced freestyle yesterday in Stoneleigh and got himself qualified for the Crufts semi finals. I am so proud of him, getting his second place out of 21 entries with a lot of more experienced dogs and handlers than us ;-) He is a superstar!

Anyone interested in such wonderful dogs as mine?? Then go and visit the website of the breeder of Wizz www.detania.com

Wizzy won 1st intermediate HtM and 6th in Advanced Freestyle

Wizz has done well. Every show this year we have been to he has won his HtM class. He got a first at Findon Downs & Barnard Castle in novice HtM and now a first in intermediate HtM in Blackpool. I had entered for Anglesey in July but unfortunately I got ill myself and was not able to walk so could not go. The last 8 weeks I have been solely focussing on my new freestyle routine as on the evening before Barnard Castle I heard this song of Madonna (Hung up) and all night I had been thinking of what we could do with this music as this music fits so well to Wizzy's personality. I asked some help of Hayley Austin who is a choreographer / dancer and together we made this choreography, with her ideas on how I should move and my ideas on what Wizz should do we got a nice routine together. The public was very enthusiastic about my freestyle routine as well as our heelwork to music routine. I am very proud of my little boy! *love*

Barrel Racing and Longe Training Day - 25 July 2010

We have made an album of photos of the barrel racing and longe training day. Please click on the link to have a look. Below is already a little preview! The pictures were taken by Lucy McMillan. Thank you Lucy for sharing them with us!

We have had a lot of enthusiastic reactions from the people that came to this day. In fact everyone was so excited about the training day that we are going to do shorter training sessions on a regular basis. The first one is a barrel racing session and will be held on the 18th September 2010 from 12-2 pm. More information: Barrel Racing

Rogue was spayed today.....

As we had decided not to breed from Rogie, we had her spayed.......Here you can see her in her basket after she got home this afternoon....She is still a bit sleepy from the anaesthetic......

pictures Black Jack Games - fun day (afternoon)

Gillian Reece took several pictures at the fun day. Thank you Gillian for sharing them with us!

Ellie has rolled the die and Malcolm is now reading the team exercise card

Because Ellie was a little bit too big for this team challenge we decided that Malcolm was the one riding the wheel barrow and little Max would have to sit in the wheel barrow for Ellie one time as well.

Part two of the challenge: Buster in the wheel barrow and Kate riding it.

Team captain Sally instructing Missy of Sarah on what to do.......

Another team challenge - recall relays, Hetty is instructing Liz, Peter and Alison on what to do.

Part of the fun was watching the others do their challenges..... Margaret with Barney, Wendy, Laurel with Molly, Brian and in the chairs Sarah's parents, Sandra and Dave

Caroline with Jack, Roger in the chair with Tilly, Megan, Sally, Sarah with Missy, Jenny, Hetty reading out an agility card and in front you can just see Alistairs face.

Peter and Georgie on the start of their agility challenge, where Georgie has to go through the tunnel by himself and come back to the start, while Pete is not allowed to go past the white post. They had one minute to do that as many times as possible. Georgie really excelled at this challenge, getting loads of points!!! Well done Georgie!!! :-))))

Bear rolled a 5 and he and Liz had to take a barking mad divas card. They had one minute to eat all the cookies out of the dog spinny. Any cookies left in in after a minute would give them reduction points. Bear had never seen a spinny before, so was not quite sure what to do. Here we have the proof that Liz indeed did cheat a bit on this challenge :-)))))

Oh my goodness Rogie has got such a hard life!!! Sally was cuddling with her sister's dog Honey in the back ground .You can clearly see that this day was exhausting for the dogs, being cuddled all day, having to do silly games etc. etc. 

Eye test Koda

Detania Dancing Koda passed his official eye test by Prof. Bedford and also passed his gonioscopy. The easiest eyetest he had ever done he said as Koda just sat still and was a perfectly behaved little boy.

Results Black Jack DTC fun day

In the morning we did a lot of fun obedience exercises with the beginner dogs and their handlers. The judges were Roger Reed, Margaret Reed and Adrian Hayes.

Musical Chairs Champion - Debbie with Patch
Musical Chairs Reserve Champion - Cheryl with Sorrel

Fastest Recall:
1st - Jill with Dennis
2nd - Sally with Molly

Best overall beginner dog:
1st  - Kelly with Neala
2nd - Sally with Molly
3rd - Mr Jones with Benji

Best junior handler:
Robyn with Cassie

In between we had 2 lovely demos from a few of our HtM members. Thank you Roger and Margaret.

In the afternoon we played the Black Jack Games with the novice and advanced dogs. It was a lot of fun. Time just flew by and before we knew it we had to finish the games......

Best team: Liz with Bear, Peter with Georgie and Alison with Bertie after their impressive recall relay races and  sausage retrieves.
Best individual was Lucy with Max.

Well done everyone, you made me proud to have such nice members in my club!

tomorrow - fun day at the dog training centre

Last day to get everything sorted for our fun day at Black Jack DTC. The game is finished and it should be good fun to play it with everyone in the afternoon. In the morning we have little fun competitions for all the beginners and puppies that come to our classes. Unfortunately not everyone is able to make it but there will be enough people around to have a lot of fun........

Pictures by Wendy Coyne of beginners / novice group on 30th June 2010

Box exercise of FCI obedience

Sit

Sit 

Come

Come

Walking on the lead

Dogs in this group have either first done the puppy & young dog obedience classes at our club or have already had some basic obedience lessons somewhere else. They have learned a lot of basic skills that we are now trying to bring to a higher level. In this class we work on general behaviour & obedience as well as some exercises of the competitive obedience. 

We don't select dogs on ages, but on skills so you will find dogs from different ages & breeds in our groups.