Monday 26 March 2012

Devastating news


Angela Gillespie, the grandma of  Toffee, Gyp, Phoenix, Delight, Zima, Violet, Wizz, Rogie and Koda (or the breeder of my doggies) passed over the rainbow bridge yesterday. We will so miss her in our lives, words can not express how sad we all are. Our thoughts go to Tony, Laura, Samantha & Adrian, David, Antony, Nichol and the rest of the family.

Saturday 24 March 2012

Findon Downs HtM competition

Last year I sadly could not compete or train for competitions with my dogs due to a car accident resulting in a whip lash injury. In December I had my last physiotherapy and in January I started training a bit again with Wizz and Koda. Koda himself had been ill the year before so had not had any training for 2 years, bless him. Even though I did not feel like we were ready for it, I decided to enter Wizz for a competition again (as it is good for him to get some ring experience) and when I filled out the entry form I also put Koda's name down as I was going anyway. I decided I would use an old music of Violet for him as Koko is similar in his movements to her so it would hopefully fit to the music. This was a month before the show and even though I started working with the boys again, I could still not do so every day, but managed to do a training session 2 to 3 times a week.

Last weekend I still was not sure if we would go or not, but as my friend Gillian said she wanted to come with me, I decided to go after all. And we do not regret this! First of all as it was nice to go with someone else and had a super fun chat all the way down (we left at 4 am) and second of all my boys did me proud! Koda was first in novice heelwork to music, where he got a second place out of 13 entries:-) He was not as confident as he normally is, but did quite well so we had a pleasant time in the ring. He hardly has ring experience (2 years ago he did his first competition and this was his second time in the ring). The dog winning the class has learned heelwork in our club, so we felt like we won a little bit as well :-))) Wizz was in intermediate heelwork to music and did his routine well, without any noises and he paid attention and apart from some minor mistakes I was really really pleased with him. We both enjoyed our time in the ring. He got a 3rd place outof 10 entries with only 0.2 points in between him and the dog that got placed second, so not bad at all :-))))

Congratulations to everyone who took part and got placed :-) hope to see you all again next time!!!

Sunday 18 March 2012

Agility training starts

on 2 and 3 April :-)

Thursday 15 March 2012

Our new agility equipment arrived

We have bought some new agility equipment and my goodness does it look good!!! We bought it from Jaycee Jumps as we have more stuff from them and it is really good. Now we have aluminium jumps and they look amazing! And so does our new tyre jump, the new dog walk (Adrian needs to put rubber on it) the new trestles and weaves......can't wait to try it out this weekend :-)

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Digby at Crufts

One of our members got a fourth place at Crufts! We are so proud of Digby and Wendy for doing so well. No it was not obedience, even though Digby comes to the Pet Dog Obedience Classes, but all the training he has done with us has helped :-))))


Some impressions: (all pictures by Wendy Mitchell)
 Digby laying on his 'Magic Matt'
 in the ring

4th place!!!! YAY!!!


It is not easy to be so handsome and it can be quite tiring as well :-)

Sunday 4 March 2012

This is why we focus on positives

At Black Jack DTC we work with positive reinforcement. If the dog misbehaves we teach it alternative behaviours. We feel this is the best way to train and teach dogs. We have really good results with clicker training and reward based training in dogs with aggression. A research has now been done by an university in Pennsylvania which shows that aversive methods (e.g. dominating the dog) cause more aggression in dogs than actually solving it.

If you are interested in the article, please click the link below:
Aggression in dogs in relation to training methods