Hi. This is my first blog post and I just wanted to say a bit more about why I am so passionate about Pawfect Ability. I have been teaching people for a long time and love watching people understand sometime for the first time, that ‘lightbulb moment’. Nothing is more satisfying that someone achieving something that they thought was out of their reach. It was working with my lovely Zoe that showed me how amazing dogs are at helping us with so much in our lives. It took me months to train her to retrieve but that first one we did in a competition honestly made me cry, it wasn’t perfect but we had worked so hard to get to that point I wasn’t going to worry about a crooked sit. Now I look for that same sense of achievement in my students, the confidence to do an off lead recall, standing outside the circle of hoops, going to a first show right through to being part of a winning team in Tri-Score. These moments make us, and our dogs feel special.
I don’t train robotic dogs that are perfect, I train dogs that choose to work in a partnership with you. My dogs are far from perfect, they have issues, they chase and jump up, but we are working everyday towards a happier, calmer team. I also am far, far from perfect but I’m trying to learn something new every day. I want to work with positive people to improve the bond we have with our dogs. To promote hoopers and other training disciplines to bring smiles to handlers faces and have happy dogs. Yes we have to set boundaries for our dogs, we need manners and social etiquette to enable our dogs to face the world in a relaxed way. Training is always developing and changing, and so am I. This is what I feel makes me a good trainer, I won’t use a ‘one box fits all’ approach, I work with different people and different dogs and I train them all as individuals.