crufts

Here's another Crufts story. Alan Checkley and his Support Dog, Fudge, will be at Crufts on Friday 6th March. Support Dogs is a founder member of Assistance Dogs UK and also a full voting member of Assistance Dogs International, an organisation that represents assistance dog training programmes around the world. Every year Support Dogs receives in excess of fifty applications for dogs from each of its programmes, which means that there is currently a two-year waiting list. Without secure and regular funding the wait may be even longer and demand for dogs continues to increase every year.

The press releases about Crufts are coming thick and fast now - I shall pass the more interesting ones on to you! I interviewed Claire Guest a while ago, when she was just getting started with the cancer detection training and charity. It's fascinating, and a great cause to support. She has trained dogs to do amazing jobs, and it's a pleasure to watch them work. She will be at Crufts again this year. You can hear interviews with her in Episode 48, Episode 63 and Episode 70 of DogCast Radio.

Cancer and Bio-detection Dogs receives support from Samsung Electronics

Crufts is only just over a month away. In five weeks’ time we’ll be smack bang in the middle of it all. This year’s Crufts could of course be quite an unusual one.

Mic Martin (www.micmartin.co.uk) is one of the dog trainers on the television programme Dog Borstal. Owners of dogs with problems of various natures endure the no nonsense approach of the show’s trainers, and emerge at the other side stronger, knowing more, and with a much better behaved dog.

Mic has trained dogs for many years, to perform many different behaviours, and is also the Patron of Support Dogs. At Crufts, in return for a donation to the charity, Mic will be trying to solve dog training problems.

The British Kennel Club has come in for a real mauling recently, and consequently more and more organisations have bailed out of Crufts 2009. I think the real question here is not can we live with the Kennel Club, but more can we live without it?

I met and interviewed Dr. Roger Mugford at his Train and Behave Week. He’s a real character who’s lots of fun and not afraid to speak his mind. He’s also passionately committed to dogs; his own and those whose owners appeal to him for training or legal help. He is extremely likeable in person.

Roger invented the Halti, and sells many variations on a Kong theme. You can find his website at www.companyofanimals.co.uk

Here’s some thoughts from Roger about Crufts and the contribution of showing to the development of dogs:

Usually when you're walking your dog, any thoughts of a toilet nature are concerned with what the dog is doing. Sometimes, however, the "call of nature" is speaking to you, and at that point if you're out alone with your dog, just what do you do?