Howard Kirby is the proprietor of Lains Shooting School and Mullenscote Gundogs, where he specialises in training a variety of dogs (and handlers!) from companions to specialist gundogs. In his weekly blog, Howard shares his experience of the dogs and people that pass through his school and his top tips to train your dog.
"Here again, sat on the lorry step writing my blog while watching the dogs relax in our arena. This weeks venue is Hatfield Show in Hertfordshire. I had the privilege of being asked to be part of the show opening ceremony which was opened by the current Miss Hertfordshire - my job just gets better each week. Thank goodness Miss Hertfordshire loved dogs; Apollo wanted to lick her legs, the dirty boy. Not really, being a dog meant he could get away with doing what every man around the arena would go home and dream about.
Converting the urbanites
Hatfield really is a town meets the country show, the majority of visitors being urbanites. We've had some lovely feedback following our demonstrations, gundogs are brilliant ambassadors for country sports and in my experience have been the vehicle to carry a lot of people across from 'the dark side' and get involved with everything country.
Poo relay race
We ran a day titled 'Dogs in the Community' last week for local youngsters. We were fortunate enough to persuade our local Dog Warden, guide dogs, Canine Partners, The Dogs Trust and a police dog unit to come and help us. Without fail, each one of these fantastic organisations gave each of the groups of youngsters a fun and educational presentation. We interspersed the presentations with dog related arena activities. Following on from a Responsible Dog Ownership presentation the youngsters competed in a Scoop the Poop relay race which was the invented by the genius Annie Buckley. Annie is still on 'sick leave' and has far too much time on her hands, but this race truly was genius.
Youngsters raced out with a poo bag to collect a dog poo, race back and deposit the poo in the bin. The children loved it! Annie had constructed and painted fifty dog poos in her kitchen. Now that's dedication to duty, but it's also good to know that her university degree in 3-d Design has proved to be useful and that once again Britain really has got talent. Well done Annie."
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