Starting School June 26, 2011

Starting school is an important day in anyone’s calendar.  At the tender age of 5 months, Ziggy’s enthusiasm to learn is high, albeit accompanied by a certain over exuberance.

He loves people and as such a cutie that most people are happy for this pup to jump up when he sees them, with comments like “oh it doesn’t matter” and “he’s only young, he’ll soon learn”.  Of course what he’s really learning is that whenever he jumps up at anyone he’s rewarded by fuss and cuddles.  At 2 months it was no problem.  At 5 months and 2 stone in weight – its borderline.  And at 5 months he may well still have some growing to do.  Here he is at 10 weeks – his first formal portrait – butter wouldn’t melt.

The final straw was at “Art in the Park” recently when he left a couple of beautiful muddy paw prints on some random lady’s Persil-white Tae-Kwan do suit.

Add to this his poor heel work, which resembles something more akin to a greyhound chasing a rabbit.

So, we started school.  I hadn’t seen Fred for some years.  It was certainly 14 years since I first met him when Kep started school at 6 months.

Fred seems to have mellowed a bit since then.  Apart from mellowing and being slightly greyer – I don’t think he’s changed a bit.  I think he’s a retired police or army dog handler and took over the dog training school when his wife Kath became ill.

Seeing Fred on his own with a room full of mad dogs and possibly even madder handlers, he certainly plays the “Alpha Male”, but if you had ever met Kath, you’d certainly know who’s boss.

http://kathbelldogtraining.co.uk/default.aspx

Kep and I spent many months in dog school, and we enjoyed it, we even progressed enough to do a bit of agility, but I think Ziggy and I will just get the basics sorted and based on tonight’s performance I don’t think that will take long.  Here’s Kep with his agility medals