At Dog Borstal with Rob Alleyne

We're lucky to call Rob Alleyne, from the BBC3 series, Dog Borstal, a personal friend. I also happen to be the one who designed and manages his website. As a result of this, we were invited along to see the filming of Dog Borstal for a day. Of course, we were able to take Ellie along too.

The picture to the left is the picture that Rob would probably pay me not to publish. It's fair to say that he's not the world's biggest Border Collie fan and so it took quite some coaxing to get him to be seen with one. But look at his happy face!

For those overseas readers, who probably aren't aware of Dog Borstal, it's a television series where dogs and dog-owners go to get some "tough training". These dogs are often those that have been allowed to run riot for far too long, and their owners are at their wits-end as a result. It's as much about training the owners as it is about training the dogs. Critics of the series argue (sometimes quite loudly and venomously) that the trainers are unfair to the dogs, or use out-dated methods. I don't personally agree with these charges, but each to their own. Rob is often described as the more placid and approachable of the three trainers.

While Rob and I often speak on the phone (actually we just do silly impressions to each other, with "Little Britain" characters being a firm favourite) it's very rare that we get to meet, because of the distance involved. Killing two birds with one stone seemed like a great idea.

It was a two and a half hour drive out for us, and boy is that camp well hidden. Though, with the help of SatNav, we managed to find it, and only needed to call Rob once we got on the site itself. The site is massive. Just so incredibly vast.

As we arrived, they were getting ready to shoot the exam for Rob's dog. We watched as much as we could, but were really nervous about having an enraged Director shouting "Cut, there's two half-wits in shot!".

What was immediately obvious is the immense number of people and the amount of coordination and organisation that goes into making what we see as a really simple sequence. It's incredible.

After watching the filming, we received the full tour of the complex, including the infamous kennels. Talking of which, I must add that the kennel blocks are much larger than they appear on television. I can also say that the dogs want for nothing in terms of their well-being. There are washing machines and dryers for the bedding, fridges, clean food bowls, grooming blocks, and the list goes on. Don't for a second, believe that these dogs are being kept in harsh conditions. It's just not the case.

After a spot of lunch at the expense of the BBC, we continued our tour, including the training room, and the offices of the trainers. Throughout this time, Ellie was in and out of the car. To her credit, despite being in the car for sometimes quite lenghty periods, she never grumbled once. More importantly, she managed to get all the way there without vomiting!

In the afternoon we went to the 'living quarters' of the trainers. We met Lynne Davis (and one of her dogs) briefly, as she was watching the tennis in the communal living area, with Mic Martin's wife. Oh yes, it seems like a really tough way to make a living doesn't it? :)

Shortly after, we got to let Ellie off leash and just walk her around the grounds with Rob. It's a staggering place to walk a dog. It seems almost limitless and you know that your dog is as safe as it's ever going to be. Again, to Ellie's credit, she wasn't in the least bit bothered by the very many rabbits around the place and behaved like the star that she is.

Did we meet Mic, you might be wondering? The answer is 'briefly, sort of'. As we were readying to leave, we were stood at the car with Rob. Mic pulled up in his car, said "Hi", and then went into the living quarters. He seemed either busy, or miserable, or busy being miserable. :)

Overall, it was a great day. It was great to catch up with Rob of course, but it was also great to see just how different things are to what we see on the final edited version.

Finally, as is often the case when I write about Dog Borstal, people will message me asking if I can get them and their dog on the series, or they ask me when the next series is starting. The answers are, no, I can't get you on to the Dog Borstal series, and while I do sometimes get advance notice of when the next series might be starting, I usually post that here in the blog as soon as I know. So, if I haven't posted the start date, it means that I don't know about it yet. Similarly, when the BBC are looking for new dogs for their next series, I will usually post details here too so that people have plenty of time to submit their dog for consideration by the BBC.

Kennel Club Good Citizen Bronze - Passed

We bring good news. Following the recent posts, where it was seeming impossible to get our Kennel Club Good Citizen Bronze exam date, we have since received our date, and indeed Ellie passed the exam last night.

She was a model dog throughout and carried out each exercise flawlessly. There were ten exercises - nine of which were all down to Ellie. The tenth one was about me answering some questions about dog ownership and responsibility.

The exercises were as follows.

1. Cleanliness and Identification
I had to ensure that I had poo-bags with me and the examiner came over and inspected Ellie to make sure that she had a collar and Identification tag complying with the law.

2.Collar and Lead
Ellie had to remain still and calm whilst I demonstrated that I could remove her collar without her running off.

3. Walk on Lead
Ellie had to demonstrate that she could walk on lead without pulling or becoming distracted.

4. Control at Door/Gate
Ellie had to demonstrate leaving and entering through a door calmly and on command.

5. Controlled Walk Amongst People And Dogs
Ellie had to demonstrate that she could walk calmly on lead amongst other people and dogs.

6. Stay on Lead for One Minute
Ellie had to stay for one minute whilst I was at least five paces away from her. This exercise is more a test of the dog remaining in the position that she has been left in for the whole minute.

7. Grooming
Ellie had to be groomed by me without making any fuss.

8. Examination of the Dog
Ellie had to demonstrate her ability to allow inspection of her body, mouth, teeth, throat, eyes, ears, stomach, tail and paws.

9. Return to Handler
Ellie had to be let off lead and return to me when I called her.

10. Responsibility and Care
I was asked various questions relating to responsibility and care of dogs.

It's been an exceptional ride with Ellie at all the training classes and the work has paid off. I'm so proud of her! Now we can focus on the silver. I just hope that we don't have to wait another year for the silver exam! :)

One Year

Wow, we've owned Ellie for nine-months now. I know I keep saying it but the time has really flown by so fast. It doesn't seem that long since I was having to fetch her from up the stairs every five minutes.

So what is she like at twelve months of age? Is she the zany and crazed Border Collie that everyone warned us about at the start? Not at all. The truth is that she's a very sedate dog. In terms of training, she can be a little too sedate at times, and certainly nothing like the majority of Border Collies that you routinely encounter. It would help if she had a little more "zing" in her personality as working with a low motivation dog can be quite challenging at times. Still, dogs rarely come in perfect packages do they?

Being one year in, would we have done anything differently to what he did in this first year? I don't think so. The key thing that we decided on from the start was to discourage her from playing freely with other dogs.

Our thinking, or rather I should say, my thinking, was that for the first eighteen months I wanted Ellie to learn that we and we alone are the source of fun and excitement. I didn't want her to learn that other dogs can be more exciting, run faster, and communicate with her in her own language. We've all seen the view of dog-owners running after their dog when it has seen its best "friend" which it runs around with in the park. No, in this relationship, there is room for only one best friend.

Of course, we wanted her to meet other dogs and that is chiefly why Ellie has attended training week in and week out - to learn to be in the same area as other dogs, but in a controlled environment. Despite some people suggesting that we might be teaching our dog to be anti-social, I think that our gamble has paid off, and I would certainly repeat it in the future.

We now have a dog that can walk past other dogs, almost completely ignoring them. She will continue to play with me in the park, even with other dogs running up to her and around her. I can even call her into my left side when other dogs are thrashing towards her, barking and growling. She will get 'growly' only if other dogs don't behave with good manners, and begin to jump over her. On or off-leash, she's a pleasure to have around other dogs. We have exactly what I had hoped we would have in that sense. That is not to say that she is faultless; she does slip up from time to time, but it's extremely rare indeed and becoming increasingly rare as she continues to practise.

To this day, she hasn't chewed a single item that doesn't belong to her, and I really can't see her ever doing so. It's just not in her nature. Besides, she's never out of vision long enough to get away with it. :)

Her first season was interesting. She became exceptionally clingy with me, sometimes wrapping herself around my neck when on the sofa. Since she's come out of season, however, she's become a little less clingy than she was before she went into it.

Before the season, she would curl up on the sofa with me each evening, and always lay on the bed with us to sleep at night. Since her season, she tends now to lay either on her own bed, or on the spare sofa. When we go to bed, she now climbs under the bed and seems to join us in the very early hours. This change, however, might just be because the temperature has warmed up considerably and she's too hot to be that close to us. I don't really mind either way.

Ideally, by this age, I should liked to have been able to report that Ellie had passed her KCGC Bronze and perhaps even Silver exams. The reality is that we just can't get an exam date from our training class. I personally feel very frustrated that our schedule for her is having to be revised, and her training has been wasted (in so far as it's not been tested in a formal sense), entirely for reasons that seem completely out of my control. Unfortunately, the training class we attend is the only one in the area and so our hands are tied.

I still need to investigate whether we can get her formally tested privately by someone who is qualified and recognised to judge such things. It's the only way I can see of getting things moving in the right direction. I'm just not sure it's actually possible to do that. I can but find out...

The sunnier days appear to be bringing out the chestnut colour in Ellie's fur, particularly around the face. We've changed her feeding now to just once a day. She now gets her 250g of Burns Active in the evening, as opposed to being fed once in the morning and once in the evening. This seems to have remedied her leaving much of her food. My guess is that her belly wasn't large enough to warrant two meals per day, and felt full enough on just the one.

Finally, Ellie seems to be able to walk past people without feeling she has to get a stroke from them. We didn't really do anything to adjust this behaviour. We just left it for age and maturity to sort out for itself. That's not to say that she doesn't still love human interaction - she thrives on it, but it is nice not to have to apologise to everyone that we walk past. :)

We will have our first 'home-boarding' dog come to stay with us on 19 June. We've met him and he's a lovely seven-month old Rottie x GSD, or so it is believed. I think we're looking after him for about ten days or so while the owners go on holiday. He is a complete opposite personality to Ellie so that will be fun. They have met and they were fine together, though Ellie did seem to tire of his over-active jumping about. :)

We'll now be looking to have her spayed around October time. I bet she's so looking forward to that. Training-wise, I want to work on her latency quite a bit in the coming weeks. She will do most behaviours that we have trained her for, but she will do some of them very slowly indeed! I'm looking to test (and video) her Sue Ailsby Level 2 test this week. As you will remember from before, the sticking point was her "stand", but I think we've remedied that now. We'll soon find out.