I emigrated to NZ from the UK in 2003 and having spent the better part of $4,500 to bring my then 2yo crossbreed dog, Tui, with me, I decided that I was going to "get my money's worth" from her and go do some sort of activity. We joined the local dog club and discovered dog sports.

Tui enjoyed the work and we competed in Obedience, Agility and Flygility. She is now recently retired having gained her FDX, ADX and Canine Good Citizen Gold titles. Next came Raven, my huge GSD x Huntaway. Read more about her further down this page. These two dogs, along with Jet and Phoenix (Nick) are my home “pack” and keep me active in dog sports.

I have been Northern Area Representative for the New Zealand Flygility Dog Association (2009 & 2010), encouraging other clubs in my region to progress with training and begin holding tournaments. I have judged at two National Dog Training Assemblies, Auckland 2007 and Dunedin 2009, and I actively teach flygility at local clubs.

I am also the Secretary of the new Association of Pet Dog Trainers New Zealand Inc hoping to promote positive reinforcement training methods in New Zealand.

This is Raven... She came to me from Manukau Pound via the German Shepherd Rescue Trust in 2004 as a young puppy.

Already at approximately four months of age, she was showing signs of acute Separation Anxiety and it took her a while to learn to settle into her new home with us.

Raven was very special needs. She couldn’t travel in the car without screaming in over excitement. She couldn’t be left anywhere without chewing, ripping apart and biting anything in reach, including leads she’d been tied with. She didn’t like other dogs and would hide from them.

Slowly I worked through her issues, getting her more settled and accepting of the situations she found herself in. As she got older, she was enrolled in agility and flygility classes, and progressed well in her training.

Then disaster. Raven was attacked at a class by two Border Terriers and could no longer tolerate any dogs in her area without lunging out and biting. She was muzzled thereafter in public and I relied on the information given to me, by my peers, of checking her harshly, growling and smacking. This did nothing but make Raven more fearful and the aggression grew.

In 2007, I discovered a better way to train Raven. It involved letting her decide how close was too close for the other dogs to be and setting her up for success. As Raven is a good 30kg and I’m only 55kg, this was a relief for my aching arms to not have to be fighting for control all the time.

Considering Raven is constantly placed in the high energy, high excitement environment of dog competitions, the progress that she has made, of her own free will, not to attack other dogs, is testament to the technique I used with her.

Raven can now tolerate dogs approximately 1m away at events, regularly runs loose with a pack of dogs for recreational exercise and we’re working together, her and me, to get her to a more, calm, relaxed state of mind. She and I continue to work on this and Raven is the inspiration for me to teach others.