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Update on the Cairn Obreedience Team:

 

Unfortunately Our Cairn Obreedience Team will not be at Crufts 2015,.

But I am sure you all agree that we are very proud of our team –

 and roll on Crufts 2016!

 

Checkout the trials on You Tube

Obreedience Audition 2014 Isla & Oscar - YouTube

 

 

Latest Update – 9 November

Dear Linda,

 

On behalf of the Cairn Terrier Obreedience Team I would like to thank the Midland Cairn Terrier Club very much for sponsoring us and to update you on our progress so far. Our thanks also go to Frances Goldfinch in her role  with the Cairn Terrier Working Party who is going to act as our ‘Treasurer’ for the monies donated to the Team.

At the moment we are a team of five handlers with their cairns: Suzanne Drew and Oscar, Andrea Bolden and Ruby, Wendy Laker and Isla, Amanda Leek and Orwell and myself and Mischief. The actual team will only have four cairns and handlers but we need reserve handlers and dogs just in case someone is unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances e.g. injury or sickness to either handler or cairn? Suzanne, Wendy and I, all show our cairns, Wendy, Andrea and Amanda do competitive obedience with theirs and I train my cairns in obedience but not to competition standard until now!

Because we all live quite far apart, Andrea in Andover, Wendy in Portsmouth, Amanda in Nottingham, Sue in Essex and me in Bicester, finding a venue where we don't have to travel for hours to meet up is proving difficult. We are all prepared to pay for the travel, pay for the services of a Trainer and the hiring of venues for half days training but this could turn out to be very expensive so we thank you for the sponsorship your club has given us as it will mean we will be able to have several more training sessions as the hall we are using at the moment costs £18 per hour and on top of this we have to pay for petrol or diesel to get to the venue. We have learnt that a three hour session is just not long enough for everything we need to train for so next time we will make a day of it. Thankfully, Fred Burns our Trainer is not charging us for his services and for this we are very grateful.

Thanks to the Southern Cairn Terrier Club and the South Wales & West of England Cairn Terrier Club we have managed two very short training sessions, both during the lunch time break at their shows in September and October. Both sessions went very well and the cairns all worked very hard especially as the shows had a lot of distractions. This will be good training for the cairns when we get to Crufts.

On the 16th November we have been invited to audition for Crufts 2015. Of all the different breed teams auditioning, only ten will be selected for Crufts. The details of what we will have to do at the audition are as follows: a set formation heelwork sequence with all four cairns working together and then each dog in the team will do one specific exercise: either to ‘retrieve an article’, ‘scent discrimination’, ‘stop the dog’ or ‘send the dog to bed’.

As there are five team members and only four needed for the team, we needed to decide who was going to be in the team for the audition. We arranged a half days training session in a hall in Sunningdale near Ascot which is probably the most central for us all on Sunday 2nd November with a very experienced obedience trainer, a gentleman called Fred Burns who trains the Southern Regional Obedience Team. All five handlers attended and Fred very kindly gave us his experience in helping us to decide who was going to make up the team for the audition by putting us all through the set exercises with additional training at the same time.  It was decided by Fred that Mischief and I would be the reserve for the audition. I did think this would take the pressure of me but it doesn’t as I now have to train Mischief in all four exercises just in case we are needed as reserve! So now I have to teach him to retrieve and scent discrimination as well as tighten up on ‘heelwork’ and ‘stop the dog’ and ‘go to bed’! But then we are all doing this as well just in case on the day…………..

We have decided we will have a 'uniform' which consists of a white blouse and black trousers. Suzanne has made us each a red tartan sash with a matching bandana for the cairns. Sharon Confue is making us a lovely kilt pin for the sashes, each pin has silver coloured cairns, red ruby shoes and a bone to decorate the pins. We should look very smart!!

Looking ahead, all this could have a spin off in that the Team will show people that cairns can be trained and do enjoy working and maybe we will have more than one Cairn Obreedience Team at Crufts in the future? The team are all prepared to do training workshops for any of the UK Cairn Terrier Clubs, if they so wish. We would also be prepared to give demonstrations for any event we are invited too.

 

 

Once again thank you for sponsoring the Team and I will keep you updated on our progress.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

 

Jennie Fairweather 


Cairn Terrier Obreedience Team manager

 

 

 

 

October Update

We have done 2 training sessions one at the Southern Cairn Terrier club's show at Lewknor and one at the South Wales & West of England Champ show. Both sessions went very well and the cairns all worked very hard especially as the shows had a lot of distractions. This is good training for Crufts (if we get there).

 

On the 16th November we have been invited to audition for Crufts 2015. Of all the breed teams auditioning, only 10 will be selected for Crufts so we are all training very hard so we will get selected for Crufts next year.

 

At the moment we are a team of 5 handlers and cairns: Suzanne Drew, Andrea Bolden, Wendy Laker, Amanda Leek and myself. The actual team will only have 4 cairns and handlers but we need reserve handlers and dogs just in case someone is unable to attend.

 

We have been given details of the exercises we will do: we will do a formation heel work sequence and then each dog will do one specific exercise each: either to retrieve an article, scent discrimination, stop the dog or send to bed. All 5 cairns are learning to do each exercise just in case one has to drop out for whatever reason.

 

 

We have decided we will have a 'uniform' which consists of a white blouse and black trousers. Suzanne has made us each a tartan sash  with a matching bandana for the cairns. Sharon Confue is making us a lovely kilt pin each with cairns, red ruby shoes and a bone to decorate, all silver coloured for our sashes. We should look very smart!!

 

At the moment we are all busy training the cairns and looking forward to our next training session. The venue and date is proving difficult as we all live so far away from each other so travel and hiring a hall is going to be a major cost to us all.

 

I will send you further up dates as and when.

 



Also I want to brag about my 2 cairns Tinker and Mischief. I have been training them for tracking and on Sunday they both passed their Pe Beginners Tracking Test in very difficult weather conditions. I was sooo pleased.

 

The Judge wrote for Tinker: "Tinker is a very busy little lad. I felt that in the blustery conditions Jenny was sometimes a little quick to go forward and may have benefitted from letting Tinker work it out. Well done though, it's nice to see 'unusual' breeds being successful".

 

Mischief's critic was: "Mischief struggled with the wind today and is still in the process of working out that to get the food he has to follow the footsteps. Jenny handled him very patiently, it was nice to watch her communicate him that he should focus on the track and not her!"

 



Best wishes

 

 

 

 

Jennie Fairweather 
www.Fairweatherdogtrainingclub.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Calling All Obedient Cairns!

Click on photo to goto crufts site for more info

Update on KC Obreedience competition at Cruft's 2015 .

The application for Team Cairn to compete is in!

 

However, they still only have a team of four and need at least two reserves. They are looking for anyone who can do a bit of heel work with their Cairn and a couple of simple exercises - recall/retrieve/send away/ or a simple scent. Madness, and a willingness to make an idiot of yourself in public is compulsory!

 

Don't worry if you live miles away as we will meet up for training sessions, plus there is still plenty of time to train. 

 

If anyone is interested please contact Jennie Fairweather on 01869 322996 - email ockcairns@yahoo.com or Andrea Bolden mailto:andreamariebolden@yahoo.co.uk