Guest blog – Training the Tessleymoor Way

I first met Damian five years ago. I had a seriously badly behaved 18 month old English Pointer, Meggie. She needed to be in boot camp and so did I. I don’t want to make the same mistakes with Lola, collected yesterday and super cute. I also can’t make the same mistakes because Damian is watching. Now I work for him; his comment on my first Instagram puppy post was ‘put that bloody dog down’. I have nowhere to hide. So this time, I’m doing it Damian’s way, Tessleymoor Training. Here’s what I’ve learnt in the first 24 hours with my new dog.

Ignore your puppy. It’s crazily hard to do. My house is really busy. I have three teenagers and I work from home. That’s a lot of friends, family and associates. However, Damian says…put the puppy in the crate, walk past her, ignore her. Under no circumstances pick her up. When you think about it, that’s very sensible advice. English Pointers are not small dogs. Currently, Lola is the size of a cat but Meggie weighs over 20 kilos. Start as you mean to go on. Then, when you need to get on with life, when she’s not a cute puppy, she won’t be hassling you for attention.

Also, no treats. Lola comes from an excellent breeder. At just under eight weeks, she already has a good sit so that’s step one of the training done. That’s just the start though. Recall is massively important with Pointers – they can reach in excess of 25 mph and have centuries of breeding ingrained into them to run ahead and flush game. Basically, you can’t catch them, they have to want to come back to you. So we’re on the recall training with Lola already but when she comes back she doesn’t get a treat, a sausage, a piece of cheese. She gets a pat. To be fair, she seems completely delighted with this arrangement. Damian despairs of the trick treat trainers; he has told hundreds of his clients, it’s about the bond. The dog should want to come back to you. I’ve learnt with Meggie, your dog running at speed towards you for no other reason than because you whistled, is one of the best feelings in the world.

I know I won’t ever have a dog that looks at me the way Damian’s dogs look at him because, well, I’m not that disciplined. Hopefully though, I will have a really well-behaved pooch who’s part of the family, not ruling the house. I’ll let you know how it goes with my Tessleymoor Training.

Posted: August 28, 2018