Darwin's Dog Training School

Darwin's Dog Training School Scentwork, Mantrailing and 1-2-1 sessions. Reward based, scientific dog training. BSc Psychology,

(back to our usual content!)Teams Arty, Mabel, Lenny and Cwtch trailed into the night at Butser Hill last night! We prac...
24/04/2025

(back to our usual content!)

Teams Arty, Mabel, Lenny and Cwtch trailed into the night at Butser Hill last night! We practiced gate indications and challenged everyone with a scent discrimination task in the dark!

Happy Easter! 🐣Over the past few days, we've had lots of dogs trailing on Easter themed sessions! Everyone has successfu...
20/04/2025

Happy Easter! 🐣

Over the past few days, we've had lots of dogs trailing on Easter themed sessions! Everyone has successfully trailed from a boiled egg and from the carrot wreath (most of whom have had a contaminated wreath!)

Brilliant work from Teams Bertie, Mabel, Lionel, Henry, Cwtch, Daisy, Delphi, Baxter, Indie, Ralph, Quinn, Willow and Arlo! 🧺🥚

Saving the main photos from today's trailing session until all the Easter themes are complete! But I will leave you with...
18/04/2025

Saving the main photos from today's trailing session until all the Easter themes are complete! But I will leave you with some excellent camo action from Carla 🫥

Super Sunday trailing! We started off this morning with Teams Cwtch, Koba and Indie working on shorter trails, some high...
13/04/2025

Super Sunday trailing!

We started off this morning with Teams Cwtch, Koba and Indie working on shorter trails, some high and low trail layers, and ending with a tricky handshake scent transfer! We warmly welcomed Lionel back after his break for surgery and eased him back into trailing gently (for both body and mind's sake!)

In the afternoon, we had Teams Millie, Cherry, Ralph and Quinn. Extremely proud, especially for Millie and Cherry's progress on walking trail layers and Ralph for being much calmer and happier out and about!

Apologies to Indie - I didn't manage to take a single normal photo today, so a preview of the thermal photos attached with apologies 😂

Sneak peak of a bit of kit we've borrowed 👀 We can think of loads of dog-related applications! Stay tuned!
05/04/2025

Sneak peak of a bit of kit we've borrowed 👀

We can think of loads of dog-related applications! Stay tuned!

What a 10/10 beautiful day for long trails at Staunton Country Park! Teams Henry, Indie and Cwtch each worked a main tra...
05/04/2025

What a 10/10 beautiful day for long trails at Staunton Country Park!

Teams Henry, Indie and Cwtch each worked a main trail of 900-1000m and did absolutely brilliantly. Warm weather and long/ aged trails and lots of contamination is a really challenging combination! Proud to report the only dogs who ended up in the lake were my own 😂

Failed to track Indie's trail 🫣 but an interesting comparison in precision between airscenting Cwtch and mega-accurate Henry!

Super duper proud of Darwin for this one! 2.15km trail, aged 30ish minutes before we set off. 40 minutes of trailing, 2....
30/03/2025

Super duper proud of Darwin for this one!

2.15km trail, aged 30ish minutes before we set off. 40 minutes of trailing, 2.8km covered, and we had to figure out a way across the A3! You can really clearly see on this map how the diffusion (from ageing) of the trail at the start makes junctions less clear for him. We also had a couple of dogs being a bit rude, a horse and a couple of deer cross our path and this best boy just got on with it. So so glad to have him back on his feet after last year's surgery!

We didn't see much in the way of a solar eclipse but we did enjoy some trailing in the sunshine! Teams Otto, Cherry, Del...
29/03/2025

We didn't see much in the way of a solar eclipse but we did enjoy some trailing in the sunshine!

Teams Otto, Cherry, Delphi and Houdini this morning, followed by teams Quin, Mabel, Buzz, Dizzy and Indie this afternoon. We had a few aged trails for the more experienced teams, shaped some new indications for the novices and had an all round lovely time!

**Now taken** Last minute mantrailing Progression spot available this Saturday afternoon at Queen Elizabeth Country Park...
27/03/2025

**Now taken**
Last minute mantrailing Progression spot available this Saturday afternoon at Queen Elizabeth Country Park! On the website for whoever gets there first!

Displaced starts day with teams Indie, Henry, Lenny and Baxter! Plus some spring-themed novel articles to finish 🥚Displa...
23/03/2025

Displaced starts day with teams Indie, Henry, Lenny and Baxter! Plus some spring-themed novel articles to finish 🥚

Displaced starts are a tricky technical challenge. Normally, we make sure to start the dogs on the trail, but today we practiced starting away from where the trail layer has walked. This presents two big challenges - finding the trail, and then deciding which direction to follow it in.

As predicted, Indie's prowess in airscenting gave her an edge in finding the trail. Baxter never put a foot wrong, even with vast distractions appearing each time he was out of the vehicle. What was absolutely fascinating was seeing the difference between the two labradors today! Henry was the only one to thoroughly pursue the backtrack before turning, compared to Lenny's confident dismissal of the older trail.

All four were absolutely brilliant today. We have to hand the MVP prize to Lenny today - not only for absolutely waltzing through his displaced start, but also for not eating his egg article (we didn't even use the Lenny-jar 😂) 👏

Spring has finally officially arrived! We celebrated with teams Roary, Millie, Fletcher and Quin and some themed novel a...
22/03/2025

Spring has finally officially arrived! We celebrated with teams Roary, Millie, Fletcher and Quin and some themed novel articles - flowers and eggs 🌷🥚

Butser Hill can be such a challenging environment. It's environmentally challenging with little shelter and plenty of resident animals, but also can be very distracting with lots of visitors at the weekend. I am so proud of all the dogs today who took it all in their stride!

As well as novel articles, we also had opportunities to practice gate indications, visible trail layers and introducing walking trail layers (some of which I even remembered to film 😂)

Spot available on this Saturday's Spring equinox mantrailing progression session at Butser Hill! Message if you're inter...
20/03/2025

Spot available on this Saturday's Spring equinox mantrailing progression session at Butser Hill! Message if you're interested 😊🌼

Not as warm as it looked! Today's mantrailers were just brilliant. The overall themes were variations of walking trail l...
15/03/2025

Not as warm as it looked!

Today's mantrailers were just brilliant. The overall themes were variations of walking trail layers (with plenty of decoys) and scent discrimination exercises. We had so many excellent wins across the board - too many to mention!

Teams Arty, Bertie, Meme and Cwtch this morning, followed by teams Daisy, Henry, Buzz, Dizzy and Indie this afternoon.

Some highlights for me were seeing Daisy nailing a walking trail layer, finding some methods for walking trail layers for the oh-so-busy spaniel crew, a perfect walking trail layer from Bertie, and Indie and Henry nailing a very tricky carpark scent discrimination exercise.

The lowlight - falling over mid sentence in the carpark, maybe the most embarrassing thing I've ever done in a session 😅

We've had an absolutely beautiful day up Butser Hill in the long anticipated sunshine!Teams Millie, Kestrel, Cwtch and I...
09/03/2025

We've had an absolutely beautiful day up Butser Hill in the long anticipated sunshine!

Teams Millie, Kestrel, Cwtch and Indie tackled long trails today. While the humans greatly enjoyed the warm, breezy, dry weather, it did make for challenging conditions for the dogs, especially with the amount of contamination and distraction from the volume of other users of the country park today. A fascinating location for studying how wind affects trails, with odor sweeping across the hill and dead spots forming in some of the valleys.

We rounded up today with a fantastic hour-aged 650m trail by Indie 🎊

Spotting trailing friends in the Crufts ring! 👀Well done Charlie Blake and Buzz in the obreedience final!
06/03/2025

Spotting trailing friends in the Crufts ring! 👀

Well done Charlie Blake and Buzz in the obreedience final!

Mantrailers!A cancellation means there is one spot available for longer trails on Butser Hill this Sunday! I can't promi...
03/03/2025

Mantrailers!

A cancellation means there is one spot available for longer trails on Butser Hill this Sunday! I can't promise blue skies but it is looking likely!

Today's challenging trail - as attempted by Indie, Henry and Cwtch!This trail went along the edge of the lake, down a ro...
01/03/2025

Today's challenging trail - as attempted by Indie, Henry and Cwtch!

This trail went along the edge of the lake, down a road and up onto the top level of a multi storey carpark. It was fascinating to see all three dogs work this in very similar ways - pursuing the scent blowing off the top of the carpark into the hedging, before investigating the other (upwind) side of the carpark, and finally investigating the carpark itself. An excellent opportunity for handlers to practice keeping themselves oriented in the environment.

Pictured - Cwtch being so close yet so far from her trail layer!

Saturday mantrailing! Teams Indie, Gus, Arlo and Mabel in the morning, working on junction handling and some indication ...
01/03/2025

Saturday mantrailing!

Teams Indie, Gus, Arlo and Mabel in the morning, working on junction handling and some indication proofing, followed by teams Henry, Willow, Buzz, Dizzy and Cwtch this afternoon, working on a bit of everything!

We had a very interesting challenge for the experienced dogs today involving multi storey carpark and some fun breeze effects that deserves its own explanation.

Fair warning, don't swipe to see Dizzy's photos if a 10 month old cocker stealing a treat pot will induce puppy fever!

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PO14

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