STRICT TRAINING?

A bit of a shock for Barney last evening. He had missed the last two training sessions having been away in Cornwall for a week and me being `otherwise engaged` with the Royal Albert Hall last week. So last evening we managed to get back to the training regime only to find that Barney was a bit rusty and also to discover that the test for the Kennel Club Good Citizen Gold Award (KCGCGA) will be held in just two weeks time.

It`s safe to say that a little panic has set in and although we are fairly confident that the examiner will declare Barney as `not ready,` we have to give him every chance and give it our best shot and so the next two weeks will be filled with the daily training routines set out in the KCGCGA leaflet. Mind you, given Barney`s inability even to master the art of climbing onto a woodland bench to sit next to yours truly, as captured above during a recent exercise in Platt Woods, I suspect his Gold Award test will go down in the annals of the KCGCGA scheme as one of its more heroic failures.

Not that it matters one jot. All that matters is that we have a faithful, well behaved companion and that Barney enjoys his life. Which he does - almost too much at times. I guess, in the end, if his `master` (I use the word advisedly) finds it difficult to take anything too seriously, then we shouldn`t be surprised that we have a fun dog on our hands.