The Top Lodge Team at Tomlinson's

The Top Lodge Trio and their partners are also the Committee of a National HTM Club called Canine Freestyle GB - so along with promoting the sport through education and displays they also run two hugely successful and popular competitions each year at Tomlinson's Canine Centre in Markfield, Leicestershire.

Saturday was the day for all the Heelwork To Music Classes and Lesley and Hamish's first competition in Advanced Heelwork To Music class.  Well Done to both of them for a very enthusiastic performance. 

The routines are around 4 minutes long and Lesley and Hamish performed some lovely heelwork to "A Night Like This" by Cara Emerald.

Karen and Erin took part in the Intermediate Heelwork To Music Class - 

 performing with attitude to "I Was Born To Love You" by Freddie Mercury

Kath and her youngster, Denby competed for the first time in the Novice Heelwork To Music Class.  Dogs need to be 12 months of age to compete in this class.

Not always easy to decide when a dog is ready to compete, but in the last class of the day, in heat of 36 degrees, Denby worked really well and won his class performing to "Octave Stomp".

The Sunday was a day of Freestyle Classes - and Erin has recently progressed into the Advanced Class - Karen is training her in these classes until she feels the time is right to compete and maybe when Erin doesn't feel the need to kiss her so much!!  :-)

 And yes - here is the proof, Erin can work really nicely even with her feet on the floor!!

In GB dogs can be entered into the Freestyle Classes from 18 months of age.  So with Denby being 18 months and6 days old - Kath decided to gain more "ring experience" with him by training his new Freestyle routine.

 He seemed nicely focussed and eager to please.

And then it was time for Lesley and Hamish to go through their Freestyle routine - again Lesley decided to train this in the competitive atmosphere!!

Well done to the Trio of handlers - having already qualified Spice, Fly, Angus and Amber for the Crufts Semi Finals to be held in January 2013, it was good that they could put most of their efforts into having fun at this show.  Over 155 routines to get through over two days - and fabulous weather!!  Allan on camera, David on Scoreboard and Roger overseeing the Cars and Dogs outside the arena - it was a busy but well run event for all Top Lodge.