The Talented Duke Performs

We adopted Duke, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier crossbreed, when he was 10 weeks old. His mother had been adopted and the family shortly after adopting her found out she was heavily pregnant! Along came Duke!

I'd like to tell you taking on a beautiful puppy was easy, but the truth is it was not! Duke was full of mischief. We went through many carpets and flooring, as well as wooden cabinets and just about anything he could sink his little teeth into. Despite our efforts, everything seemed impossible!

Then we learnt about the Positive Reinforcement theory and have never looked back since. We used positive reinforcement to start teaching Duke how to behave and also started doing trick training and agility to help with mental stimulation. To begin with, it started as a bit of fun, but we could see Duke had a real passion for it (and sausages) so we progressed and got invited to a TV audition.

We then realised Duke had a special talent for Tricks, and with the help of positive reinforcement, he was learning new tricks every week! We entered him into the Super Dogs Live competition, held at the National Pet Show-- a competition to find the most talented dogs in the UK. Duke made it into the Semi-Finals and finally finished 3rd place.

We are very proud of his achievements! He is also an annual Crufts crossbreed competitor and has been invited as a Special Guest to a large local event. Duke has achieved all of this at only 3 years old. We are excited to see what the future holds, and all of this could not have been done without Positive reinforcement and using force-free methods!!