The UK’s 1st Certified Professional Pettrailer Team

We did it!!

Mabel and I started our trailing journey over 4 years ago and what a roller-coaster it has been. As with any dog training it has been filled with ups and downs. Our 1^st obstacle living in the UK but travelling and training in Austria. For me it was vital to learn from the best, this was Pettrailer, Europe’s leading lost animal search charity. An organisation with many 10s of years of experience reuniting families with their lost pets, with only 30 trainers across Europe teaching specialist search dog teams. Quality over quantity, with an intensive trainer course that takes a minimum of 12 months to complete, you know you are training with the best.

The pettrailer style of training is entirely dog-led, not only a humans view on how a dog should search and use their nose. The dog is the priority and the team leader whom the human end of the lead must learn to read, assist and ultimately trust. Any dog can train with them, no matter of age, breed, temperament, ability or disability. A truly all-inclusive style of trailing in which teams can train for fun to provide a mental challenge whilst giving their dogs a job to and if they choose to continue their journey, complete assessments to become a certified professional pettrailer team, a lost animal search dog team.

Over the years we have continued our training in Austria, keeping our skills up to date. We have tried to fill in the gaps between journeys to Austria training at home but have found that there are no equivalent trainers or style of trailing available in the UK. I have tried to find if anyone had the same ethos, sadly they do not. If you train with someone who leaves you feeling like shit after every session, belittles you and tells you have no right to be trailing – walk away and forget about them, they are a nobody.

This is why as a trailing trainer, I will always to be respectful, welcoming and honest with the teams that train with me. This is how everyone should be treated in life, how you yourself expect to be treated by others. I will teach the team in front of me, it is not ‘our way is the only way’, but what fits best for that particular handler and dog team. Giving them what they need to be motivated and nurtured to be able to trust each other and to strengthen their bond with each other. This is how I have been taught and how I will continue to teach my teams in the UK. We have been fortunate enough over the last couple of years to have gained another UK pettrail trainer in Northwest England, Jayne. To have a training colleague with the same outlook and training mindset is invaluable, both for our own development and to be able to offer our unique style of trailing to a wider community.

One of my key skills as someone who teaches trailing is that I trail myself and have done so for many years, I teach through both knowledge and personal experience. As with everyone over the last couple of years our lives have been impacted by lockdowns and travel restrictions. Prior to March 2020, myself and Mabel had completed ¾ of our assessments to become a Certified Professional Pettrailer Team and in June 2020 were planning on completing our final assessment in Austria. Our training trips to Austria abruptly stopped and our final assessment was frustratingly put on hold, but this could not be helped. It was important that we all did our part to keep ourselves, our families and friends safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

Fast forward to October 2021 and we have finally been able to travel back to Austria to continue our training with our Pettrailer friends and colleagues. For 3 weeks we have trained intensely every single day, with our trainer colleagues in Germany and across Austria. There is a language barrier but the one thing that unites us is our passion for dogs and trailing.

On Sunday 17^th Oct 2021, it was time to put our teamwork to the test – this was final assessment day for myself and Mabel. To become a Certified Professional Pettrailer Team our final hurdle was to complete a double blind trail which was had been laid the previous day (over 24 hours old) of a minimum length of 1000m and we had to complete the trail within 1 hour. A double blind trail means not a single person who is on the trail on assessment day knows the route, how long the trail is or where the trail ends. As with a real-life pet search, myself and Mabel were joined by a search assistant to be an extra set of eyes for us during our trail, to watch out for our safety and be an extra set of hands when we found the ‘missing dog’. In addition to our assistant, a trainer who also does not know the trail, joined us as an independent assessor to monitor that you prioritise the welfare of your dog throughout the trail and complete the trail without any outside assistance.

Nervous and terrified does not even begin to describe me on Sunday morning!! No matter how many times your brain says, ‘I am relaxed’, your body will never take any notice. Fighting the urge for a swifty schnapps with my breakfast to settle my nerves, it really was time to put our training to the test and most importantly let Mabel do was she does best. My worst fear was letting her down by not trusting her completely. Your biggest enemy is yourself and self-doubt, but it was time to ‘suck it up cupcake’ and get trailing!

Our start point was a large road junction in a suburb of Klagenfurt in Southern Austria. The scenario, a dog had escaped from a nearby bus stop on the previous day after it had been spooked and slipped its collar. The dog could have travelled in any direction, was not from the area and had not been seen since. We did however, fortunately have a scent article of the missing dog so we could start our search straight away. Time to put on my big girl pants, take a deep breath, focus and give Mabel her scent to follow. Time stopped during a trail filled will complete focus on Mabel and what she was telling me, reading her body language and most importantly trusting her. Our trail took us through an area full of apartment blocks occupied by over 20,000 people, across busy main roads, though parks past children playing and cats lazing in the sun, across a bridge over a river and to our final destination.

For those that trail when you get close to the end of your trail your dogs body language changes, your hint that they are close to what you are looking for. Mabel started to tell me that we were close, eyes up and I was scanning the area for a dog, but we were in a quiet empty street I couldn’t see a dog anywhere. Then we went past a parked red car, which Mabel promptly returned back to and to my complete joy our missing dog was inside – we had done it! A few microseconds of disbelief, followed by a little happy dance on my part (fortunately not caught on camera!) whilst getting Mabel’s well-deserved reward from my pocket. I am a softy and I cried tears of joy, I have never been prouder of my little girl – she had worked her ass off!

Our assessment trail was completed in just under 30 minutes, had been over 1 day old and 1630m, just over a mile long. All of our hard work and commitment had paid off, we did it! Travelling many 1000’s of miles and spending endless days and weeks training to improve our knowledge, experience and teamwork. Now I can proudly say we have earned our place through hard work and dedication to become the UK’s 1^st and only Certified Professional Pettrailer Team. Successfully completing 5 individual assessment levels, we join the ranks of our Professional Pettrailer Teams across Europe providing specifically trained specialist lost animal search dogs to help when your worst nightmare comes true.

A huge thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way: our friend and mentor, Markus, head trainer of Pettrailer Austria, all of our Pettrailer trainer colleagues across Europe who we have trained with whenever possible; to Jayne our UK trainer colleague who has helped with our assessment preparation and continued training; to Jenny and her team of trail layers who spent a full afternoon setting up our assessment trail; and Andrea who was our search assistant on assessment day.

Finally, congratulations to everyone who has passed their individual Pettrailer assessments no matter what level over the last few weeks in both Germany and Austria.

P.S. if you see me with smiling to myself for no apparent reason you now know why.