Clean Run - November 2013 - 51

Trainer: Laura Chudleigh
Base: Wiltshire, England
Years competing in agility: 8
Dogs: Border Collies: Rodney, age 5;
Troy, age 2; Tease, age 8 months
Favorite treat: Dried lamb's liver
Most unusual training tool:
Plunger. "Every so often I put it near
the end of the dogwalk to create a
deeper turn off of the dogwalk. when
I'm working on my running contacts."
Piece of technology that has
benefited training: Slow-motion
video camera. "I video most
competition runs and, because I
train by myself, try to video as many
training sessions as I can. It allows
me to check to see that I am doing
things correctly."

Training
with the Stars
Laura Chudleigh
By Sally Silverman, photos by Ian Watts except where noted

Laura Chudleigh is a young woman with a truckload of drive, plenty
of pluck, and a vision for where she wants to go. That personality
helped her to grab the gold at Britain's most prestigious agility competition; and she did it at age 22, with a dog that was barely two, the
youngest dog ever to win Olympia.

If she wasn't doing agility she'd: Go
back to jumping horses.
What's in her agility bag: Poo bags,
water, water bowl, her dogs' favorite
tug toys, and sheepskin toys.
Agility moment she's most proud
of: Winning Olympia. "It was our first
year of being successful and we were
the underdogs."
Best advice received: Setting
realistic goals from Natasha Wise,
"Set out to succeed every single time.
Aim to get to the semi-finals, not to
win the finals."
Wisdom to share: Make sure training
is always fun and rewarding. "As soon
as you allow or expect failure you are
going to have negativity, which our
dogs can't always handle."
November 13

| Clean Run

Speed to Serendipity
It started with Phoebe, a wicked fastworking Cocker Spaniel that wasn't very
successful in obedience class. "The instructor suggested that we might be more
suited to agility, so we gave it a try,"
recalls Laura. That was 10 years ago.
"We had a little go at it and she really
enjoyed it." At the time there were not
so many medium-size Border Collies
in England so Laura was sure that if
Phoebe could run clean, they would win.
Time after time she stepped to the start
line, telling herself, "Okay. We are going to go clear on this one." She kept up
the positive attitude for 18 months until
the team finally had their first clean run.

In retrospect Laura sees that she and
Phoebe were hampered by training
issues. "I didn't know you had to stop
at the bottom of the contact equipment
and she was a bit tunnel crazy. We
hadn't even started to train weave poles
when we started competing." Lucky for
Laura, the agility community in England
is quite collegial and other competitors
were quick to offer help to the young girl
with the very fast cocker. She took their
suggestions, went away and worked on
what she was told, and came back better
each time. When she was 15, she took
lessons from Anthony Clarke who was,
at the time, just 13 years old.
51

Clean Run - November 2013

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