About Myself, John Woodward, Trainer
  


As I have always been interested in dogs it was inevitable that when I joined Durham Constabulary I was determined to join the Dog Section. I was given a dog called Aycliffe Duke VI. Duke was a gift to the Police from a member of the public as he was out of control and was potentially very dangerous.

Before Duke was given to me to train he had already had two previous service handlers and he was rejected by them both as he was too aggressive and was in the habit of running away when the pressure of being trained became too much for him.

When I first saw Duke in a kennel I formed the opinion that all he wanted to do was bite anything that got in his way. However, having no other option than to take Duke for training I persevered with him and in no time at all we started to work together and I soon realised that with a lot of effort Duke and I could do well together.

And so it started, I was determined to do well with this " mad, untrainable " dog and Duke and I had our ups and downs. He ran away from me on a number of occasions but I always got him back and we started to retrain from scratch once again.

After much trial and error Duke and I started to understand what we wanted from each other and so our standard of training and our ability to work together went from strength to strength.



Duke was developing into a very well adjusted dog who not only did well in trials but was also an effective tool at scenes of crime. Duke was also extremely effective at scenes of public disorder, he has saved many a bobby from being assaulted.

During the course of Dukes development I was improving my dog handling skills. Don't get me wrong, I was not a perfect dog handler, I made lots of mistakes with Duke. I grew to understand where I was going wrong. One of the best teachers I had was Duke himself as he was a very biddable dog and I found that if you have a good understanding of your dog and his behaviour he will show you where you are going wrong.
 



Dog training is easy and is fun to do, some people can train their own dogs to a high standard, others can't. That is where I come in.

We progressed so well that we qualified to complete in the National Police Dog Championships, which is the pinnacle of Police Dog trials work. Achieving this was one of the proudest moments of my life.

My interest in helping others to get the best from their dogs had also grown and I have been a professional dog trainer for a long time.