More recently Hugh and Pauline have visited Forstal/Norfolk, the home of Sally and Sheril Leich and Ali Koops and all their amazing dogs. It was particularly enjoyable to go out early morning training with Sally and Ali and take their dogs out with them to High Lodge. As usually the hospitality from the family was fantastic and so was their cooking. Although the early morning starts to take the dogs out for some exercise leave a little to be desired. As Hugh and Pauline do all their training in the late evenings weather, humidity and temperature permitting. Mind you on this occasion a 4.00 am start was later by Forstal standards. The last time they visited it was a 2.00 am start time and they were woken up with the Forstal pack howling in the moon light in the dog run outside their bedroom window!

The training at High Lodge with them was really interesting. Especially as they run the teams on an engineless quad. The power and strength of some of their teams is incredible and if you haven’t sat behind one of the best teams of dogs in the UK then you should organise a visit yourselves. It really is an amazing experience to see the dogs moving in such a controlled way and working together like the cogs of a well oiled machine. Forstal’s hold the breed record for the highest ticket number and will be a very strong contender in this year’s BSHRA Championship.

There was also very recently a fantastic two week article published on the kennel in the UK weekly issue of Dog World. Which shows that Forstal really does support the KC’s view that form should really follow function in this breed.

(Back issues of this magazine and article can be brought directly from the publisher’s.)

It was also great for them both to catch up with a few close friends of both the 2 and 4 legged variety.