Club History
In 1993 our president Ann Ballard approached Mick Bingham, who is now our Patron, to help with the training of her GSD 5 month old puppies and suggested that they formed a training club.
Mick agreed to do this on the condition that the donations made went to Hearing Dogs for Deaf people. Ann made a trip around the local vets and the club started with just one or two people turning up.
The 1st venue was in a riding school at Bobbing. This may sound grand but in reality the floor was ankle deep in wood chippings and horse droppings. Owners and dogs found this difficult to deal with.
The club then moved to Stockbury Village hall this was only used once as space was limited and not suitable for dogs
The middle of 1994 saw the completion of The Police Dog Training School at Stockbury. Mick Bingham was the manager of the school up to January 2002 and this gave the club a training area. On Mick’s retirement we lost the use of the Training School but we were able to use Detling Showground as a temporary venue for 2 months until Detling Cricket Club heard of our desperate situation and allowed us to use the cricket club from March 2002, but unknown to us the ground became waterlogged in the winter making in unusable for training.
In 2003 we moved back to the county showground on a more permanent basis.
During 2004 it was decided that instead of donating to just one charity, we would start donations to a range of animal charities.
As we were having difficulty getting the County Show Ground on a Sunday morning due to the increased number of events taking place we moved to paddocks near Stockbury in 2007.
In 2010 we changed our venue to Lower Hartlip followed by another change of venue in 2013 to Stockbury Village playing fields were we currently train.
The club has been well attended with many different breeds of dog passing though.
We have since 2004 donated over £34,000 to Animal Charities and these donations continue on a regular basis.