Blaze was by Robbie out of a smooth coated bitch called Lis.  John chose Blaze because Robbie was getting close to retirement.   Hubert had a litter that had been sired by Robbie and John chose Blaze from that litter.

In his early days he was competing at Scarborough working trial.  Unfortunately, while we were walking the dogs along a path going down to the beach at Robin Hood Bay, Blaze disappeared over the edge of the cliff.  We thought he’d fallen about 30 feet onto the beach.

When John reached the beach it was to discover that Blaze was stuck in a sand bowl about 20 feet up.

The only way that John could get Blaze out was to encourage him to do a wall of death run up the bank until John could catch him. 

This took several attempts and by the time John caught Blaze both of them were exhausted. John retired Blaze from his control round the next day because the dog wasn’t right.

It wasn’t until 18 months later that we realised how much damage had been done.   Blaze was visiting Ronnie Longford from Priors Marsden for another injury.  While Ronnie was checking Blaze out he found damage to the bottom of Blaze’s back.  On recollection we realised that this had been caused when he’d gone over the cliff at Scarborough.  In later years Blaze was to retire early because of his old injury and was put to sleep in January 2005 aged 16½.

Achievements