Rachel Rodgers is co-founder and a head instructor for The Canine School of Trailing. Rachel is a registered Animal Training Instructor and Clinical Animal Behaviourist on the Animal Behaviour Training Council register. She runs her own company Nose to Trail where she runs pet trailing sessions primarily in the Nantwich, Cheshire area and that is how she teamed up with Marilyn the other co-founder of the canine school of trailing the two have trailed together for several years now. You’ll find out more about Marilyn in our next blog post coming soon!
Rachel trails with her own dog Rico. Rico is a nine-year-old Kokoni cross breed he was rescued from the streets of Portugal. He has been pet trailing for many years and has previously had newspaper reports on his success of finding a lost dog who got separated from their family in the Wrexham area in 2021. Despite his success Rico is really in retirement having had a collapsed trachea in 2023 which meant that he had to stop trailing for many months while he underwent medical treatment.
With the help of Marilyn Rico is now trailing again for fun a few times a month, on an adapted method. Unlike most dogs that we trail Rico, does not work by having pressure on the long line instead to protect his damage trachea Rico trails on a loose long line. This seems to cause no problems for him, and he absolutely smashed his way through his assessments in 2023 and is looking forward to doing another in the not too distant future. It is however, much harder for Rachel who is used to telling when Rico is on the trail and heading towards the runner by how much he is pulling and the force that he puts through the long line. As he is no longer able to do this Rachel is having to become very attuned to Rico’s minor body language signals to tell if he is on track or not! While Rachel misses the opportunity to go out and help on real lost dog searches, she is proud of how many of her Cheshire based teams are progressing and looks forward to when they are ready to be deployed on real lost dog searches!
When not busy trailing with Rico, or training up teams in Nantwich, Rachel covers a wide area of the UK running sessions for other dog trainers and helping to spread the word about pet trailing.
Being born and bred in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a life long Newcastle fan (for her sins) she runs sessions in Jesmond, Gosforth, and Cullercoats when she is at home visiting her family. This also gives her prime opportunity to train up our two new instructors in that area, Kerry (Howl School for Dogs) Becky, (Rebecca the dog trainer). These two ladies are just two of a selection of instructors who are training up from February 2024 to bring you pet trailing sessions in more areas of the UK. (Dog trainers who are interested in finding out more should head here )
a nervous cockapoo finding a black labrador on a trail in Kilsyth park
Rachel clearly enjoys travelling up and down the M6, as she also splits her time further afield to Glasgow, or more specifically, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth where she likes to visit her partner’s family, and have an excuse to visit some lochs for her other love, wild swimming! When up there she trails in the local area and has a lovely selection of clients who have already passed that beginner assessment and are working hard towards that advanced assessment. Some of Rachel’s favourite locations for trailing have been in Scotland such as at the Falkirk Wheel.
Maddy, a black GSD cross trailing at The Falkirk Wheel
Just to add to her travel, Rachel will also be starting sessions in Liverpool and Derbyshire in January 2024!
If you’d like to trail with Rachel then drop her a message she would love to hear from you!
rachel@thecanineschooloftrailing.co.uk
Don’t forget to pop back to the blog soon to find out all about Marilyn, our other co-founder as well as more about pet trailing, and our instructor course.
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