Sharon Footitt & Little Bezler
Little Bezler (Jake) came into my life in Aug 2002. We had decided that it was time to get another dog as company for Jerry 
(rescue GSDx) and also to do agility with. He had been found on a supermarket car park - small, cold and afraid! The rescue centre that found him was an independent one called Alsager Animal Rescue and he had been taken into one of their volunteers homes to live with them as he was quite sickly. They thought he was possibly a collie which is what we wanted as I already did agility with my other dog. Although he has turned out to be some sort of crossbreed I wouldn’t change him for the world. Jake settled in really well, although no amount of coaxing could convince him that toys were fun to play with and to this day he is not fussed with them. This made training quite difficult as my only option was food. I started to take him agility training when he was 1yo but, despite having the build and speed he seemed to get quite panicky. If he didn’t like or understand anything he would jump up and nip me, this started to get more frequent and closer to my face so I decided to stop training him and leave it until he had matured and was a bit more confident in himself.
Horses then took over my life and Jake became a stable dog. He did get a bit excited one day and chased one of the ponies which resulted in a swift kick to the head and a quick trip to the vets. Luckily it was the smallest pony on the yard and didn’t have back shoes on so a couple of stitches in his gums and we were sorted. You would think he would have learnt his lesson but, no, the next week he went to chase again so a bit of training was required to put a stop to this. We did have a horrible day about 4 years ago at the stables when one of the horses put its foot down a hole and it was a wasp nest. The whole yard, people, horses and dogs were covered in wasps – it was horrific and, even now, Jake panics if he hears anything buzzing.
I discovered agility again in 2005 when I found a club that trained just 10mins from my house. That club was Agility Addicts and 
through them I found the confidence to begin training with Jake again. We started totally from scratch and we did have a few problems along the way. He hated the seesaw but with the help of Fiona Hulse and Carol Disley this was slowly overcome. I have to tell him ‘seesaw’ in the ring so he can differentiate between it and the dog walk whereas my older dog is ‘walk on’ for all the contact equipment. We did have a small issue with weaves as he just wasn’t understanding the channels getting closer together but that was soon sorted with a couple of private lessons with Lee Gibson.
Jakes first taste of competition was at Tuffley show in July 06. We did the AnySize Jumping and got a clear with a 4 jump wait at the start – yippee! It was so nice to see how he would work in a ring in an outdoor environment and he was a superstar.
We did our first full height competition at Agility Addicts in Nov 2006 and quickly progressed from Elementary to Starters. His KC career started in July 07 at Wirral show where he got a 5th in G2 Agility (his brother had won us out of Grade 1 years ago). He continued to get top 10 placings up until Sep 07 when we moved to
We started at Paws 4 Agility as soon as a place became available and under the tuition of Pete and Shirley Wells success was not far away. We did Dog Vegas shows over the winter and the KC season started up again at a very snowy Easter Dog Vegas show in March this year and then in May at Godmanchester Jake got enough points for his Agility Warrant Bronze. He won out of Grade 2 at Dog Vegas in May. At the RVA show in June he obtained enough points for his silver warrant. Our first Grade 3 show was at Empingham in July and we won out of Grade 3 at the WBSDS in Aug by winning not only the G3 Agility but the G3 Jumping aswell. We then followed this success with another win at
A big thank you must go to the clubs that have trained us, all at Agility Addicts for the excellent grounding and start in competition and, all at Paws 4 Agility for the continued support and outstanding training. Another thank you must go to all my fellow competitors for the friendly welcome that we have felt at every level.
Jakes other interests are sleeping, running about, sleeping, chasing rabbits, cuddling and, um, sleeping! I am so proud of my little boy and he has brought so much joy to my life. I think I will always have rescue dogs as the two I have now have taught me so much and given me so much that I would have no reservations about giving another dog a 2nd chance.
Sharon Footitt