I love Strictly Come Dancing. Himself hates it – he calls it “unadulterated rubbish”, but as he’s a grumpy old man I just ignore him as usual.
Over the years I feel I’ve got to know many of the professional dancers and I have my favourites. I usually don’t recognise many of the celebrities but I get to know them during each series too. It’s a feel good programme I really look forward to my Saturday nights in front of the TV between September and Christmas.
The celebrities are like scared rabbits at first and as about as coordinated as an elephant trying to move like a gazelle. Each week they improve (usually!) and by the final near Christmas they have turned into proficient dancers.
As a child I went to dancing lessons and am proud to say I passed my grade 1 ballet – I can still do the five positions as a party trick, despite the knee and hip replacements – but that took three terms of lessons with me going once every week. I didn’t practice much in between.
So how can the Strictly contestants learn so much in such a short time?
It’s all down to the skill of the professionals and their ability to teach these complete novices to perform to a high standard – in just twelve weeks. They teach the basic steps, make sure their students understand each small step properly ,then build on these basics gradually until the students can perform intricate and detailed routines. And they practice hard – doing hours and hours of practice each week. Each Saturday their progress is celebrated by performing their new routines in the programme.
It’s the same with training dogs. If you go to a dog class once a week to do your training you will make progress – but it will be very slow. The way to train your dog well is to attend a good training class run by experienced professionals, do your homework by practising every day, then celebrating your progress in class and learning the next lot of new stuff to practise that week.
That’s what we aim to do in our Perfect Pet classes. We use our depth of experience to teach you the most efficient ways to train your dog the key things they need. In each class we show you what to do and make sure you’ve learnt the techniques, then between classes you go away and practice – and to help you we also send you homework sheets with tips for training that you can fit into just a few five minute training sessions each day.
Guidance from professionals, regular practice and celebrating progress – that’s the most effective way to train your dog or learn to dance – and it’s what makes Strictly so watchable.
Himself will just have to find something else to do.
Keep training
Carol