Plea to help make Wisbech St Mary dog lover’s world title dream a reality
A Fenland man hopes the community will get back him and help him to represent Great Britain in the little-known sport of Mondioring in Greece next month.
Jean Pierre Felicien of Wisbech St Mary is one of the world’s top competitors in the dog handling sport, which is popular across Europe, but still quite rare in this country.
The former Army engineer took up dog training when he left the services having been impressed by the dogs and their handlers who were deployed alongside him and his fellow soldiers.
He said: “I have been a dog lover all my life and I used to watch the dogs at work and was impressed by how well-trained they were and what they were capable of doing.
“When I left the army I decided to take up dog training as a hobby and I attended dozens of seminars and workshops. I now work as a dog trainer locally helping people with their dogs, especially those with behavioral problems as that’s my special area of expertise.”
Jean Pierre started competing in dog competitions in this country taking part in dog tracking, and then moved on to agility. But he said after a while he grew bored as the tasks were always the same.
That’s when he found Modioring which tests the handler's skills alongside those of the dogs. It is quite a complex sport and looks at the dog’s training, intelligence, and natural abilities.
It involves agility, obedience, recall, and protection skills – no two competitions are the same but among the tests the dog faces is food refusal, leaping over a wooden palisade, and retrieving an object.
The protection side of the competition sees the dog ‘bite’ an assailant and protect its handler, but it must be done in a totally controlled fashion.
Jean Pierre is planning to drive with his two Belgian Malinois dogs Chance and Upup the 2,000 miles from Wisbech St Mary to Greece as he has a fear of flying and a friend has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover the costs of travelling.
He is the only handler from Great Britain to have qualified having competed all over Europe in the past 11 months to gain enough qualification points.
Last year he was placed second at the World Championship in Portugal and he is hoping to go one better this year.
He concluded: “I am quite confident that we can win, we just have to get there first. It would be fantastic to win the world title for Great Britain.”