SHOW NOTES: Summary:   Kamal Fernandez is an internationally renowned dog trainer and seminar instructor, Championship Obedience Judge, Crufts competitor, and the head trainer and owner of East London Dog Training. He has over 25 years of practical dog-training experience, based on a combination of science and hands-on work that have led him to establish a reputation for positive training and to champion reward-based methods all over the world. Kamal has made a study of psychology and began his career as a police officer working with young offenders. This has shaped his training philosophy and helped him craft a style that gets the best from his students — human and canine alike. He’s probably most well known for teaching heelwork, his primary focus at FDSA, but he’s successfully used rewards-based methods in a wide variety of dog sports, including obedience, agility, protection sports, and canine freestyle. His training specialty revolves around using play and games to create motivation and control. Links kamalfernandez.blog Sports Addict blog post (mentioned during the podcast) Next Episode:  To be released 3/2/2018, featuring Esther Zimmerman, to talk competitive obedience and dog sports in general. TRANSCRIPTION: Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you’re listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high-quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today we’ll be talking to Kamal Fernandez. Kamal is an internationally renowned dog trainer and seminar instructor, Championship Obedience Judge, Crufts competitor, and the head trainer and owner of East London Dog Training. He has over 25 years of practical dog-training experience, based on a combination of science and hands-on work that have led him to establish a reputation for positive training and to champion reward-based methods all over the world. Kamal has made a study of psychology and began his career as a police officer working with young offenders. This has shaped his training philosophy and helped him craft a style that gets the best from his students — human and canine alike. He’s probably most well known for teaching heelwork, his primary focus at FDSA, but he’s successfully used rewards-based methods in a wide variety of dog sports, including obedience, agility, protection sports, and canine freestyle. His training specialty revolves around using play and games to create motivation and control. Hi Kamal, welcome back to the podcast! Kamal Fernandez: Hi Melissa, thank you for having me back. I’m grateful, I should say, to be here. Melissa Breau: I’m excited. To start us out, do you want to refresh our memories a little bit by reminding us who the dogs are that you share your life with and what you do with them? Kamal Fernandez: Yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to do so. I own eight dogs — that’s a lot of dogs — and several breeds. My oldest dog is a Malinois called Thriller, and she does obedience along with my oldest Border Collie, Scooter, and they’re both 10 years old. After them comes a German Spitz called Sonic, and he does agility. He is 7 or 8 years old. I got him when he was a little dog, so I always lose track of their date of birth when I’ve got them a little bit older. After that is Punch and Fire. Punch is my boxer who I’m currently training to do OPI, hopefully, which is a protection sport, and Fire, my Border Collie, who I do agility with, followed by Super, who is my Border Collie, he’s 3 years old. I’m contemplating at the moment doing tracking with him. And then I have Super and Fire’s daughter, Mighty, who is my young Border Collie. She is 18 months old, and I’m undecided again about what I’m going to do with her. And then finally my little crossbreed, Sugarpuff, who really is just a very content lap dog. So a lot of dogs. Melissa Breau: I love that at the end of all these working dogs you have a l