A CRUFTS competitor has received thousands of pounds worth of funding from the Kennel Club to set up a dog training academy.

Karen Davies has received the first grant of its kind from the Kennel Club's new investment fund, of £5,000, to refurbish an industrial unit at Skelton Industrial Estate in East Cleveland and establish a fully-functioning dog training school.

Target Dog Training Academy offers help for problem pooches, as well as puppy and dog obedience training and agility training.

Ms Davies is an experienced competitor at Crufts and is the only person in the North-East to hold the Kennel Club accredited instructor status in both the companion dog and obedience categories.

She used to provide training just one evening a week in Redcar, with assistant Anita Clark, but has now been able to fulfil her dream of expanding and opening a facility especially for dogs, with a range of training and services on offer.

At the weekend she invited local dogs and owners to try out the new facilities at Skelton Industrial Estate, and offered pet photography, training tasters, a doggy ball pool and puppy agility jumps, as part of an event to celebrate the official opening of the academy.

Ms Davies was also offering tasters in flyball, a dog sport in which teams of dogs race each other, over hurdles, to a box that releases a tennis ball when the animal presses a spring-loaded pad.

The dogs then have to go back to their handlers while carrying the ball.

The event helped raise money for dog charity Maxi's Mates, which tries to rehome dogs from Waterfall Kennels at Guisborough.

Ms Davies said: “It’s been quite a challenge, transforming the industrial unit into a state of the art dog training facility, which has enabled us to greatly widen the opportunities we can offer to local dog owners, and the support of the Kennel Club has been a huge help to this end.

"I am the only KC Accredited, Companion Dog and Obedience Advanced instructor in the North-East and this is one of the reasons why the Kennel Club awarded me, their very first awardee, £5,000 from their legacy fund."