How did the Club start? Not by just walking in with your dog and there it was, do your class then go home. You won’t find many direct dates in this article, it was a long time ago, so I’ve just generalised.

In the autumn of 1967 an advertisement was put in the local paper asking if anyone was interested in training their dog. On the first evening the local church hall in Haslemere was packed and Sam House took over the training.

After several weeks the hall was lost, probably due to shortage of money and a move was made to the Small Hall (now the library) at Grayshott. Sam still took all the classes, but started to send people off on courses to learn about training. Jackie Reid went two years running to the NDOL down at Totnes and brought back the Star System, for progressing through the classes. This system was in place for a number of years. Getting through the five stars earned you a club medallion to go on the dog’s collar.

Courses were run by Crawley and Findon Down dog clubs and taken by Len Pearce, these produced more trainers for the Club. The trainees first job was to sit with the newcomers to watch the Beginners, until they were ready to be included in the class, usually about three weeks.

In July 1968 the Club applied to the Kennel Club for registration, the Secretary resigned and I took over as Secretary for the next 15 years.

Soon Susan Wood joined me as Treasurer and paid for the Hall’s fees a month in advance. “That’s all very well,” she was told “but what about the previous three months?” We had no money, all the members lent a hand and we ran a jumble sale, with a well filled cake stall. As luck would have it John Noakes, of the Blue Peter fame, lived locally and signed autographs for us all day. We were solvent again, but only just and had to beg or borrow most of the secretarial stock we needed.

In those days people did not just attend to train their dogs. There was a coffee/tea rota and always homemade cake available for every class.

Soon Sam made us spread our wings even further. All the Sundays were allocated to outside meetings. One Sunday was a multiple dog walk on Hankley Common, usually about 20 dogs, I can’t remember any fighting. One Sunday was gundog training at Westbrook where there was a river and the other two Sundays were for Working Trials – Sam’s favourite, held on the Flashes, just below the Devil’s Jump.

The first night I attended with a twelve week old puppy, there were thirty of us all with puppies of different breeds and twenty adult dogs. No one was turned away and all the puppies had their class at the back of the car park. The adult dogs were in the small hall. There were not the number of dog clubs or private groups in those days, so they all came to Haslemere!

As numbers grew we took over the large hall at Grayshott, keeping the small hall for Ringcraft and Catchment (the class we used to filter the dogs through to Beginners).

We used to arrange Club outings as well as the Sunday events and Christmas parties. I think the best outing the Club had was to greyhound racing at Wembley. We took two minibuses, driven by Timber Wood and Buster Guard. Dinner was served at tables overlooking the track and we didn’t even have to move to have our bets taken.

Several members became interested in formal Obedience and we had regular matches with other Clubs in the area. As part of the hall was in Hampshire we were invited to join the Hampshire Rally. This we won several times and therefore had to host the event the following year. Again members all rallied round, their children helped with scoring and husbands were given jobs to do.