Dog Borstal
At the time of writing (October 2007) Dog Borstal was airing in the UK on BBC 3, same episode twice a week on Tuesday and a Thursday.
I have personally only watched a handful of episodes from what is now Series 3. In that time I have learned the programme is mainly entertainment first and improving behaviour of dogs and educating the owners second.
Basically, Dog Borstal has been set up as a last resort boot camp for really badly behaved dogs. Each week 3 very badly behaved dogs along with there owners arrive at Dog Borstal. The owners have to sleep outside in army like tents. The dogs are locked up indoors in separate units.
Each dog and owner is then set up with one of the UK's "toughest trainers". Each trainer uses there own methods to train the dogs and improve there unwanted behaviour. After 4 days of training on the grounds of Dog Borstal the trainers set up a test which the dog has to take and be judged by an independent judge who will pass or fail the dogs. The judge sometimes hands out red or yellow rosettes to the best dogs. The trainers aim to have the dog with the highest test score.
The concept behind the programme is the not best way to solve most of the difficult dog problems that arise. They take the dog out of the problem area (its home environment) and try to fix specific aspects of the problem, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
The 3 trainers on Series 3 of Dog Borstal:
Robert Alleyne from what I've seen Robert seems to be an excellent dog trainer and has great success every week I've watched. He seems to have a very good understanding of dog behaviour. I'd watch the show just to get ideas for training and solving certain problems from him alone.
Lynne Davies for a few episodes I thought Lynn did a great job and come up with some good training methods.
Mic Martin has been on the programme since series 1. They portray him as a hard man who has trained dogs for the police, as well as providing trained dogs for TV programme's. He's known for his constant swearing and will refering to some dogs as "dumb" and "stupid" when they don't do what he wants.
My rating 2 out of 5
Final Comment : Watch for dog entertainment but don't expect to be any wiser by the end of it.
Check my Dog TV blog section for any comments on individual episodes.
NOTE Disclaimer: My opinions above are just based on what I have seen and I'm fully aware that the programme is edited and things may not always be as they seem. I just give my opinions on what I see aired.
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