ERIC is a typical Labrador from Northwich who loves his food and sleeping on the sofa – but he’s now making a name for himself as a Crufts champion.
The talented pooch and his owner Sarah Bowyer won The Kennel Club Large Novice ABC (Anything But Collies) agility competition after battling it out against eight other finalists at the world’s most famous dog show earlier this month.
Eric and Sarah were thrust into the spotlight after their win, with articles, a live TV appearance and a video of one of their runs getting thousands of views on Crufts’ social media pages.
The five-year-old working Labrador came into Sarah’s life as a tiny puppy.
Sarah, 39, said: “We had two dogs at the time; we had a Labrador who was a bit older and another dog who was five or six.
“It got to the point where we knew the youngest wasn’t going to cope without the other one.
“It was just chance our neighbours’ dog had puppies and they said, ‘why don’t you come and have a look?’.”
It was love at first sight for Eric and Sarah, and she explained how he also ‘filled a hole’ in her life after she suffered a ectopic pregnancy a few months earlier.
And he certainly kept her busy.
“He started trashing the house, so I spoke to a trainer, and he said, ‘he’s a working dog, you need to give him a job’,” Sarah explained.
She went to Dig It Dogs in Sandbach to start agility training and said Eric ‘absolutely loved it’.
The pair competed in various agility competitions and their confidence went from strength to strength.
Sarah recalled: “Crufts was the dream and we had to form a bit of a plan of how we were going to get there.”
The coronavirus pandemic put the duo’s plans on hold, but something positive did come out of lockdown for Sarah and her husband James.
James now looks after SGN Agility Equipment – a business set up during lockdown which creates dog agility products.
After the worst of the pandemic, the focus was on Crufts and Eric and Sarah qualified with flying colours.
Sarah explained how she was nervous the morning of their first run: “I had only been to watch twice, and Eric had never been there.
“I’d never competed there either, and it’s the biggest dog competition in the world.”
But Sarah didn’t need to worry – Eric pulled out all the stops and ended up winning The Kennel Club Large Novice ABC (Anything But Collies) agility competition.
There is plenty in the running for Eric and Sarah this year, as they plan to continue their agility journey.
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