About Hetty
Obedience
Freestyle & Heelwork to Music

Displays
Seminars & Workshops

Videos of our Routines:
Hetty was born in the Netherlands. During her childhood Hetty had the wonderful opportunity to train dogs. When she was 18 she started teaching other people how to train their dogs. From 1986 to 1992 she competed successfully  in F.C.I. obedience and agility with a poodle and a border collie. From 1993 she started training British obedience with her Border Collie Toffee, who preferred the agility above anything else and through working with Toffee Hetty learned a lot more about motivational training techniques.

In 1997 Toffee and Hetty made their first dance steps and did many television shows trying to get the sport more known in Holland. Hetty & Gyp got a second place at the European Championships Dog Dance in Switzerland (advanced freestyle) in 2000 and haves won many other national and international competitions in Europe. With her dog Violet she performed twice at Crufts, in 2005 and 2008. And with her dog Wizzy she has been  performing at Discover Dogs in 2008.

Since 1999 Hetty is using a clicker in the training of her animals and has gained more and more experience in this type of training, winning the Clicker Challenge Master Championships in England in 2003 with her dogs Gyp and Violet and getting a special reward of excellence of Karen Pryor for her work with Gyp that day.

Since 1988 Hetty has been teaching other people how to train their dogs. Over the years more and more people got interested in Hetty's training techniques and from 2000 onwards she gave many dog training seminars all over Europe. Topics included: clicker training, obedience, dog dance tricks, choreography for dog dance, heelwork training, behaviour training with the clicker and many more.

She studied chemistry in Leiden for a while, as she couldn't get through the lottery system to study Veterinary Medicine at the University of Utrecht, straight away. In 2003 she graduated in Utrecht as a vet and as there were not enough job opportunities in small animal practices she moved to England. After working 5 years as a small animal vet, she recently changed careers so she could spend all her time training animals.

She lives with her fiancé Adrian, 5 dogs, 3 cats and 1 rabbit in a village near Boston in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. She is a qualified heelwork to music and freestyle judge.

At 9 & 10 May 2009 Hetty participated in a TAGteach seminar of the American Theresa McKeon, who came all the way to Switzerland to give this seminar. Hetty is now a TAGteacher.