About Angela

Angela Watson (Just Train The Dog)

Just Train The Dog is run by Angela who started competing in obedience in 2011 and has achieved high levels of success with her golden retrievers. She competed at Crufts in 2016 and has since qualified Hanans Golden Liberty @Wygulmut (Berty) to compete in the championship class in competitive obedience.

Angela is a Kennel Club Judge for obedience and is the resident guest trainer for the obedience competition class at Basingstoke and District Dog Club. She is also founding member of Micheldever Obedience Training Club and the Micheldever Open Show.

Alongside her dog sport career, Angela is a Certified Executive Coach, and Master Trainer in Executive Coaching. She has 20 years’ experience coaching and training thousands of people in high-pressure performance environments. This background informs her approach to competitive obedience, and she understands both ends of the lead better than most.

Angela now tours her obedience workshops around the UK as well as providing outdoor obedience lessons and workshops at Just Train The Dog, in Aldermaston, Berkshire.

Me and My Training Background.

I know what it’s like to dream of having a dog that’s a joy to live with, loves training, and takes you to the very top.

I’m fortunate to have experienced this with my dogs.

But it wasn’t always this way…

I came to dog sports later in life.

I didn’t get my first dog until I was in my forties. But it was through trying to find someone to help me with my adolescent golden retriever, Harry, in 2011 that I was introduced to competitive obedience and positive training. I was immediately hooked! I just needed to learn how to do it.

My love for dogs began when I brought home my first puppy – a golden retriever called Lucy. Like many other first-time dog owners, I thought ‘OMG…how on earth am I going to train this creature? So I enrolled us in puppy classes, and fell in love with training her.

Two years later, Harry arrived. He was was the perfect puppy. Bright and biddable. But when adolescence kicked in walks, training, and life felt like a constant battle.

Eventually I found the right help. What started out as a desperate search for answers turned into a commitment to learning and a passion (ok, obsession) for competitive obedience.

Harry had the looks of a show dog, with the heart and style of a working dog. With the obedience foundations in place, he worked his way through the classes from Pre-Beginner to Class B, qualified for the Obreedience Finals and competed at Crufts in 2016.

Over the years, I’ve raised 4 golden retrievers, trained 3 of them to competition level in Obedience, and in 2025 I qualified Hanans Golden Liberty (AKA Berty) to compete in the championship C.

For 15 years I studied the technical, physical, and mental elements of competitive obedience training, judged hundreds of teams, have been judged by the best, and trained with some of the top instructors.

Along the way I started to notice that I trained my dog better and worked my best rounds when I wasn’t preoccupied with thinking too far ahead, distracted by worries and doubts, or concerned with outcomes and scores. This realisation changed everything.

It has shaped how I train, how I compete, how I prepare dogs for competition, and how I coach other sports dog handlers, trainers, and competitors.

From this, I have developed a subtractive approach to help you and your dog perform well in the ring even when the pressure is on.

My Dogs