ONE dog school in Swindon has been celebrating England’s form in the world cup with football-themed training classes.

Footballs have been out for dogs to play with in the sunshine at Janet’s Puppy School.

Poodles, spaniels, and border terriers took it in turns to dribble, shoot, or simply sit on the balls in casual sessions to make a change from their ordinary training routines.

Janet Garrett, who runs the school, said: “The dogs do whatever they can with the footballs. Our dog Mac can put his chin on it and dribble it with his nose. They have to dribble it along and get it in a small goal which is impressive as they have to be quite accurate. Some of them were naughty and picked them up in their mouths which cost them penalties.

“It’s all on AstroTurf and it was such lovely weather. We found a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread revived us beautifully while the dogs took water breaks. We obviously didn’t go for the full 90 minutes as that would be a lot of shortbread.”

The school plans to run more football classes providing England remains in the World Cup. Janet hopes our national team will be able to achieve a repeat of the big win in 1966.

The training instructor added: “There’s been loads of interest because of world cup fever. Many trick classes we do involve props, and they learn to put their toys away. We try to bush the boundaries a little bit which makes the training a lot of fun.

“We will keep doing the football classes otherwise it might somehow jinx England.”