A Dog's Dinner of a Challenge for Tindall

Spent an afternoon dog training with Mike Tindall the other day at Gatcombe, which follows on from golf and clay pigeon shooting. In the golf, played at Minchinhampton GC, we recorded an honourable draw after 9 holes, with Tins claiming the 9th to save his blushes.

He's a good golfer who can drive the ball a long way, but he'd be a great deal better if he learnt to drive the ball straight. So, while I was in the middle of the fairway some 200 yards from the tee, Mike was 50 to 60 yards further up, but in the bushes. In the clay pigon shoot it was the other way round. I managed to blast a woodcock (not a real one) out of the sky with my last effort to level the series against the Gloucester and England world cup-winning centre, who has grown to love his country pursuits since meeting and subsequently living with Zara Phillips.

It was Zara's eight-month-old black labrador, "Storm," who was being trained by a local lab trainer, Debbie Polley, to be a gun dog and did rather well. Mike and I need to find another sporting challenge to see if one of us can nudge ahead after two draws. I refused to drag my black labrador three hours in the car down to Gloucestershire, which had Tins claiming some kind of victory. Dog training does not count!