I should know better

Still recovering from a trip to Bath Ch Show. On a dogbus. You can`t imagine.....

A dogbus is not exactly the top of the line vehicle. You don`t hire that out to have it stuffed with dogs, even if they are all toydogs in carrying boxes. So picture me at midnight , standing at a corner of the Motorway services, laden with dogs and grooming equipment and trolley, waiting for this creaking museum peice to turn up. All the containerised dogs are piled up and secured with bungies in a swaying heap in a middle space where seats have been removed, and they probably have the best of the travel comfort, as the humans settle into hard lumpy seats with ventilation that hasn`t worked for years.

It`a a long hard run to Bath, punctuated with sleepwalking stops at services, when you drink disgusting Moto coffee without knowing at all where you are. The only saving grace is our usual driver, Stan the Man, a prince of the road, who doesn`t even mind getting bitten.

But it was a good day. The Young Dog stood a good second in his huge class. Emboldened by this, I got Tomato out for her turn - she scuttered off under the bench and returned soaked in diarrhoea. (Doesn`t diarrhoea feature a lot in this blog? Isn`t it good that I can spell it.....?)

Well, I had two options. One, to give up. Two, to do the mad thing. You don`t have to ask. I used up a whole tin of Johnson`s Baby powder (a totally illegal substance under KC rules), my best brush and a lot of bad language, and scuttled into the class late with apologies. wafting clouds of white powder behind me.

The trouble was, the stain had gone but the aroma hadn`t. Only now it was mixed with the pungent sweetness of Johnson`s Baby Powder. a heady mix. Fortunately the wind was rising, carrying it (I hoped) away from the judge and into the next ring, where already people were beginning to cough and look pale. Judge backed off a little, but placed her an astounding 4th.

After the illness, the medicine. I had (you guessed it) a bottle of Kaogel about my person. I had not, however, anything to administer it with. I put the bottle to her mouth and the fight began.

She did get some of it. Meanwhile my hands, arms and feet were spattered liberally with kaolin mix. It was in my nails and hair, and, as everyone delighted in telling me, on my nose. And of course it sets like cement. In this state, carrying a very aggrieved Tomato who now looked like a plaster cast of a dog, I boarded the bus for an arse-breaking seven hour journey home.

I told BF about this and she roared with laughter and said the unmistakeable effluvium of Johnsons and excrement was one of the abiding memories of raising three children......"used to think of it as `Johnnyshite`" she said.

Dogs are quite bad enough.