I should know better

Another show - one of the last, as the year winds to a close. Another bus. This time I was awarded the toilet seat. No, not literally - it wasn`t a prize, and I didn`t spend six hours on the seat of a mobile Elsan. Just the one facing it. I could log for you the bowel habits of about fifteen elderly exhibitors being bounced along the M6........

Anyway, it was Florian`s debut. His first Big Day Out. I took him round the hall first thing with Demented, who kept on leaping about and tailwagging, assuring him that this was what it was all about, and the best fun you could have with your fur on. It worked at the beginning, but as the hall filled up with dogs, cages, trollies and general noise I tried them out again. This time Florian was not so easily convinced. He kept looking at her sideways........"are we having fun yet?" Eventually he was giving her a look that clearly said, "my friend is not to be trusted and clearly several rosettes short of a Challenge Certificate" I could have told him that D is clearly insane - I had to endure another embarrassing bout of wrestling her into submission on the table, and unsurprisingly she got nothing.

Florian did his little best, but clearly couldn`t make much sense of it all. He looked very serious as great fundamental philosophical questions filled his head. Why was he standing here? Who were these other dog puppies anyway? Why was that man staring at him? Was he ever going to be fed?

He was fourth.

Meanwhile I was to become involved in the strange social doings of the seething underlife of the benching.

More of this anon.