I should know better

No posts because I haven`t been well - those of you who have encountered the tale of my Achilles wooden leg (THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR IT} will know that I have these problems, and I struggled to the last show wheezing like a leaky steam engine - damn near a stationary one at that.

I managed to show the dogs somehow. But it was one of those days.

Florian did his best. But only a bucket of red hair dye would have won him a class that day. Red or dead. Haven`t seen such a blatant example of "I only like one colour" judging in years. He was 3rd.

Prudence forgot everything she had ever learned, became mega-girlie and was a disaster. The wrong colour of disaster at that.

Oh a great day. And I had to give a lecture too. One of our breeders had been caught out selling to an Irish puppy farmer - and she had two puppies by my Julian. I gave her a succinct account of how her reputation in dogs had just died and a warning about the puppies. And I didn`t lower my voice. It`s a horrible thought - a poor little animal condemned to two litters a year and knocked on the head when she can`t produce enough any more.

After all that I was really finished. I went and sat on the benches and coughed and coughed, with an audience of Prudence and Florian and an Airedale in a cage, called Bollocks - well he seemed to respond to the word when I threatened him with a swift kick there if he didn`t shut up.

No, of course I didn`t. I gave him a biscuit. Poor thing, all alone in a cage. Didn`t shut him up though.

Eventually I staggered to my feet and somehow trailed all my stuff out to the bus, the loud complaints of Bollocks dying away behind me.

Somehow I got home. Couldn`t get a breath on the bus, and this was compounded by the fact that we were carrying Bassets. If you know Basset hounds you will know the smell. If you don`t I couldn`t possibly begin to get the effect over here. A solid, thick, warm wall of odour. And no, they were perfectly clean. It`s a Basset thing...

Well now I`m relaxing in the sun on antibiotics and steroids, delighted to be told to take it easy, sitting out with the dogs, watching the buzzards circling in a bright blue sky. Buzzards everywhere these days. Apart from having to evict a whole family of baby bluetits who had come in the window and decided to colonise the sitting room, I am pleased to report that absolutely nothing has happened today.

Just wait till tomorrow....