I should know better

An actual award - thank you !

Hope and Fran at GOLLYLOG have amazingly awarded this blog the BLOG
GER REFLECTION AWARD. I am very surprised and grateful.

I should nominate five other blogs which have given me inspiration and support. I`ll have to think about it. Hope and Fran of course, but quite a lot of the support for this blog comes from regular readers who are involved in the dog world but who don`t actually blog themselves. Papillon people don`t tend to, it seems.

Right away I`ll mention RABBITCH and INSPIRED TO BLOG (the links in the sidebar should actually work, unlike many of mine). More at a later date.

Shelby wants to know at what show I won this, and how did they get me on the table?

He doesn`t know about cranes...

It happens once a year. The Dire Show. The one you try to forget. The one where you feel there should have been a premonition when you posted the entries.....

I had a taste of what was in store when after my sleepless horrid night on the WhiteBus, Shelby managed an escape at dawn when being unloaded and ran through the soaking long grass in excited circles pursued by a lot of people with creaky joints who hadn`t slept so well either. Shelby was well rested, thank you, and managed an amazing turn of speed, with an excited grin all over his big flat face. He was eventually headed off and decided to surrender, leaving me to pack up the trolley and haul the rest across the endless sea of mud to find the indoor rings. Shelby`s of course, was about three miles from the Papillon one....

The judging was best forgotten. I sloshed back from the Chin ring to rush Marcus in and take a 3rd. Florian the Climbing Dog was next, and for once was performing well....until I got him on the table. His mouth was duly opened - and a tooth was missing ! I stared. I had cleaned those teeth the night before and they had all stood present and correct. What had he been up to during the Long Night of the Bus? Had he pulled it out himself to avoid further shows? (He would much rather be up a tree). A friend suggested that it was probably in his travelling box - "you could go and get it and show it to the judge."

It could have been worse. Many years ago I was showing Celeste in veteran under a foreign judge and when her mouth was opened a tooth tinkled out on to the table. The judge inspected it solemnly. "Oh look - she has lost the tooth." I could only agree - there were few optional answers to this. "No, you are hallucinating" clearly wasn`t going to pass muster, let alone "Hold on and I`ll stick it back in"...

There was an unhappy atmosphere around the ring. Some of it had to do with mud, more of it with bad stewarding. The bright yellow book entitled "Stewarding For Dummies" was conspicuously absent from the table. Present dogs were marked absent, dogs left at home were placed, and bitches did really well in classes for males. Meanwhile proceedings were held up by many many dogs, denied exercise due to the mud, insisting on stopping traffic for a much-needed Brad Pitt right there in the ring.

Tempers flared. One exhibitor was vowing revenge after another remarked that her exhibit had all the animation and attractive qualities of roadkill. Small dogs were inadvertently stepped on by wellies caked a foot deep in mud. Toilets were only accessible by boat. It was a relief to head back to the bus for the long haul up the road. The experience was completed by a run in with an abusive taxi driver.

Never again.

Until the next time....

...And the rest of us suffer. The Beeb keeps telling us about the disturbing fact that parents will now not let their children play outside their own gardens, so afraid are they for their safety. Well, I wish it would catch on outside the middle class home counties. Here they run in feral packs, turned out at dawn and dared to come home before six - "And take the wean with you!" (Which is why I am subjected to 14 year old vandals and thieves trailing toddlers with them.)

But I notice that one of the local bus companies has come up with a solution. They are offering "specially for the holidays" a child`s All Day Ticket for a pound on the express shuttle service that hums along the motorway into Glasgow and back. Think of the possiblilities....

I can see the grateful mother shoving the child onto the 7.40am bus - "and don`t get aff till 6. Here`s yer Irn Bru and yer comic. I`ll meet the 1.40 and sling you oan some chips. If yer legs get sorta numb sitting just bang yer feet a bit."

I might just help to load a few myself. Well worth the money.

Glasgow - business as usual

I got the renewal forms for the gun license in today. Well, actually these are replacements - two bitches managed to piddle on the originals and I draw the line at handing the yellow damp fragmented remains in with the bright smile and innocent expression you always seem to adopt in police stations. Applying is a tortuous, involved procedure designed to make you feel like a criminal - and if you think that`s bad, you should experience the home check.

Well, I obtained the four photographs (one for the police, one signed, one countersigned, one for the Home Office), all appearing to show a week-old corpse with attitude....it didn`t help that I only got the photobooth to produce them after a good kicking (a fine old Scottish remedy for recalcitrant machinery - kick it and insult its mother). And then I checked to see if there was any change in the regulations governing the references required.

The person giving the reference must be a MP, Justice of the Peace, doctor ........or person of similar standing.

I wonder if that includes the Islamist doctors who plotted and tried to burn Glasgow Airport and all within. The RAI in the town where I was born seems to be a hotbed of such medics, and it hard to realise that the dedication to healing we expect from doctors in the west is not at all part of the profession in the Middle East. I for one will make a point of avoiding moslem doctors in the future - not that that will do anything to reduce the terrorist threat - it`s just a personal reaction.

Fortunately the Glasgow terrorists were incompetent, and ran into a typical Glasgow reaction.

But thanks to the Blair legacy, no doubt they will not be the last.