I should know better

It was complicated by the fact that, having been washed and groomed within an inch of her life, she felt it imperative to go out and roll in....well, never mind what, but I used a lot of bad language as I hauled the stinking little object in and immersed it again. She was unusually quiet about it this time. And I didn`t have time to use the American shampoo and then the French one again - but washing up liquid removes anything.

So we set off down the road, and although she was sick as usual, she is developing a useful talent of not sitting in it.

She had a wait for her class, and sat on my knee and watched the show, and sometimes watched me, in case the washing up liquid should make another appearance. Open shows are full of all sorts of dogs, to which she awarded imperious stares of contempt. I checked to see that her class did not contain a Pekingese. I have found over the years that Papillons have considerable difficulty in accepting Pekingese as real, and not terrifying hallucinations. They smell like dogs, they make dog noises....they look like fugitives from Area 51. I think it is the black flat face that does it. Angel had met some at training class, and was appalled. She had adopted the standard Papillon reaction of screaming hysterically, quite out of character.

However, there wasn`t one. She strode into the ring, and did it all perfectly, with great assurance and an obvious awareness that she was out there redefining cute. And she won. And she expected to win.

She had to go back in for the Best Puppy challenge, where her opposition was a much older Bichon Puppy. She turned to see, and the look of contempt she gave it brought a ripple of laughs round the ring.

But she didn`t win that time, and was most unwilling to leave the ring. "I haven`t done the walking bit! I know what to do - I`ve been trained! Clearly you haven`t!" I carried her off, wriggling.

I think Angel and I will be having some fun at future shows.