I should know better

A quiet time here, punctuated by two fairly local championship shows - great for once not to have to load a car and head out into the night with a cargo of dogs who start off squeaky clean, but may well be the worse for wear by the time they are unloaded.

Cupcake in particular hates travel.   He begins to dribble before he even gets into the car.   With travel sick pills he will not actually be sick, but has been known to make....offerings...from the other end.  There is no pill for that.   (Although the old saying about swallowing corks of varying size till you hit on one that fits comes to mind...)  He longs for a method of transport that does not involve four wheels and going round corners.

Belle at one year old

Angel loves it.   She sleeps all the way, on her back with her legs in the air like an upended beetle, in her little travel box.

This time the shows were back to back - two consecutive days.  Angel was delighted.   She would love a show every day.  Cupcake shuddered - two car journeys!

Two very contrasting shows.  We did reasonably at the first - but the judging was so slow that all sense of continuity was lost and the cafe did a roaring trade.  The Event Manager stood by with a watch, reminding us when the hall let would run out.   Fortunately Belle and Cupcake are very reliable and do not get bored, and anything that slows Angel up is a good thing.

Home very late from that one and off early again to the next.

Cupcake - just a year old  now

This , in contrast was efficiently quick in judging - but results were strange.  Cupcake was thrown out, but I didn`t feel so bad when I saw other top quality dogs go the same way.   At last I got an explanation.  "She only puts up dogs that stand like statues and keep looking at her."   Well, Cupcake didn`t like her.   He is too much of a gentleman to protest, but when she tried to attract him to look at her, he simply and eloquently turned his head away, and kept it turned.   Angel?   Stand still?  Look at the judge?   Amazing she was placed at all.

I headed off to the Afghan and Pharaoh rings, where my friends and relatives were having great success.

I find two days running pretty exhausting nowadays, and will be glad not to do it too often.

Angel, on the other hand, was very disappointed to wake on Monday and find that we really weren`t going again!