PUTTING ON MY FACE

I went to Crufts yesterday. On the Wednesday I was absolutely dreading going and I really thought that I might not. I just could not face the idea of having to put on the show persona that I do in order to make the shows doable.

 Yet after my swim on Thursday morning I came home and within about 10 minutes I had come up with my outfit for the show. This enabled me to contemplate actually attending.

I showed Mary-Grace. It was a very difficult decision even to enter Crufts in the first place. If I did not enter I would have hurt a dear friend and I would have given in to the nasty aspect of the dog came. Yet by entering, if Mary Grace did well, then this nasty element would be thrilled to bits to have something they can bitch about and make themselves feel happier by putting both me and the judge down.

When Mary-Grace one limit bitch I was completely shocked. In fact I did not realise that I had one I thought that the judge had just picked out the first cut. It was the steward who told me that Mary Grace had been placed first. So if you were at the show and you are reading this now you know why my face look the way it did and why I did not have a big grin on my face!

The open bitch winner was absolutely gorgeous and in full bloom and I knew that Mary-Grace would not win the bitch ticket. In fact I was not expecting anything else at all. So when Mrs Cain  came up to me to present Mary-Grace with the reserve bitch ticket I was once again shocked. Of course I was absolutely delighted.

It was an incredibly long day. I think I did not get into the ring until 4 PM and I had been up since 2 AM and at the shows since 6 AM.

It was lovely to meet so many people and have so many people come up and introduce themselves to me because they are friends on Facebook or just because they had heard of me and they wanted to wish me well. It was also a delight to have the owners of one of the boys out of my present litter watch me in the ring and of course see me win.

 I got home about 8 PM in absolutely vile foggy weather. I went to bed soon after and I got up at midday and of course I feel as though I have been run over by a truck. I got through yesterday with much more medication than I would normally take, which is allowed by my doctor because she knows that dog shows are an integral part of my quality-of-life. Today will probably be just an ordinary day as regards the amount of medication.

I have deliberately not named any of the friends that I met some of whom I have not seen for a long time. I will not mention any people by name because I'm bound to leave some out and I do not wish to hurt anybody's feelings.  You know what my memory is like!

Mary-Grace is for me the ideal Lhasa Apso.  She is feminine yet sturdy. She is very well angulated without exaggeration.   She covers the ground effortlessly and with the economy of movement needed in their natural   environment of the Himalayan mountains.  Her skull is moderately narrow rather than the moderately broad that many seem to prefer and her nose is half the  length of her skull. Meaning that her nose is one third of the length from the tip of nose to the occiput.  Now that covers her qualities as a show dog but she surpasses all of that with her most delightful personality. She is incredibly affectionate and she is very smart. She is not the easiest of dogs when it comes to other dogs and she does not back down easily once she decides that she will dominate another! Some puppies she adores and other puppies she does not and we have absolutely no idea what makes the difference! She is very typically weird as all Lhasa Apso are!