Dog Show Tales - Sharon

Monday, July 23, 2007

Dog show tales - Sharon
Category: Pets and Animals

When we went to the show in North Carolina last May, it was definitely an adventure. The accomodations were attrocious. They had people set up in a barn that had a red earth floor covered with sawdust. And to top it off, it rained... and rained... and rained. They had no decent facility for shampooing a dog - simply a table out back with a garden hose and it was so cold, any dog who attempted to be shampooed on site was immediately shivering. Then once they were primped and ready, the red earth stained their fur, the trenches of water would mess up their fur from the belly down, and sawdust was getting in their eyes. The men were lucky - they could put a large breed dog across their shoulders and run across the parking lot, but most people had to get creative. Some made little booties out of doggy poo bags, some had rolling carts that the put their crates in, some ran as quickly as they could and tried to undo the damage under the canopy outside before going into the building. Overall, it was one of the worst shows I have ever been to, and the over-inflated ego of the adversarial superintendent did nothing to help matters.

We met some wonderful people, though, and the dogs we took did quite well in the ring. One of the people we met was a vendor for some shampoo products. After she had been in the ring, she was relaying how she had not succeeded that day because her dog eliminated in the ring. Evidently he wouldn't go outside due to the rain, and she wasn't the only victim that weekend. But once she got rolling, she shared a few stories, then whipped out her motherload of funny show stories on us.

At one particular show, she had been assisting a friend with her vendor station. They had many general items, toys, squeaky toys with squeeze stickers, blinking lights that attach to collars for safety at night, etc. She noticed the time, and ran to get her dog to get ringside when she was due to show. Arching her neck, trying to figure out where things stood, she heard a noise and noticed that her dog had it's head in the glass of a woman sitting in a chair beside the ring. He was drinking her iced tea!! She apologized profusely and offered to buy the woman a new tea, which she politely refused.

Some announcements were made, and some shuffling occurred, and much to her horror, the woman in the chair stood up and entered the ring as the next judge!! She swallowed hard, and entered the ring with her dog. On their first go-around, she realized she still had a blinking light attached to her belt loop and she casually reached down to turn it off, hoping no one noticed. Still trying to maintain her cool, she followed judge's orders and finally got to the point where she put her dog up on the table, standing across facing the judge. The judge looked at her and commented in a cool voice, "Are you aware that there is a 'squeeze me' sticker on your left breast?"

Needless to say, she didn't win that day. But she sure had us laughing and made us feel better about our day! It would take quite a bit to top that one!!