Anderson, South Carolina Show

Monday, May 07, 2007
Anderson, South Carolina Show Category: Pets and Animals
I went with my handler to a show this weekend and it was soooooo cool! I FINALLY got to see how a pug and frenchie are groomed from start to finish. The conditions were lousy - they had us set up in an open air cattle barn with sawdust everywhere, on top of red clay which got wet during the monsoon that poured down. I was covered with red clay from head to toe. It was interesting how many alternative solutions people came up with to keep their dogs clean! And some of the things people wore into the ring had me wondering if their nice clothes had suffered some tragic fate during the bad weather. So I learned about setting up, tearing down, grooming, and schedules. Remember I've only had one dog at a time and one ring to worry about I learned about politics (the same woman who complained to another person last month about their dog running up on hers intentionally let her dog run up on my handler's puppy's rear and got him all bent out of shape.). I met the coolest man from Germany who had us cracking up about his stud dog being a stud dog while being examined and they couldn't get his thingy back in even during the photo shoot, so he had to photoshop it out.But the kicker was this rep from Isle of the Dogs grooming products. She was a hoot. Said that one day she was helping a friend with her products for sale, including sqeaky toys and those little lights that hang on the collars and flash as you're walking your dogs at night. Well, it was getting close to ringtime for her, so she dumped her arms full of products, grabbed her dog, and ran to the ring. Ringside, her dog leaned down and drank out of a woman's iced tea and she was embarassed, offered to buy her some new tea, and the woman politely refused. So they're changing over for the next set of people and the woman with the iced tea turns out to be her JUDGE. So then she's trotting around the ring and realizes she has a flashing light still attached to her belt loop and tries to subtley reach over and turn it off. As she's stacking the dog on the table in front of the judge, the judge says in a very prim and cool voice, "do you realize that you have a sqeeze me sticker on your left breast?" It must have rubbed off of the squeaky toys. Needless to say, she got 3rd out of 3 dogs. But she made us feel better about our day - lol. I told her she should have said, "well, I was expecting a male judge." hahahaha ... crazy.
We came out of the weekend with Vincent getting some nice points. He was stunning and stately. And he's such a good boy with a sweet spirit. He was my buddy this weekend. And we met an awesome lady who has been working with and breeding frenchies for 27 years and knows a lot about health in general. She's going to run a saliva test on Gator and we're going to get a plan together!! It was good to see my little man again after so long. He got to come home with me. And Mushu got to go on the trip this weekend, too. He handled it all like a champ, a tribute to Daisy's even-tempered nature.