Off with Jim and his dog to the German Short-haired Pointer Association Championship Show at Coventry. for Sam to win the first prize despite being the only entry.
Then back to celebrate Daniel's 22nd Birthday before watching England beat the West Indies cricket team.
Manchester United's dreams of a football treble were dashed by Aston Villa who beat them in today's cup final match.
The dogs eventually settled down and Jim and I got ourselves up at 6.00am to give them a walk before we set off for the German Short-haired Pointer Association Championship Show at Coventry. Fortunately, Sam's tummy upset seemed to have passed and there was no problem in his kennel or in Jim's car on the way.
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Jim wanted us to use his car for this event as we are always using mine and the dogs settled in there well and behaved further as we stopped for some toast and tea once nearly there. The venue was a large open hall where a block of portable show benches had been set up with a ring defined by double row of chairs at the other end. Entries were not particularly large in general and, on my main class of "Special Beginners - Dogs", there was only me as an entry.
Being the first on, I had nobody else to take my lead from and, never having been to show before, made rather a mess of standing and trotting my dog and then left the ring before the judge had finished! It will come as no surprise to me that I was given first prize (as the only entry) but I was to learn afterwards that the judge did not have to do this and could have given me second or third etc. if she did not find Sam acceptable. This, in fact, happened in the Novice Dog Class later where there were five entries. I did not do so well on my other two classes but at least had place cards to carry away.
The day was long, the classes were many and I was not very impressed with the way that a single judge just picks dogs with no marking or justification. This lady liked the smaller, prettier dogs with colour patterns and generally preferred bitches to dogs in the head-to-heads but I very much doubted if the winners could have retrieved a wounded Canada Goose from the middle of a Scottish Loch! Still, it was a good opportunity to improve Sam's manners and handling and good experience for him but how many other such shows I will go to remains to be seen.
Back for Daniel's birthday cake and tea round the lounge television where he opened his presents. My gift will be the money for a large disk drive for his computer. I watched some more televised cricket from the West Indies this evening and saw the hosts slump to some 70 runs ahead on with five second innings wickets down. That of the dangerous player, Jimmy Adams, was taken in an amazing incident off the last ball of the match from a poor full toss from the leg spinner, when a full-blooded shot bounced off the unfortunate silly mid-on Smith's forearm and ballooned up in the air for wicket keeper Jack Russell to run and catch! Smith's arm was X-rayed later and found to be only bruised and not broken.
It seems as if the anti-European Tories are being prepared for a British climb down over the voting terms in the E.E.C. once enlarged from 12 to 16. Manchester United's dreams of a football treble were dashed by Aston Villa who beat them in today's cup final match.