On the 13^th and 14^th of November at the invitation of the Kennel Club we took a team of 8 dogs and handlers, 4 assistants, and team leader to Discover Dogs at Earls Court, London, to put on a total of 4 displays based on the Kennel Club’s Silver Good Citizen Dog Scheme. The opening and closing routines were various intricate manoeuvres with dogs and handlers to the music from Begorah. In between these routines were exercises all included in the Silver test as set by the Kennel Club, these included such things as food manners, the right and wrong way of travelling dogs in vehicles, recall to handlers with distractions, vet’s inspections, and play with your dogs. Due to the Kennel Club not giving me the music until just 3 weeks prior to the weekend the team only had 3 rehearsals to the music, very difficult, and then when we did arrive on the Saturday at 8am we did not get a full rehearsal time, doubly difficult as the width of the ring was something we were not used to, 10 minutes was all we had to practice the opening routine. Nightmare!

The team consisted of Kathryn Souster with Cavalier King Charles spaniel Daisy, Heather Holden with Golden Retriever Fumba, Pat Pettet with Golden Retriever Connie, Deanne Batehup with Border Collie Skye , Sue Thornton with Brittany Cyd, Becky Layphries with cross Blue, Janice Davis with Border Collie Sam, Gina Pink with German Spitz Bailey. The team also included the assistants Beryl Greenslade, Len Davis, John Souster, Norman Pettet, and Helen Souster, and Team Leader was me. The team also competed in a fun game called temptation alley, which consisted of toys and lots of bowls of food which the dogs had to ignore. This was a race against Dogs for the Disabled and Battersea Dogs’ Home, the gauntlet was thrown down and with lots of audience participation and shouting from Heidi Lawrence “ go for it gal” we won. Great fun, with some dogs unable to resist the grub in the bowls but star of the race was Fumba .

The team worked really hard and pulled out all the stops for the weekend, but we had to leave poor Gaye Wells out as she had hurt her knee and it was too painful for her to work Dash her little Cocker Spaniel. Bad luck Gaye.

A huge thank you to the team for all the effort and hard work in making it a successful display.

Click here to view photographs taken by Norman Pettet and Richard Thornton