Sue's Greyhound Blog

Quite a lot has happened during the summer months. Woody has managed to at least conquer some of his fears and he has also been unexpectedly clever, so here is a short update.

Follow up:

During the summertime we went to Cornwall and visited his nemesis – Trengwainton garden. You may remember that last time we visited, his fear of shiny floors rendered him virtually paralysed halfway across the entrance of the shop, which was highly embarrassing. Well, undeterred we decided that we would visit again. We were all prepared for his embarrassing behaviour to send us through the driveway entrance, but no. We braced ourselves for the inevitable only to find him happily following the girls in front of him – well that was a surprise and no it wasn’t a fluke because he did it again on the way out – what a clever boy!

Whilst still on holiday we entered into a local dog show as a bit of fun and it was a shock to us all when we did rather well – 7 rosettes in all. Woody was the first to get started with a 3rd in Veteran (just 3 weeks off his 9th birthday), we were delighted, he then went on to win 1st place in Handsomest Dog (we know he is, but it is always nice when a judge agrees with you); not bad for an old guy with only 7 teeth!

Pepper, who now seems to be Emily’s dog as she is usually easy to walk, was entered into Junior Handler. Her excitement at suddenly being the centre of attention made her behave like a real twit and she almost tripped Emily up by leaping in front her while being shown to the judge. Despite all this they still came out with another 1st, they then went on to get placed 3rd in Prettiest Bitch – the dog that is, not Emily.

Pickle was by now feeling a little left out, but was happy enough to be placed 4th in Best Rescue Dog. As we had by now been placed with at least one 1st that meant we had to stay to the end for Best in Show so we decided to make a late entry and try our luck with Pickle in The Dog the Judge Would Most like to Take Home – which paid off as she won it! However this now caused us a problem as it is only Emily and I who take the dogs into the show ring and it now meant that Geoff would have to take a dog. As I was still in the ring from Pickles last class I thought it best the he just come in with Woody.

There we all were, waiting with baited breath alongside all the other 1st prize winners. Imagine our shock when the judge suddenly walked up to Woody and Geoff with a huge rosette and lots of congratulations. Needless to say both Emily and I were understandably a little peeved (a polite way of putting it) as we had both done all the hard work to get us all there in the first place. All Geoff had done was walk into the ring and stood there with a dog! After any murderous thoughts had subsided we were all really pleased.

Geoff has now officially retired from showing dogs as he claims he has peaked and that he can’t get any better than winning Best in Show. (He has mentioned it, just a couple of times!) Emily and I are now hooked on showing and Pickle and Pepper have gone on to win another 1st and 6th at the Swallowfield show. Why oh why did I let him take Woody that day? We did later discover however, that the judge was actually a breeder of show Greyhounds and a member of the Greyhound Club – she may have therefore been a little biased towards us, but we didn’t know that when we entered. We just thought she knew a good greyhound when she saw one two or three of them!

The other weekend we returned to the Great Greyhound Gathering in Nottingham and after our recent successes our hopes were high. It was a lovely weekend, the weather was a lot better than forecast and was very warm at times. The classes though were HUGE – 60 dogs in some, but sadly there were no rosettes this year although both Pickle and Pepper were called out in the last 12 of there classes as runners up.

Like last year, we decided to make a mini break of it and booked the same hotel. This year though Woody was not going to be given the chance to embarrass us on the marble floor as he’d be sleeping in the car. We had planned on just taking the girls in with us but at the last minute changed our minds in case he got bored or lonely and howled all night long in the car park – so he had Mrs Pepper for company. They wore their fleece coats and apart from having to eat their dinner in the middle of the car park they were quite happy. Pickle was therefore promoted to the hotel room where I swear she had a 100 watt bulb in her halo that night and was as good as gold – no embarrassing moments with the floor or the stairs and even stayed off the beds all night too, just as well as they had white duvet covers – aarghh!

So maybe the motto of this blog should be that sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. Whether we can cure Woody completely of his floor fetish I don’t know, we shall have to wait and see, but he can do it sometimes which is a paw in the right direction. As for his successes in the show ring, well he’s only just got started – watch out world!