Life after Crufts

Well Crufts seems such a long time ago, its now time to get back into training and arranging the diary for the rest of the year. Details of new workshops will soon be on the website for Sweden, Bridgewater and a couple of others if there are places avaliable. Bookings are already coming in for 2011 which seems wrong as im sure christmas was only two weeks ago!! i suppose having a busy life means time goes quickly and in only a few weeks i will be off teaching in Australia, fingers crossed the jet lag is not as bad as last time.

The main item on my mind at the moment is what routines will Pogo do next ? I already have a long list of things i want to teach her as of course with the last few months being focused on Crufts you dont want to teach her anything new. I know if i dont start now on the new stuff time will again run away with me.

It was interesting watching the various Crufts finals back online especially when you see moves I did first with my dogs in the Uk many years ago. I think care needs to be taken with some of the moves that are being done now that they are not dangerous for the dog as the last thing the sport needs is for dog to get injured while performing.

Im slowly getting around to putting up some video of Pogos Crufts routines but some others have already put several versions of Pogos surf routine on youtube. The HTM routine will have to be put to different music as Lets face the music and dance is one of the tracks the Youtube will not allow.

Having had this last weekend off it was nice to get out in the New Forest walking the dogs. Betty decided to see if she can walk on water for the first time, luckily the water was not too deep !

Crufts

Well its all over for another year but what a great Crufts it was this year for me and Pogo. The first day was the freestyle final which i am delighted to say Pogo won by performing her Hawaii 50 routine. Everything seemed to go to plan and it got a great reaction from the crowd. As Pogo had won this final she then had to go back in at the end of the day to perform it which is not ideal as she was in the HTM final the next day.
The second day dawned and i was a bit nervous about our HTM routine as it was a bit out of our comfort zone. Normally i tell stories in the routines but this year i had decided to push myself and do a routine to Lets face the music and dance. The routine went well although a couple of times my mouth was so dry the commands didn't come out so we had a couple of wobbles. Now i thought the crowds reaction to the Hawaii routine was good but this routine seemed to go down even better. I had lots of people coming up after the final to say how much they enjoyed it and have received lots of emails to complement us on our performance. Many people have asked whether or not i have taken dance lessons well not at all i just practised a lot to get myself right. Although we came third the top three all scored twenty six points with the decimal places deciding where we came.
Onto the Saturday where i had to represent England as i had won the freestyle final on the Thursday. Pogo by now was tired so it took a lot of effort to get her to perform as she did. The international competition was probably the toughest there has ever has been at Crufts. The standard was very high and considering Pogo was tired i was delighted we gained second place.
Sunday was just as busy as i had three displays to do in one ring which i had also been doing on the previous days as well as competing. Plus i was giving a demo on the Samsung stand which was very well received with over 200 people watching in a very small space.
I would like to thank everyone who wished me luck and congratulated us on our achievements. Also a big thank you to Penny and Jean who help me out during the four days at Crufts and made it so enjoyable.

Last training session

Last night i went and did the final main training session before Crufts eek scary! Pogo went well but i think the handler could have done a lot better. I had the session videoed which meant i could see what i was doing or more like what i should be doing. In my defence i was only doing short bits of the HTM routine so it was hard to get into it. Fingers crossed on the day with the aid of some alcohol i will not let Pogo down. So over the weekend i am going to be writing out my lines of " must stand up straight" and "shoulders back and smile" 1000 times !!

Bridport masterclass evening

Its been a busy couple of weeks with cabaret evenings and workshops. Last Saturday i went down to Dorset to the Freshwater holiday park. It was nice to stop at the beach at West Bay and give the dogs a bit of a run before making our way to the venue.

As the holiday park is shut this time of year it made this an ideal venue for a masterclass evening. We were performing in the entertainment area where there was a dance floor and stage. Being a holiday camp i felt that i should really be wearing a red coat like all good camp entertainers. The dogs had been on form the previous weekend at the cabaret evening so i hoped that all would go well.

Betty strutted her stuff well and with the help of some of the younger members of the audience was a big hit. She is developing her own fan club and i had so many people come up afterwards wanting to hold Betty. All the other dogs did well and the evening went down extremely well which was great as it was raising money in aid of a charity.