News Update
March 2013

Stop Press:

I still have a couple of vacancies for Mary’s Competitive Obedience and Agility Week at Daventry, 5 mornings of obedience and 4 afternoons of Agility, the obedience paddock is available all day. Details can be found on the Diary page.

I understand that Angela White still has a couple of vacancies for the Obedience and HTM Week being held in Haxey, nr Doncaster. 5 Mornings of Obedience and 4 afternoons of HTM This is at the beginning of April so will take place very soon and once again details can be found on the Diary page, if we have limited numbers this will be condensed to 3 days Monday to Wednesday


WOT A START TO 2013 FOR MARY !!!

Well, unlike the usual we will start with the latest - and what a fantastic time Mary had at Crufts; in fact, what a fantastic time Mary had in the last year! I don’t know whether it’s because she gave up Agility so had more time to devote to Obedience - which must have had a bearing on it - but last year she won 10 tickets / 27 first places with Levi and 6 tickets / 19 fIrst places with Foxy which, of course, at Crufts culminated in her receiving the DTW Top Dog Award for the most points gained in the last 12 months with Levi 398 and she was also runner-up in the Bitch category with Foxy with 278, Well done to Linda with Levi’s sister Denim on winning that with 328 points.


Apart from the usual pre-Crufts Obedience training, for Mary Crufts starts at the end of the previous year when she has to choose her music.

Unlike a normal HTM routine, the BIS has to be something a little bit different, so the first job for Mary was for her to pick some music with Richard as we both believe this is the key to a great routine, preferably something that is known by the audience and that it is possible to choreograph correctly, so the final choice was made for ‘Putting on the Ritz’. Also at this time, Mary had decided to ask Richard Curtis to partner in the routine. A number of rehearsals were held, both in Rugby and at Richard’s home then two short ones at the NEC at the start of Crufts which, in Mary’s words, were “not quite perfect”.


We have had some years where a brief glimpse was made of the routine or possibly half of it but we never actually know until the television people have decided. When I saw the time schedules for the Sunday, I realised that they were going to show the whole routine as Channel 4 would go into adverts at 7:00 pm, more adverts were scheduled for 7:10 pm and Mary was scheduled in at 7:05 pm. And the result – absolutely marvellous! Mary and Richard did a superb routine and, as I write this there is a home video of it on YouTube but I am hopeful of a full professional version going on shortly. Mary and Richard were absolutely delighted, the choreography was superb and it just goes to show that you don’t need anything too complicated to be successful in HTM.




Well, what can I say about the Obedience Championships - they were just brilliant! Unfortunately I did not see the dogs work myself, the reason being that I have to spend all day in the arena so it’s a case of seeing Mary in the morning then we meet again in the evening. In the Bitch class, we were both absolutely delighted when Foxy took the Crufts Reserve Ticket – she is now ten years old and in the last few months has had a muscle injury so had to lead a bit steadier life so to get the Reserve Ticket was just brilliant and Mary was really pleased. And for her and Foxy, it just topped off a great year. Of course, for the Dog Championship, Mary was under a little more pressure; when you’ve had such a successful year and Levi has been so brilliant it is always going to be a nervous experience competing on the green carpet at Crufts. However, she need not have worried as they tell me his work was quite stunning and she was by now absolutely ecstatic that she had the Reserve in the Bitch and Ticket in the Dog with Levi. You could say that Levi was expected to do well but I think everyone knows that what you expect to happen at Crufts, sometimes just doesn’t.




So that was the third day out of the way with just one more to go for Mary and this was the World Cup when she was in the English team. No doubt, all the gory details will be printed in full but the English team had a run off but finished up in second place with the winning place going to Holland. BUT Levi took the award for the best individual performance throughout the whole competition. Well, of course by now Mary was more than a little ecstatic as this was better than she could have dreamed of in every possible way.


Only one more hurdle to cross now, and this was another big one - we were told that Best in Show night was a sell-out, with even helpers such as I struggling to get tickets so it was apparent that not only was Mary going out live with her whole routine on Channel 4 there would be over 6,000 people watching the performance live in the arena. No pressure there then! It’s bad enough for me, stepping out to commentate with a 5,000-6,000 live audience but goodness knows what it’s like stepping out there with a dog when anything could go wrong.




If you watched it on television, you will know that Clare Balding did a wonderful introduction for Mary stating that she started the sport of HTM then the music struck up and there was an arena introduction from Nick Brooks-Ward, about 30 seconds in the cleaner aka Richard Curtis wanders in with his broom and they perform a magical routine with Levi pulling off Richards cleaners jacket! It really was ‘Putting on the Ritz’ - they looked so smart, the choreography was spot-on and they had an enormous amount of applause from the audience at the end. It was just a great Crufts, both for me with my role in the Main Ring and for Mary, Levi & Foxy it was just the stuff that dreams were made of.












So the trail starts again, with Ticket season soon being here. We will not have a trade stand at Crufts again as it is just too much so we will just do the odd trade stand at shows and mail order.






Now what about the ‘earlier in the year’ news? Well, I suppose the biggest event was me going on holiday. I was extremely lucky to be able to have over two weeks away with a friend on a week’s personal guided tour of Ecuador then on to join a luxury 24 cabin motor yacht for a guided tour of the Galapagos Islands. I would like to tell you how good that was but I can’t because words are not suffice. I was really not very well the week before we went so was very lucky that this cleared up but unfortunately, as soon as I left home, Mary had it and I was corresponding with her on Facebook telling me how ill she was and she lost her sense of smell and taste. I sent her one Facebook message saying where we had been and how good it was and she sent me a very short three word reply – “well, lucky you!” I think it was at that point that I thought I was in the best place while she was being unwell !!!!!!



Mary has had a couple of early year courses including a weekend with Jackie Moir which was like a Clicker Introductory Weekend - very successful, a great bunch of people and a lovely village hall just outside Gateshead. She offered to let us stay with her but with the dogs and everything else we said that we would stay in the motorhome and parked it outside, which worked very well - even though it snowed!


Mary also took a weekend for Kathy Ingham. This was all Obedience and held just outside Warrington and what a great place! It was called Grappenhall and we were in the community centre with the motorhome parked in the big car park. A great function room, Kathy arranged for some carpets, great exercise area for the dogs and a lovely bunch of people again. So I think we will be going to both of these sometime again in the future!


As I complete this update the post has arrived with another delivery of congratulations cards and Mary wishes to thank everyone for sending them she really appreciates it.






14/03/2013