Well what a great Crufts Mary had and what a fabulous routine that she did on the Sunday night with Riverdance it was just a shame it wasn’t on mainstream television. She chose Riverdance this year and although I asked her two or three years ago to do it again she was never too keen on repeating it because the type of music it is limits the type of moves that could be used in it – or at least that is what we thought. Anyway, when Mary was waitressing on the tables at the Kennel Club International Agility Festival (is there no end to her talents?!) last August one of the guests for dinner was Vanessa McAlpine who is show manager at Crufts and out of the blue she asked Mary if she would do Riverdance again because it was then known that Riverdance was going to be performed for the last time in the UK during 2009 so that is where the idea of perfoming a Riverdance routine originally came from.

After the decision is made it is quite easy because you don’t do anything for a few months so at the end of the year Mary had to start thinking how she was going to put it together and also make it just that little bit more special. And we thought that it would look good if we could put in some proper Riverdance type Irish dancers and that is a problem in itself. It is not only a problem locating the dance troupe but also convincing them that this is not some sort of joke act it is a serious event and hence the first group we approached who sounded keen on the telephone didn’t actually get back to us at all. But then we were given the details of a group based in Coventry who seemed really keen and they were called Celtic Feet. The next problem was liaising with them to put it all together and arrange rehearsals and to ensure that they understand it was a serious event and not a doggy dancing stunt. And I can tell you that one of the girls is a 5 times world champion. The young lady in charge is called Roisin and her mother who is with them all the time was one of Michael Flatley’s original teachers and the week before Crufts some of the troupe were in Oman dancing for a Arab Prince so obviously it is a concern that being a highly sought after group we needed to emphasise just how important this was. They came over to rehearsals at our training hall a couple of times and it was quite amazing to watch. There were 4 girls and Roisin was in charge and she was an expert choreographer. When I thought something looked great she said “no, do it again it wasn’t quite perfect” so at this point everything was looking good for Crufts.

On the Wednesday afternoon the day before Crufts opened, Mary was booked for a rehearsal in the main arena for an hour at 3pm. It was a bit of a worry because the Celtic Feet troupe couldn’t make it because they were only arriving back from Oman that evening. None the less, Mary had some stand in Irish dancers which we subsequently named “Chronic Feet”! I have to say it is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! Pauline Churchill, Jan Morse, Jan’s daughter Beverley and Mary’s sister Pauline. All of them have got various health problems and it was so funny when they got down on their knees and couldn’t get back up again. What a creaky lot they looked and then when they came out of the arena Ann Roberts did her impression of a picture house ice cream lady offering ibrufen, aspirins, paracetamol etc!

Anyway, we got through the Wednesday and everything was fine and Friday night was to be the full dress rehearsal but not starting until 9pm. Nick Brooks-Ward was in charge, he had previously arranged to have the spotlights in the places where the girls were going to stand and it is probably a good point to say that the sound, as always, was excellent but this year they had a new lighting director and the lighting was just excellent but more than that was innovative. Not just for Mary but for the whole show. Anyway, with Nick’s help and a little bit of fine tuning one hour later Roisin and Mary had got everything how they wanted it.

So we arrived at the big night Sunday. It is always a bit stressful, not helped this year by the extremely tight security when I had to get Roisin, her Mum and the troupe in to Crufts plus the families of the girls. We made use of a little bit of a private side entrance that we had into the arena and we got everybody in trouble free and I’d obtained a supply of best in the house seats for the family so we got them seated there so they could have a good view of the show. The girls had their photo taken with the Crufts Best in Show trophy and they had a nice posh star dressing room with lights all round the mirror etc – it could have been the one that Robbie Williams had used!

I had a busy start to the evening commentating on the agility championships and the minutes tick by and the interval arrived and then it was time for Mary. The programme was running late so it was a rather short interval and we were hoping that everyone would be back in their seats. The lights dimmed and Nick had arranged for a montage of Mary’s previous routines including the original Riverdance that she did in 1997 which she did with Kizzy and as this was drawing to a close Mary entered the arena with the lights down and there was a blue spotlight that highlighted her standing at the back of the arena with Levi. The music started and off she went very well highlighted with spotlights. When she was 2 to 3 minutes into the routine two girls entered the arena from each side and stood along the side of the ring ready to take their places. When Mary was completing her leg weaving part of the routine they danced into the arena and took up their positions on the spotlights and the crowd went wild at this point. Mary sent Levi round one of the girls on each side and they did a twirl then they dropped down onto the knees and in turn on both sides Levi jumped over their arms then they danced back in pairs and stooped down holding hands and Levi jumped between the girls they then danced in to a line with two facing in opposite directions and got the spacing exactly right so that Levi weaved his way through their legs and weaved his way back. They then separated and Mary appeared in the middle with Levi going round Mary on his back legs and the girls went into the finishing pose. And the whole place erupted into applause and cheers and almost a standing ovation and from comments passed afterwards it appears that a lot of people had their tissues out! Mary was jubilant and she had a beautiful waistcoat on that came from Val in Australia and it had shamrock type designs depicted with mirror type jewelling with her black trousers with a sequin strip right down the outside leg. We can’t thank Roisin and Celtic Feet enough for what they did. The 4 young ladies who were doing the dancing had beautiful short lace trimmed dresses on with black tights and their hair and makeup were as you would expect top artistes to have. They looked gorgeous when they were dancing and they didn’t put a step wrong.

Well, there were other things happening at Crufts. We had a trade stand which was extremely successful with the two Pauline’s manning it with a little help from Tanja Guba from Germany. Mary did a one hour demo each day on the Thursday and Friday on the Samsung stand. Samsung are great friends of ours and we have the greatest respect for what they are trying to achieve and have achieved in South Korea. On Thursday morning Mary did a short click and treat demonstration which went down well in the main ring.

On the Sunday the final day, Mary had been chosen to be a member of the English team to compete in the World Cup Obedience Competition against 8 other countries. And again some success, the English team were the winners and Mary got herself 3rd place as an individual with all the other teams competing. So another great result.

It is a shame there were only 2 teams from mainland Europe competing – Holland and Belgium and we can compare that to the 21 countries that were competing in the International agility competition at Crufts on the Saturday.

My highlights of the week? Mary’s routine on Sunday night is number one. Quite stunning and I don’t know if she will be able to produce anything so memorable again (or have I said that before?). Number two would have to be the Saturday night International agility final with the amazing David Munnings taking the crown for England. Number three would be the Sunday night Championship agility finals with young Toni Dawkins taking both the medium and large trophies. My fourth most favourite would have been the International Freestyle. I must mention the most exciting flyball final I have ever seen especially as the Scottish winners Broxburn had their kilts on.

It is a shame that the BBC weren’t at Crufts, a lot of people have missed their coverage but did we miss them? No we didn’t. Was the filming/camera work in the arena better? No comparison. Where could you watch it? On the Crufts website. What a masterstroke, everything that happened in the arena live on the Crufts website via Crufts TV all day everyday. Absolutely brilliant and now until the end of March for a small fee you can go into a video library to watch all what you missed and watch everything you want from the show including obedience. There are many thousands of people throughout the world that would like to know who thought of this innovation so they could nominate that person as Crufts best in show 2009!

We have a few copies of a DVD we have had professionally put together for friends containing all Marys routines from 1997 to 2009 its nearly 2 hours long !!, e-mail me if you are interested.

Dave