News Update
March 2012

We had a great Christmas but, as usual, a quiet one as we always stay at home.  The week before Christmas I spent six days down in London running the Kennel Club Olympia Agility Stakes Finals so I’m really ready for a rest and Mary likes a quiet Christmas at home too.  And she always cooks the  Christmas dinner for all the family !



Buying Mary a Christmas present is always a major problem for me!  She did see a Chihuahua at Discover Dogs that she thought at the time could have been for sale.  It was a largish dog and absolutely full of himself.  The breeder was going to put him in the show ring.  So I rang her to see if she’d decided to sell but unfortunately for Mary, the dog had been a huge success in the show ring so she wasn’t selling.  So I was left with the problem of what to get Mary for Christmas.

Now Mary is not computer-orientated at all and has never typed anything in her life – I always have to do it for her.  But our friends Roger and Pauline came over before Christmas and she saw Roger’s ipad and realised that you could download books onto it and also games.  So, clever me thought I’d buy her an ipad and three days before Christmas I got her an ipad 2.  Well, I can’t believe it as she’s now typing, she has caught Facebook-itis which seems to be a prevalent disease in the UK because it appears there are many people she’s communicating with who have the same affliction!  And I still can’t believe she’s typing now!  She now has a huge list of people who want to be her friend but she’s afraid to say ‘yes’ to them all in case she’s inundated.  And to be honest she’s spending that much time on it that I think this would probably make it even worse.  Anyway, it was a great Christmas present for her but I don’t think she’s had time to read many books on it yet.



As soon as Christmas was over, thoughts turned to Crufts of course.

Mary is always under a lot of pressure.  This year, as you may be aware, she has Foxy in the Bitch Championships, Levi in the Dog Championships and Levi in the England team competing in the World Cup.  And that is pressure enough really, but that’s not bad - what does pile the pressure on her is the Heelwork to Music routine on Best in Show Night.

The first problem as always is finding the music.  Mary always looks for some music that will choreograph correctly.  The easier thing would be to do what some competitors do and that is to do a lot of tricks just with music playing but we both believe in choreographing the routine to the actual music.  Then of course you need a theme to work to, as well as to dress to.  And as it’s Best in Show Night, it has to showcase the dog to its full potential without doing anything degrading or silly.  So when it comes to picking music there’s no pressure there at all!

This year Mary has chosen a band piece with a little bit of the 1940s theme and also, as it’s the Queen’s Jubilee Year and the Olympics, we have a bit of a Union Jack theme thrown in as well.  So having got over the music question and the theme, it’s putting it all together which is where the pressure really comes on.  She has done some magnificent routines over the years so that in itself increases the pressure on Mary because it is what’s expected of her.  Anyway, the routine is looking great and I’m sure it’s going to be brilliant in the main ring.



The final piece of the Crufts jigsaw is our little Ozzie.  Mary has been looking at his routine because he’s going to be performing for Jill Houston from Australia in the International Freestyle Competition.  Mary’s had the music and the routine on DVD and she’s been doing some practice with him ready for when Jill arrives from Australia .  Jan has also been working Ozzie to get him used to performed with someone else.  I think Jill will have her work cut out though, because she’s not arriving until the day before Crufts starts so she’s really got just two whole days to perfect a routine and the only place she will have to practise will be Crufts itself.  So if you walk round seeing someone practising with a Sheltie in a corner of the NEC, you’ll know who it is!



As you may have noticed on the Home Page, we had to send our Gypsy over the Rainbow Bridge .  She took poorly and obviously we took her straight to the vets where Mary insisted on blood tests and sadly her kidneys were failing but instead of going to stage 1 failure as most dogs would do, she went straight to stage 4 which is really the end of the line and which, we’re told, can happen with Shelties but no-one can tell us why.  She was a great little dog, we had her as a re-home and she’s performed all over the country on Mary’s Cabaret Evenings, she did do some agility competitions and of course she performed Heelwork to Music at Crufts.  She really was a great little character and very very clever - too clever sometimes, so she will be sadly missed.

Mary has just fitted in a training day for Coventry , she was well looked after at a nice venue Barker Butts and of course some good company & dogs as well.

20/2/2012