News Update
July.2008
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Well, I keep saying it that I mustn't leave it so long between updates and that is my mid year resolution. I think it was Easter we covered up to before but I suppose the milestone for us occured on the 25th March when it was our 30th wedding anniversary. Gee whizz, 30 years! I'd have been realeased after 15 if I'd had a life sentence! The day after our anniversary Mary went on a cruise. She flew out to Miami and she was lucky because she flew out with BA from Terminal 3 the day before they moved the flights to Terminal 5 so at least her luggage went with her. She had 4 nights in the Hilton Hotel in Fort Lauderdale and then joined the cruise liner. It was a K9 cruise with nearly 200 dog people on board apart from the other 2000 plus cruisers and Mary went to a number of canine seminars which she found very interesting and enjoyable. They stopped at 3 Caribbean islands and her favourite was St Thomas. The liner was 4 years old although when they first went on board they thought it was a 104 years old as the whole of the boat was based on movies and was very art deco. The food was superb especially in the a la carte restaurant which was very lightly used as most of the people on the cruise preferred the self service dining - probably because you could eat as much as you liked and go back as many times as you liked. Some people have rather large appetites it appears! Anyway she had a great time with Ann Bulke from Coolangatta in Australia who was with her on the cruise.



Another full house for a Wiccaways night in Rugby


She was really pleased with me as the day after she arrived back she had a Cabaret night for the Midlands Bernese Mountain Dog Club at the Three Counties Showground which turned out a great night and Mary provided many laughs with tales of what happened on the cruise. Working on the assumption that after her holiday she had got to do some work, two days after this she flew out to Turin in Italy where she was taking a weekend obedience course for Paulo Maroni. Lovely people and she really enjoyed her weekend. The following weekend the 19th April Mary was taking an agility training day for Shrewsbury Dog Training Club and the idea had been that at the conclusion of the day that we would drive straight to Scotland and Mary would compete at Knightswood Championship Obedience Show on the Sunday. But, it is difficult with a number of dogs travelling with us to get a hotel to let them all in and we really don't want to leave the dogs overnight in a vehicle in the carpark as we would never forgive ourselves if anything happened so we went back home and set off at 3.30am to Glasgow. Would you believe that we actually got there too early. Was it worth it? Well no it wasn't! The dogs were definitely not on form not helped by the fact that Mary had not had time to put the training in so you reap what you sow.  Should have stayed in bed!


Back to school for Mary


May was destined to be a busy month. The first weekend Mary had an Evening Cabaret at the Pershore college in Evesham and just two days later Mary was show secretary for our Rugby DTC's Championship Obedience show and I was show manager. And just two days after that we were back up to Scotland as Mary had a Cabaret Evening in Broxburn on the Wednesday and the following day an agility training day for Broxburn club. Worth mentioning that Broxburn very kindly put us up overnight in a Travel Lodge. Now everyone knows that they take dogs in a Travel Lodge and I said when I booked in do they have any problems in the car park because of the dogs, this was in Livingstone which is between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Probably the reason they didn't have any problems with the car park was that the outside of the building was festooned with CCTV and they had a 24 hr receptionist to monitor the cameras. So my self and Mary did our usual trick she took two dogs in, I followed shortly after with another two and then Mary followed after me with yet another two. Which worked well as usual. We obviously left the hotel to do the Cabaret night and on our return I went in with two dogs came back out and Mary went in with two dogs and then I came back to take the last two and when I went back through with the last two dogs the receptionist piped up "Excuse me, have you paid for those two dogs?" and I said that I think they had been as we hadn't paid for the room. So he was quick to tell me that they hadn't been paid for and took £10 per dog off me there and then. Now, I don't think these people are stupid and they had obviously watched us take 6 dogs in but decided just to nobble us for 2 but we could have been in a position that they would charge for all of the dogs and that would have charged £60 for the dogs and the room itself would have only cost £39 for 2 humans. Is this barmy or wot?! (An extremely funny tale about Rooney in the lift, if you come to one of Mary's Cabaret nights she will tell you the story). We got back very late on the Thursday night and on the Friday lunchtime we were towing the caravan down to Tunbridge Wells for their annual dog agility weekend where I had the Pedigree dog stand out. And what a gorgeous weekend we had, one of the few we've had this year. I think this was the second time that we used our new caravan. We had a policy mature so I decided to push the boat out as its no good putting the money in the bank as the dogs can't spend it. Mary thought I had gone potty but there you go! The first time we used the new caravan we joined the Caravan & Camping Club and took it to their site at Walton on Thames with our friends Dave and Julie Skipp. In all the years we've owned a caravan we'd only ever been on a commercial site once and I reckon that was 27 years ago so they were our guides for the weekend. And what a fantastic site. No club house, showers etc but a smashing location with electric next to the river with a superb dog walking area and if you walked out the front gate of the site you accessed thousands of acres of public land to walk the dogs and there was a great pool to swim the dogs with a beach. When we checked into the site the lady did think we had a few dogs with us but we never did tell them that we'd got 9! Anyway, back to May.


Last night of the Daventry course

The middle of May on the Tuesday we were on the way down to Tiverton in Devon. Mary had a Cabaret Evening, an obedience training day and a HTM training day. We were very fortunate that one of the ladies on the committee actually works at the Best Western Hotel in Tiverton so the evening was in their function room and we had two nights stopping at the hotel with dogs allowed to stop in our room! (If you come to one of Mary's Cabaret nights you might hear the tale about the shredded coat hanger, very very funny) A very pleasant and comfortable hotel just off the main through routes and with a grassed area which was great for exercising the dogs and very picturesque with a brook with ducks on behind the hotel. It was a full house on the Cabaret night once again, I say again as this seems to be a yearly fixture and both of the seminars were sold out as well. I think that everyone enjoyed themselves. 17th & 18th of May Mary was competing in obedience at Loughborough. This was followed on the 20th by a Cabaret night in Darlington at the K9 Pursuits Dog Day Care and Training Centre owned by two young ladies one of whom was a blast from the past - Gill Crawford. She is half owner of a very successful venture on a trading estate along with Andrea where they have dozens of dogs in on a day care and have training classes as well. Good facilities and the dogs are well looked after and kept entertained. I would have no hesitation in leaving our dogs there if the need arose. On the bank holiday at the end of May we were at Nottingham Championship agility show and this weekend wasn't so good for the weather not too much rain but very windy and unfortunately the show is virtually split into two as it is in two separate farmers fields so not the best of grounds. I had a trade stand there but I was a little bit stuck in the corner so not the best for trade. The last weekend in June it was Hinckley's annual Championship agility show. They had a new venue, smashing little venue at a touring caravan site. Things did not look good when we arrived as although it wasn't raining I don't think the ground drained very well as we had to be towed on but fortunately we didn't have much rain over the weekend so it did dry out. The guy who owns the site seems to be a great guy and put his own bar on at his own prices and that is probably why people were drinking so much. Seriously, they had two good evenings over at the marquee, no disco just a bit of back ground music and people talking. We had a trade stand out again and we'd been put right next to the Championship ring in the corner but for business it was just about the worst place we could have been put so it was a quiet and peaceful weekend. And this brings us in to June.


Mary being interviewed for Lights,Camera,Dogs

On the 7th & 8th June it was the traditional Thames DTC big agility weekend. Another great show for Thames, fantastic live group in the marquee on the Saturday night as usual. We didn't need to go into the marquee to listen to them as we were nearby and just sat in the comfort of our caravan!


Marys weeks course at Daventry

On the 13th - 15th June it was Newton Heath Agility Weekend. I was up there because the ABC semi-final was on the Saturday and we decided to take the caravan up and do the whole weekend. A very popular show in a lovely venue at Tatton Park albeit a bit windy over the weekend but at least we weren't drowned. Congratulations to all those who qualified for Olympia especially Mark Douglas who won the semi-final with his Kelpie.


Obedience Training in Daventry

The following weekend it was the start of Mary's annual week long course. We moved both the venue and date this year and the new venue was at Kath Dark's farm in Daventry. We had a small indoor hall to use, an outdoor paddock for agility, separate small paddock for obedience, dozens of acres to use as dog exercise areas and a smashing place to park caravans and tents actually a bit like a doggy utopia. And Kath was smashing all week and really accommodating. As usual it was obedience in the mornings and agility in the afternoons and as the venue had changed we had quite a number of new faces this year. But as usual it was over subscribed. We had two great barbeques on the Sunday and the Thursday and on the Thursday night in the small hall the handlers were giving demonstrations of heelwork to music which were excellent no doubt helped by the copious amounts of wine that the handlers had drunk and the evening finished off with everyone up on the floor and dancing. Quite an amazing night, we've never had anything quite like this before. Oh, and worth mentioning that on the Monday night there was 25 of us went up to the local pub 'The Countryman' which was only a 3 - 4 minute walk away and had a superb meal. My steak was scrummy! I don't think that there is any doubt that we will be back there again next year and we will start a waiting list for places after Christmas.


Party night in Daventry

The following couple of weekend we were back to shows again. I had the Olympia semi-finals at the Royal Show and also I was up in Perth in Scotland. But on Monday 7th July we had a young lady called Jess Jarvis who came down from North Wales for a weeks work experience. She probably thought that she would have been doing loads of work but it was a bit spasmodic but she did help Mary with the dogs and worked one of our dogs at training. She was a lovely girl and fitted in really well which was pretty important as she stayed in our house for the week. During that week Mary had been booked to do a demonstration at a school in Sutton Coldfield. It was a junior school so very young children. We just about escaped the rain which was handy as it was outside. It was very enjoyable for them and they really got excited seeing all the dogs do all the tricks. But also it was really disappointing for us about how politically correct that some of the teachers and adult helpers were. They didn't want the children to actually touch the dogs and I think it summed it up when one of the children did actually touch the dog and the adult in charge of the group immediately told the child not to touch their face or eyes after touching the dog. I did pass my comments to the organiser at the school afterwards about this but it doesn't go well for the future of children if they are brought up thinking that all animals are dirty and disease ridden. Anyway, Jess enjoyed her day and she was Mary's chief assistant for the day. Jess finished helping Mary run an agility ring at Rugby Championship Show before her Mum called in on the Saturday evening to collect her.


Party night with Mary & Jan in Daventry

On the 16th July we had a Wiccaweys Mary Ray Cabaret night at the Benn Hall in Rugby. It was a fundraising night for Wiccaweys who Mary has seemed to adopted. We had a great venue with tiered seating for 164 and some seats down the sides so everyone was guaranteed a good view. As it happened the following day Richard Curtis was due to come up to visit Mary to practise the Crufts routine ready for the Wag & Bone (Saturday August 2nd in Windsor) so I asked him to come up the previous evening and be our special guest star. What a fantastic night it was, it was a sell out and Mary and Richard were both on top form. During the previous week we had a couple of visits from a film crew who are making a documentary called 'Lights, Camera, Animals' . It is due to go out on Channel 5 either at the end of this year or the beginning of 2009. It is a series of 12 programmes and a piece on Mary and Richard will be included on one of the programmes. Graham, the camera man who came to film the Cabaret night was absolutely enthralled with the evening, in fact his biggest complaint was that he'd got too much good footage and he didn't know how he was going to get it into the 10 minute slot that it was originally allocated for in the programme! Now, Mary likes to on occasion show a little bit of early training with a puppy and Pauline Barr, who works for me also volunteers for Wiccaweys brought along a Wiccaweys puppy to our house the evening before. Sarah from Wiccaweys had a sweet little puppy in for rehoming so that is the one that Pauline brought over. Her name was Bunty and she was a 9 week old cross - which had collie, perhaps a bit of spaniel and a bit of terrier in her. The morning of the Cabaret night Mary did an hour with her in the living room and she was a cracking little puppy - really keen and on the Cabaret night of course people were amazed how a 9 week old puppy could pick up things so quickly with the help of a clicker.



Marys sister Tricia with Molly her new wiccaways rescue puppy

The problem was everybody kept saying are you having the puppy? And I kept saying no we're not we've already got 9 and we're not ready for a new puppy yet and that was a successful stance to take - well almost. What I didn't realise that Mary's sister Tricia had fallen in love with her. Tricia lives in a self contained annexe at our house and two days later Mary and Tricia were on their way over to Wiccaweys! Tricia had decided that although she has our dogs in with her some of the time that she was ready to have her own dog again as a companion and she'd fallen in love with Bunty or I should say with Molly because that is Bunty's new name. She is a super little dog although she doesn't like being left by herself and Tricia had to get up at 3am as she couldn't stand the crying! So that has now been solved, Molly now sleep in a crate next to Tricia's bed and a good night's sleep is being had by all and she has settled in really well. Myself and Mary have been very careful in this first week to ensure that we don't have too much to do with Molly as it is important that Molly bonds with Tricia which is exactly what seems to be happening. And surprisingly Molly seems to be keener on humans than she is dogs so it is looking good at the moment and there is no doubt that we will be borrowing Molly for the odd Cabaret night.


The Paws & Music Show at the new Rugby venue

The following week was going to be another busy one. On the 22nd July Mary had been booked to do a ten minute spot at a company conference awards evening. It was really good. They had an audience of 250, a fairly big stage which they very kindly carpeted for Mary, it was a very big budget do with a full lighting and sound crew (I should have charged more!). We had to go up earlier to do a little rehearsal which was fine. Mary was due on at 9.15 and they provided us with a nice dinner at 8pm. The host for the evening was Keith Chegwin and we have met Keith before and he is a brilliant compere but more importantly he is a really nice guy and a real pleasure to work with and he is just like us down to earth and tells it how it is. They had a variety of acts on it was like a mini variety show. When we had our meal we sat opposite Nemesis who were the dancers from Milton Keynes on Britain's got Talent and sat next to Mary was that extremely talented young man again from Britain's got Talent - Charlie. He's a lovely lad and still got his feet firmly on the floor and the day after this evening they were due to fly out to the Phillipines to do some tv work, I'm sure he's got a tremendous future in front of him. Mary was first on at 9.15, she had originally been scheduled to be later in the programme but she was slotted in first so she could start with the carpet on the stage.


Mary & Charlie from Britain Got Talent at a cabaret for a big Company

She was due to do 6 minutes with Foxy showing all the moves, 3 minutes of an edited Barnum routine and I had suggested that then we either got Keith Chegwin or a member of the audience to either work Foxy or Levi. Mary went on stage and she had the audience in her pocket within seconds, the cameras were flashing and they were all stood up round the edges of the room and little Foxy was fantastic. I said to the stage manager do you want her to stop now after the 5 or 6 minutes and he said no, let her carry on. She moved on to the routine with Levi which was brilliant and then at the end of that Keith came on and took Mary on to the dance floor at the front of the stage and said there was going to be a competition and he wanted 3 volunteers who of course he'd already chosen. And it was to be a leg weaving competition. The first one was a tallish guy who did it really well with Levi for the length of the dance floor to tremendous applause from the audience. The second was a shortish lady who had a go with Foxy, well she had a longish dress on so she had to hitch up her dress to do this, well the place was in uproar but she did manage to get a few weaves in eventually. The final one was a young man who was a bit apprehensive about dogs (must have gone to that school in Sutton Coldfield!) and he made quite a good job but not quite as good as the first guy. Now it was picking the winner time which the audience did on applause. The first guy should have won it of course but it was the young lady and the audience brought the roof down when it was time to vote for her. It really was a good atmosphere and we'd have loved to have stayed and watched the rest of the show but of course when you are working on something like this you are just a member of the staff so you have to do your bit and leave. I would have really loved to have watched Charlie singing though!


Mary and the MC Keith Chegwin