Mary has had a busy time since arriving back from Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, with training trips to France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, demonstrations at the Kennel Club Discover Dogs in London and gaining third place in the Olympia Mini Agility Finals at Christmas. All this of course as well as some training days at home and a few more of her successful evening “one-man shows” with audiences of up to 250. Quite amazing that some of the audience had been to many of these evenings and still find them just as entertaining and instructive. Mary did find the time to fit in a couple of shows and Taz has now won his second ‘B’ making him ‘C’ Obedience only and Foxy has now won three Novice so she is ‘A’ Class Obedience only. She had a very successful day at Newark Obedience Show winning ‘C’ with Quincy, ‘B’ with Taz, Novice with Foxy, third place in ‘C’ with Kizzy and even little Gypsy got 5th place in Novice. So she came home on a bit of a high and it was something of a clean-up day really.
On 26tth February we have the Heelwork to Music Show at Ryton-on-Dunsmore. Mary’s Crufts routine will be almost complete by then but unfortunately she cannot enter it into Advanced freestyle as she is using more than one dog and of course this would not be acceptable for the competition. However, she is going to enter Advanced HTM with Kizzy performing a routine to the Stars and Stripes music by Souza. We thought this was very apt as this is the tenth anniversary of this show, the first one taking place in 1996, and Mary entered Kizzy with this routine at the very first show held. We don’t really believe she will do much good as she will not have had any chance to rehearse it but it will be a little bit original – same dog and same routine after ten shows.
At Crufts, Mary will once again be extremely busy. She is in the midst of choreographing a new routine helped by Jan and Julie. This year it will be to music from a West End show and as mentioned previously, she is going to be using more than one dog in it so it should be quite exciting with a fast, punchy piece of music. She will be demonstrating this twice in the Special Events Ring on the Thursday and will also be making a couple of appearances on the Pedigree stand. (Times will be displayed on the board on the Pedigree stand).
On Friday and Saturday, she is competing in the Obedience Championships, on Sunday she is competing with Teena in the Mini Agility Championships and also she will be performing another demonstration of her new routine in the Special events Ring during the break between judging of the Junior Handler Finals. And of course on Sunday night, prior to Best in Show, she will be performing her new routine in the Main Ring. This should go out live on the BBC Crufts television programme at 8:21 pm – that’s the scheduled time anyway. So as usual, I don’t think she will have much time to sit around and chat at Crufts!
