3 June 2018

Been a bit quiet on the blog lately, mainly because we've been too busy showing Finlay! 3 shows in just over a week, it seems like we have been bitten by the bug, at the moment anyway.

Shows in question are:
- Bath Championship Show (judge Mrs J Paradise)
- Reading Open Show (Newbury) (judge Mr Nick Beveridge)
- Southern Counties Show (Newbury) (judge Mr Simon Parsons)

Finlay didn't come away empty handed (or should that be empty paw-ed) and he is now getting used to this dog showing game. Without a doubt we can see a change in him now. He is walking around the ring without constantly lunging or dragging, he even moves on a fairly loose lead, which is a massive improvement. At the Southern Counties show today, on the table he stood very well for the judge, he wagged and smiled of course but stood reasonably still whilst being looked over.

Bath
- 1st in his Tibetan Spaniel Puppy dog class & best Tibetan Spaniel Puppy Dog
- 1st in Tibetan Spaniel Special Beginners
- Beaten to 2nd in best overall Tibetan Spaniel Puppy

Reading
A really great turnout of Tibbies for the Reading Open show with Nick Beveridge judging
- Unplaced in Tibetan Spaniel Puppy
- Unplaced in a Special Beginners Stakes class

Southern Counties
- 1st in his Tibetan Spaniel Puppy Dog class & best Tibetan Spaniel puppy Dog
- Beaten to 2nd in best overall Tibetan Spaniel Puppy
- Unplaced in a massive AV Junior Stakes class of 21 dogs, but did make the final cut of 10 dogs, so very pleased with that

Junior Warrant Points.....not sure how well we are going to do here and indeed just how hard we want to try to get Finlay his JW. He currently has 11 points out of the 25 he needs, so not quite halfway yet. We would need to enter a lot more shows to get him there, and even then you have to have the requisite number of dogs competing in his classes in order for him to earn the points. For instance at Bath he came first in Tibetan Spaniel Special Beginners, but with only 2 in the class he misses out on the points. So to a certain extent it is out of your hands, unless you carpet-bomb class entries for every available class. Being new to the game we have to decide what we want to do. That said, a few months ago, we didn't dream of even being in this position, the position of wondering whether we could do it. How far we've come in a short time.

Showing....Finlay is still enjoying it. He gets to meet so many dogs and people, he loves it.  OK so he is probably supposed to be aloof if you read the breed standard to the letter, but his incredibly happy and good-natured temperament is just fantastic and I wouldn't have him any other way. I believe he is a real ambassador for the breed in that respect.

A couple of week gap in dog showing, so a bit of a relax and take stock.

Some photos and videos to finish:

Bath, his winning trophies:

Southern Counties, this was Finlay in his Junior Stakes class. This really shows how far he has come as a show dog, his time on the table shows he much better at not mugging the judge and his movement is really coming along

Then at Reading, just to show that good movement and presentation don't always get you anywhere, here he is again, on a much different surface. I realise that it's not the whole story, but he looked one of the best at this point:

The boy does a beautiful "stand"now:

Is this what you wanted Mum?

...and finally. We have been meaning to get Finlay a nice raw beefy bone for ages and we finally got around to it. Typically Finlay bounces and plays around with anything new, this whole episode went on for about 10 minutes and in the end he devoured the bone marrow over about 2 hours. Hilarious! (we thought we'd put it on a piece of plastic, but Finlay had other ideas)