My youngest daughter has been getting rather excited recently as we had been told that each year Auvillar holds a dog show. I spoke to Natalie my friend and she encouraged us to enter the little Jack Russell we have. Thinking that it would be nice for my youngest to take part with our pet dog in a little country french village we registered.
How wrong we were! This was not a little country village dog show with side stalls and a pet class for kids and aged dogs that could do tricks with cast off childrens toys....this was Crufts en France!!!
We arrived and registered feeling a bit excited until we saw the professional cages of dogs being groomed and pampered to look their best and owners running them up and down the park to show off their best lines! Alarm bells didnt ring all day really until it got to our class (I put it down to the heat myself, I need some excuse).
I gave the dog to my daughter to take into the ring, with a friend who could speak better french than my daughter and stood back to watch!!
OMG. Firstly, the judge clearly had not seen a Jack Russell before and had been reading up on the breed from a little pocket guide of dogs on the table as my daughter entered the ring. I know Jack Russells come in all shapes and sizes but our little love is a "Parsons Jack Russell" so a bit taller than the normal dog and the only type of Jack Russell to be registered with the UK Kennel Club. Clearly he did not know that!
Equally, he was being judged as a specimen rather than a pet, which is very different. The judge then went on to say in his loud french voice that our dog would not be able to compete as he had lost a tooth and asked how he had lost it...I said when digging for rabbits!!
Then to my horror he also said "he has no balls and unless he has a vets certificate as to why they have been removed and his pedigree he cannot be entered in this dog show!"
Well, how embarassing, especially as all gathered we obviously professional dog breeders, I wanted to crawl into the hole the dog would normally dig in our garden when living a happy family pet dogs life!!
Fortunately, our entrance money was not wasted as my daughter, very redfaced, left the ring with a consolation prize and a bottle of wine, so at least we could drown our sorrows!
If we do this again next year we need a real dog, nearly bought one too, but not quite!
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