Crufts - March 2009

Crufts started on Wednesday 5th March with a trip to the NEC to set up the breed booth ready for Thursday 6th March, Hound and Terrier day. We had been given more room for the booth this year as there were several large companies missing. The whole area was so much better with at least twice as much room for the visitors.
Just in case the threats that had been in the newspapers and on the internet about people and dogs being intimidated did materialize, this year, we had our own “hound bouncer” who kept an eye on all the hound booths and a very obvious showing of police around the booths. Each booth was also supplied with instructions on how to deal with “difficult” situations
As there has been a lot of negative publicity about pedigree dogs over the past few months we made sure we had copies of hip score results, eye test results and loads of photographs of the dogs at work and at play. Far more of the photographs on display were of UK dogs this year.  So make sure you take your camera with you over the coming year so we can continue to improve on this aspect of the display. As with last year the harnesses, leashes and tracking shoes on display raised a few questions about their use.
Thursday is normally the quietest of the four days at Crufts; however, with it being Hound day we had a constant flow of visitors. With the extra room far more people were able to see the dogs and spend time in the booth having a proper look at the display and meeting the extremely well behaved hounds on show.
The following three days gradually got busier, so to make sure the visitors could identify which dogs were in the booth at any one time we had a ribbon colour scheme and notices with basic information about the Bavarians in attendance at that time. The younger visitors seemed to enjoy this, especially when one of the males had a pink ribbon. 
It was really encouraging to see return visits by people from last year coming to see the breed again, as well as those we met at the game fairs attended through the year. A lot of interest was shown in the fact these are first and foremost working dogs, which can fit in with active families.
Many thanks to the members who attended both with and without their canine partners, everyone worked extremely hard. The only disappointment was we did not get placed in the Breed Booth completion. This was won by the Great Dane contingent with the Basset Griffon Vendeen (Grand & Petit) second.

Attending Discover Dogs was very good for breed awareness and was extremely successful.

Ann Marie.