I woke early this morning and thought about yesterdays show - all in all it was a very successful day and I really enjoyed it. It started very early, as it did for a lot of the competitors. It was chilly too at 6.5 degrees at 5am, the sky a clear black with a mass of stars. The journey was easy with hardly any traffic and light when we arrived.
From an organisers point of view the first part of the day was the trickiest. Our unloading area happened to also be the main thoroughfare for Trade 2 traffic and at one point we had a bit of road rage going on as we had about 6 trailors parked up unloading and queues both sides of very impatient Trade 2 traffic - some actually driving between exhibitors with animals - not ideal and that will be changed next year. Everyone in and our Judge Liz Barlow arrived, our PA System hadn't. We were due to start in 20 minutes. More frantic calls and my version of running halfway across the show ground to the main PA Tower where I staggered breathless and begged for our system to be delivered.
Judging underway and I was first in the ring with The Sorcerer, our grey Intermediate. Crikey it was already quite hot - this day was going to be a scorcher. Somewhere in the background I was aware of someone putting up loud speakers - thank goodness. Another mental note for next years double-checklist. We were awarded a second, shame we like the red ones much better!
The sun just got hotter and hotter, and the crowds bigger and bigger - we attracted a constant crowd around our ring, unfortunately there just wasn't time to open up our tent officially to the public as we had the Junior Handler classes going on in our short break for lunch, which incidentally co-incided with a very noisy band of spidermen - the kids did well to hang on to their animals. We had opened the sides up so people could wander round and see all the animals. Quite a few of the public snuck in though, despite penning them out for their safety - one even ended up wandering into the ring apparently!
The rest of our show team did well - Eros 3rd and BobbyDazzler 4th in the Intermediate Fawn Male, then Bonami won his Adult fawn male class and then went on to win Champion Fawn Male - his third this year, so I was happy. Our 3 Invincibly Elite xx intermediate white boys came 4th, 5th and 6th.
The Alpaca Stud deservedly won both both Supremes - their amazing grey Nyetimber, who looked just stunning and who our grey Ardingly always came second to when shown, taking the Huacaya - many congratulations!
My thanks as joint organiser go firstly to Nikki who did most of the pre show stuff this year and then to our team of volunteers - Cathy and Graham, Lisa and Ray and Keith and Allison and then John on commentary, Jay and Gary and others and, of course our Judge Liz Barlow you made it a great show. Oh and thank you to all those exhibitors who came and supported us and very kindly stacked your penning away for us, it made such a difference.
Not many pics as only had phone camera... and I kept forgetting to take any!
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Eros and Bonami being led round by Donna and Rebecca |
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The very noisy, quite good band of spidermen - I'm not sure who they were but possibly not the most attractive shapes in lycra! |
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Bonami being awarded Champion Fawn Male - handled by Terry |
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Suri Supreme Line-up - winner 2nd from left |