Today is December 16. I know you’re reading this in January or February, but it takes time to get the magazine produced, so I have to write an article several weeks before anyone will actually see it. Anyway, it’s mid-December. I remember when I used to show dogs that this week was traditionally the last show weekend of the year, which means I’d be in Cleveland at shows.
Don’t ask me why Cleveland in mid-December. It makes very little sense to me now as I sit here in my office and it made even less sense when I was showing dogs. Cleveland isn’t known for its balmy weather in December. I can remember being at the show and watching people file by as they headed for a Cleveland Browns game. They were dressed in snowmobile suits or big jackets with hoods, the kind that looked like they had wolf fur lining or something. They’d have ski masks on, big thick mittens and scarves. I like football, but to sit outside in 11 degrees while a wind whipped in off Lake Erie takes a devotion to the sport that I do not share. I think they were nuts. But the Cleveland shows are not the subject of this column.
In the old days before the shows in Cleveland closed out the year, there were shows in Massachusetts. One show was in Boston on Saturday and the last show of the year was in Worcester, Massachusetts on Sunday. Throughout my earlier years in dogs the Boston and Worcester shows were the last of the show season. They had to be the last shows; when you were done with this weekend you were usually too exhausted and sick to travel for a couple of weeks. Massachusetts is not known for great weather in December, either.
The Boston show was held at a large public facility in downtown Boston that was originally called the War Memorial Auditorium and re-named the John B. Hynes Memorial Auditorium. Whatever it was called, it was a miserable place for a dog show.
The biggest problem was that the show was held on two floors in the auditorium. It was accessible to vehicles by a few freight elevators that ran very sloooowly. Nevertheless, they were the only way to get vehicles to the show floors to unload them.
The people I worked for typically showed a LOT of dogs at these shows. They were local shows for us, and they were large shows, so everyone entered hoping for majors. And there was no way the people I worked for were going to tell the clients that they were full up and couldn’t take another dog. No way, it was the last show weekend of the year, the help could be ground down to little nubs and have time to recover before the next shows, yesssiree. So off we’d go to Boston with a bazillion dogs in tow, ready to do dog show battle.
First was the unloading; it seemed to go on forever. The dogs all traveled in oak crates, which probably weighed 40 pounds empty. Put dogs in them and they weighed a ton. The vehicle we traveled in was a Blue Bird motor home that held no living quarters but was gutted and set up so that the crates rested on racks. Every inch of the interior was devoted to transporting dogs, and on this weekend, we used it all.
Once we finished unloading, all the dogs had to be exercised and then fed, then put out in exercise pens again. This took anywhere from 2 to 3 hours to accomplish; there were a lot of dogs. When the dogs were finally bedded down for the evening, it was time to drag yourself and your luggage to the adjoining hotel for some sleep. It was pretty much the only sleep you’d get for the rest of the weekend.
The biggest problem at the Boston show was that there were two floors, and it was a benched show. This means there were rings on both floors and that the dogs were crated on benches where they would spend their day while they weren’t being shown. So all the crates that held the dogs were moved to their respective benches early in the day and the dogs would stay in the crates until they could be brought back to the grooming area to be groomed and then shown. Then it was back to the benches until benching hours were over at 8:00 PM. Therefore, there was a lot of backbreaking work to be done just shuffling dogs around back and forth to benches, grooming, getting dogs to the rings and back again and trying to stay sane in this atmosphere of controlled chaos.
When you thought you’d finally made it through the day, it was 8:00 PM and all the dogs had to come off the benches, the dogs for the groups had to be made ready and the Blue Bird had to be loaded so we could travel to the Worcester show. I can remember getting a little break and heading outside to the parking area to get the Blue Bird and get it in line to get loaded. When 8:00 o’clock rolled around, I was the first one in line and the first one to come off the elevator and start loading. We were going to be the first ones out of the show, the first ones to Worcester and we were actually going to get some sleep that night. When the doors of the freight elevator opened at street level in the bowels of the building there was a van parked and locked right in front of the freight elevator I was on. There was no way I could exit the freight elevator and get on the road. The Blue Bird was too big to use another elevator; we had to use the one elevator made to handle a vehicle this size, so going back upstairs and getting on another elevator wasn’t an option. So we sat there for about an hour, my plans for getting at least a little sleep slowly deteriorating until the person belonging to the locked van came back. It seems she had locked her van and gone to dinner. After a few choice words regarding her lack of consideration and a few other comments I can’t print here, she moved her van and we took off for Worcester.
As huge as the Boston show was, the Worcester show was the exact opposite. The show was held in an aging armory and we had to unload into the basement of the building. There was a ramp that angled down to the basement level and once unloaded you would continue straight out up a ramp that brought you back up to street level. This was bad enough, but the catch was that we couldn’t pull all the way into the unloading area because the roof wasn’t high enough to allow the Blue Bird under the building. So we had to pull down to the entrance and dolly all the dogs into the basement. By the time we were done feeding and exercising the dogs, it was usually 2:00 AM. The only place left to get any food was an all-night chicken takeout and by this time, the food was pretty disgusting. So it was into bed by 3:00 o’clock with some greasy chicken in your stomach and up at 5:00 AM to get to the show.
The dogs were crated in the building basement and they were shown upstairs; up a narrow flight of stairs to the main floor of the armory, which was a basketball court with a stage at one end. All day long we shuttled dogs up and down the rickety stairs until we finished, usually around 7:00 PM. Then we reversed our unloading procedure and got the dogs loaded to head home. We’d usually stop at a local restaurant with a bunch of other dog people and have dinner. As exhausted as we were, it was a warm and special time. We all reminisced, laughed, enjoyed each other’s company and took the time on this occasion to realize how fortunate we were. We’d survived another long, hectic year. We were among friends. Life was good. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Count your blessings. Safe trip home.
I had planned to end this column with the previous paragraph. Then I re-read it and took notice of where I’d called the Cleveland Browns fans “nuts” for sitting outside in the freezing cold to watch a football game. Then I read the rest of the column. Who’s the real nut? I might become a Browns fan.
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