The Learning Curve, Part 3
by Mark Threlfall
So we had bedded the dogs down for the evening and went to the large hotel across the broad avenue for a few hours of much-needed rest. The next day would start early and end late.
We were at the arena by 5:00 AM. It was still dark outside but we had a number of dogs to get ready for the specialties. We set about exercising the dogs, cleaning the crates and grooming the dogs for the shows. These were specialties and they were mainly held at several venues throughout the city. A couple shows were held as much as an hour away. Several of the specialties were held in the large hotel that we were staying at, on several different floors. Our task was to find a way to get all the dogs to the right venue and find ways to get them all into the ring. While that may sound simple, it was made profoundly more difficult by the fact that we had no vehicle to transport the dogs in. The large motor home that we arrived in was in a parking lot on the top of the Greyhound bus garage several blocks away. It usually got packed at the end of the week, and if you took it out of the lot it was pretty much a given that you wouldn’t get it back in. So we had to find other ways of getting the dogs to their destinations.
The Setter (Irish, English and Gordon) specialty was farthest away, about an hour. We knew some people that only showed Setters so we asked them if they would carry our dogs the specialty in their van. They agreed. So we loaded dogs and crates in their vehicle, along with some grooming equipment and they left. We had a Fox Terrier specialty about 90 blocks away in the city, so we found two other people who were headed to the Terrier specialties and gave each of them one-half of the dogs we had entered there to carry.
The rest of the specialties we were concerned with were in the hotel across the street. Those were ours to deal with. So, after all the dogs were groomed (Boxers in this instance), we stacked some of the crates on two dollies and took the freight elevator down to the ground floor. We rolled them out onto the sidewalks and headed in the direction of the hotel.
Remember, this was February and the sidewalks were covered with snow. This made wheeling the loaded dollies quite difficult, as the wheels tended to turn at sharp angles, sometimes independent of the others when they hit the lumpy snow. We managed to get them to the avenue separating the hotel and the arena, but when we tried to make the transition from sidewalk to street, the crates would shift and the dollies both upended, dumping the crates into the street. As we struggled to stack the crates back on the dollies, the light changed and a sea of taxicabs flowed at us and virtually surrounded us. We finally got the crates back on the dollies but we were frozen in place with the traffic flowing around us. After what seemed an hour, the light changed again and we made it safely across the avenue to the sidewalk.
The Boxer specialty was held in a ballroom off the main lobby. The ballroom was only large enough to accommodate the ring; last minute grooming had to be done someplace else. We decided that the closest area available was in a hallway that led to a side entrance of the hotel, so we lined the crates up along the wall, still leaving enough room for people to enter or leave the hotel.
Back to the arena for two more trips of Boxers. Once we had them all safely set up in the hall we went back to the arena for the dogs for the Afghan Hound specialty and the Miniature Pinscher for the Min Pin specialty. Afghans were shown on the mezzanine of the hotel (one floor up) and Min Pins were shown on some floor near the top of the hotel. We got the dogs planted in their respective venues and then parceled out people to work the events. Setters weren’t a problem; a girl who had helped us previously at other shows was going to work at the Setter show, getting the dogs ready for the ring. One of us assistants grabbed a taxi and rode to the Terrier show while another young man went back to the hotel to work the Boxer show. I went back to the arena and took care of the dogs left there and after I had finished I went back across the street to help with Boxers and to keep track of what was happening in the Afghan and Min Pin specialties.
Simple, huh?
It took me about an hour to take care of the dogs in the arena, and I headed back over to the hotel. The first thing I did was to check the Afghan and Min Pin rings. There was a big Afghan entry and I new that the dog we were showing was entered in the last class of the day, so I knew we had plenty of time for that. The Min Pins were a little less than halfway through their judging. The Min Pin was also entered in the last class of the specialty so I figured we had another hour to an hour and a half before he would be shown. Back down to the Boxer specialty I went.
The Boxer classes were huge. Each class had anywhere from 15 to 30 dogs entered in the class. This meant that the people who I worked for could maybe get through one class, perhaps two, before one of them would have to hop on the elevator and get to the Min Pin ring. Between classes I let them know the situation and they decided to stay for one more class. So when they walked into that class, I set out for the elevators and the Min Pin specialty.
Continued next month…
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