The Learning Curve, Part 5
by Mark Threlfall
I helped Jimmy out at the Boxer specialty for about an hour. We were exercising dogs, grooming and still sending dogs into the ring for judging. This was the Boxer breed’s National Specialty, and there were several hundred dogs entered. From the size of the entry and the pace of the judging, we expected to be there for a few more hours.
By 9:00 PM, we realized we were getting pretty hungry. Neither one of us had anything to eat all day long. The day had been so hectic that we hadn’t had the time to even think about eating. At about 9:30, we had a short break as a large class had just entered the ring and it would be a while till it was finished. I took this opportunity to make a dash for a fast food restaurant that was close by the hotel.
When I returned with a couple of bags of hamburgers and other such stuff, the first thing Jimmy asked me was if I knew the woman that was perched on the far end of the crates. I looked over and sure enough, there was a woman sitting on the last crate in the row we had that led towards a side entrance. I figured she was someone who either was just taking advantage of a place to sit, as any available chairs in the room were already taken. Either that or we figured maybe she was a pedestrian who was cold and had just stepped into the entrance of the hotel to get warm. She sure wasn’t dressed very warmly for the cold weather outside.
We wolfed down our burgers, all the while keeping an eye on our uninvited “guest.” We thought about offering her something to eat, as we figured by the way she was dressed she didn’t have very much money. Nothing she wore matched. She was dressed like she was ready to go to a disco or something; spike-heeled boots, short skirt and a little skimpy jacket. But she seemed perfectly happy to just sit there.
In a little while, the judge made a cut to the class that was in the ring. The husband of the people we worked for came out of the ring and handed us the dog he had been showing. He noticed the woman at the end of the crates and asked Jimmy and me who it was. We said we didn’t know, just some lady who we thought might be tired or something. We told him she seemed nice, she wasn’t bothering the dogs or anything. He looked at us like we were clueless and walked over to the woman and said something. She gathered herself together and left. We thought he was being a little unkind, not letting the lady sit there, but, he was the boss so we didn’t say anything.
It was now about 10:00 PM. The last class of the day was being called into the ring at the Boxer specialty. After the dogs entered the ring, Jimmy and I decided to start packing things up to get the dogs back to the main arena across the street. We stacked the dollies with dogs in their crates and made our way out onto the sidewalk. Even though it was after 10:00 PM, the sidewalks were still busy. We pushed the dollies along the sidewalk and were the subject of much interest with the pedestrians. I guess it was a little bit of a strange sight; wooden crates each holding a Boxer being pushed or pulled through the crowded walkways.
At the corner we stopped to wait for the light to change. As we waited, freezing as the wind whipped down the avenue, making us shiver we noticed the lady that had used our crates as a resting area. She was busy talking to some guy who seemed to be in a rush to go someplace. We waved to her and I think she noticed us, but she turned her back to us. With that, the light changed and we bumped our way off the sidewalk and across the broad avenue.
When we made it to the arena, we were frozen. We hammered on the large metal garage-type overhead door that served as the entryway to the freight entrance to the arena to get the attention of the door operator. The guy usually sat in a little booth with a small window that looked out on the drive that led to the overhead door entrance. It was kind of like the guy in the Wizard of Oz that tells Dorothy and the rest of her crew to buzz off; the Wizard was too busy to talk to them.
After a good amount of hammering, the Master of the Garage Door finally deigned to open the contraption and I stepped inside. I told him we had dogs to get back into the arena. He looked at me like I had two heads and told me that no one was supposed to come in until 7:00 the next morning. I tried to politely ask him what I was supposed to do with a dozen or so dogs at this hour of the night. He implied that this wasn’t his problem, it was mine. I told him that I wasn’t going to steal anything; I was bringing dogs in, not taking any out. He tried to ignore me, but I kept pestering him. After about 20 minutes of me bugging him, he let the dogs in. As we started for the freight elevator (the arena floor was on the 5th level) he said the freight elevator wasn’t working right now; we’d have to push/pull the dogs up the long, circular ramp to the arena staging area.
I figured I wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing this point, so Jimmy and I together pushed the dogs on the dollies up the long, steep ramp. Once they were up there we went back across the street to the Boxer specialty, collected the rest of the dogs and the equipment and made our way back across the street and up the ramp again.
By 1:00 AM, we had the dogs all back in the arena, fed and exercised. We walked again down the long ramp and out into the street. In four hours we had to be back in the arena, ready for work to get the dogs ready for the start of the weekend event. We were cold, bone tired and the thought of falling into our beds filled our thoughts. This was the glamorous life we had chosen. My parents had thought I was nuts when I told them I wanted to do this for a living. At that moment I remember thinking they were right.
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