After a long morning of packing the Suburban, Bear and I left for the National Specialty in high spirits with a feeling of great anticipation.  Along with us were the excited Woody, who insisted on coming, Trekie, Dipsy Doodle and puppy Daytripper, who just came along for the ride.

As we arrived, the first people we saw were Cynthia Courtney and Lucy Peacock (who owns my Skippy).  Right on the heels of our hellos to them, who should we see but Joseph Novak and Marie.  Since by this time we were all hungry, it seemed just the thing to do to go out to dinner, but Bear had to groom Woody for Sweeps, so we had to pass.

Wednesday night Bear handled our beloved Ch. Vennwoods Special Edition in the Veterans Sweeps and both had a great time in the ring.  We also met up with more old friends and met some new ones, then had a late dinner at the famous Flying J truck stop.

photo by Joseph Novak

While we were registering at the hotel, Bear asked for a handicapped room, hoping we could get closer to the show site, but they put us in building 5, even further away!  The bathroom had heavy metal bars on either side of the toilet  and not a lot of room in-between, either.  When I first went in, I took the toilet paper off the back of the water closet and put it on the sink counter, a more convenient place to reach.  I didn't give it another thought.  We talked, Bear walked all the dogs, we fed the dogs, Bear walked all the dogs again and then we were through for the day.  At least I was through for the day.  Bear told me to go to sleep, that he had a couple of things he wanted to do and he planned to read.  I hit the bed and was out like a light.  In the middle of the night I had to get up to visit the bathroom and I almost lost it.  It took great self-control not to scream with laughter at what I saw!  There on one of the bars for the handicapped was a contraption made of a blue wire coat hanger.  One end of the wire was wrapped around the bar, bent to hang down, turn to the right to go through the roll of toilet paper, bent to go up and wrap around the pipe again.  Every time I went into the bathroom I would be overcome with hysterics all over again!  When I asked Bear the next morning to explain the reason for his invention of this modern marvel, he said that he was surprised and slightly annoyed that the bathroom didn't have a toilet paper dispenser.  The housekeeper gave him an award of merit for ingenuity!
  Thursday afternoon was the Veteran's class for Woody and I was happy with the way Bear presented him.  He was the oldest dog in the class and the judge was making sure he didn't overdo it in the warm sun.

photo by Joseph Novak                                                    photo by Lois Kay
 

More taking care of dogs and then Thursday night Joseph, Marie, Kathleen Mallery and I started out to dinner. Every time Bear and I drove through the parking lot, we'd about run into Den Collins wandering around, so he came along, too.  We went to the Olive Garden, where we talked dogs endlessly and laughed hysterically when Kathleen politely offered to refill Den's water glass and somehow ended up pouring the whole pitcher full of water and ice in his lap!  While we were on the topic of cold showers, we found out a little known fact about Den - he had to kneel in the tub at the Clarion in order to take a shower because the shower is too low to reach the upper parts of his 6'4" frame!  The laughter (making us all near collapse) just never stopped until we retreated to our various cars and drove back to the hotel.

On Friday, Bear and I took a little detour to another dog show in Gilbert, PA. We actually arrived a WHOLE HOUR before showtime, a personal best record for the Terenelf team, which has a habit of arriving in just enough time to walk into the ring! There was only one other Corgi there and it happened to be Mike Scott with the top winner in the country, so all we had to show for the day was another pleasant day with the dogs and a BOS - no points available for Dipsy.

We got back to the Clarion in time to make the tail end of the XXX-rated party in Kathleen's room, where her Cowboy and Satan swooned for the spayed and oblivious Betony. Then on the way to dinner at the Flying J with the Corgi-L crowd, Bear stopped to jump start Thyra's car.  Bear (who knows the Flying J well from his trucking career) helped to rearrange the tables to accommodate the crowd of eighteen. Our uproarious party at the truck stop probably mystified the regulars and certainly the waitress wondered why Bear suddenly warned, "Don't put it there!" when she placed the ice water pitcher on the table next to Kathleen!

Photo by Lois Kay
Saturday in the Best of Breed class, Bear did a very nice job of handling Trekie, especially on the table where he just let Trekie stack himself and stood back about 3 feet with a loose lead.  Where I was standing at ringside, there were murmurs from a number of people about the "fabulous handling."

Photo by Lois Kay                        Photo by Dot Coleman

What a compliment for someone who hasn't been showing dogs for a year as yet.  All in all, it was a very satisfying experience except that we were always too busy to fit in any serious shopping!  And, of course it was endless fun as it always is  with Bear.
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