MASTIFFS AT DISCOVER DOGS

As many of you will know Discover Dogs is held twice yearly, once at at Earls Court in November and once at the N.E.C during Crufts. This report was written in 2001 when Tracey and I represented the Mastiff Association at Discover Dogs Earl's court for the second time.
Since writing this report I am pleased to say that the event is still going strong and Tracey and I have represented the M.A at the event in both 2002 and 2003.

On Saturday the Association was represented by Colin and Julia Frost and On Sunday Tracey Hunter and I were at the event alongside Richard and Sharon Benfield and family.

Clearly this man doesn't know how to walk his dog !

This event is one of the few events we are reasonably close to and so the day started with a drive of just under an hour to get to Earls Court. We arrived to find a long queue and myself Tracey , Richard, Sharon, Shona and four dogs started to make our way past the queue in to the hall. As we walked past a queue of several hundred people it's fair to say that we were 'noticed'. The usual cries of 'look at the size of that' and 'oh my god' could be heard and I remember one child in the queue shouting 'Mum mum what is it' , 'it's a very big dog darling the mum replied'. Before we even entered the hall several questions came our way and as we walked in the door a Broadcast Camera man took full advantage of the spectacle.

We found our booth which yet again to our disapointment was a single and had one dog enclosure.This could have been a problem but for the fact that all four of the dogs had met the night before at our house and were by now pretty good pals. Even so you could not possibly fit the two adults and two pups in the pen. Fortunately Hunter as ever was only happy when lying out on the floor in the middle of the crowds either having his photo taken with a tourist or being rubbed,stroked,hugged and generally manhandled by the public.

Richard and Sharons puppy Malibu was also clearly a hot favourite with the crowds having what I would call the Andrex factor. Arrrrrrgh they would say !. Had we thought in advance (and we should know by now really ) I would have had two posters made up for the two most common questions of the day . "How old is the puppy"? and "How much does Hunter weigh"?.

All of the usual events were at the show and their were too many to list. We never had the chance to watch any of the events which would have been nice but we were just too busy. We did see in passing many canine ambassedors including Guide dogs, Flyball dogs, Police Dogs, Pat dogs, hearing dogs and too many other dogs to list both on show and in the main ring. Cheers could be heard from the main ring throughout the day as well as loud applause from an appreciative audience.

It did seem to us that sadly there were fewer visitors to our booth who were genuinely interested in either owning or learning more about the Mastiff than on previous years. There were still however plenty of visitors who had owned a Mastiff in the past but due to there current circumstances didn't currently have one to share their lives with. These people were clearly at Earls Court for a much needed Mastiff 'fix'.

We stayed at the booth until about 5.15pm and by then all of us were pretty exhausted. We got in to our cars and fought our way out of the London traffic making the journey back to our home in Hertfordshire. After a Coffee stop and a chat, our guests, Richard, Sharon, Shona, Guinnesss and Malibu made there way back to Staffordshire and for Tracey and I the weekend came to an end. No more public no more questions no more answers no more traffic. Ahhhhh bliss.
Still we'll do it all again of course.