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14/04/2010 - Life is full of surprises...

I am currently 7 and a half month pregnant and this pregnancy has been everything but straightforward. The usual first trimester niggles took their
toll on me a lot more than with my first pregnancy, especially the fatigue.

In the second trimester, when things are supposed to settle and the experience should start to become enjoyable, I only managed to have my water breaking and to be rushed to hospital where I stayed for several days hoping the little one was not going to make an appearance just yet as he was not ready. The situation is overall much better but not quite as it should, so our life currently revolve around medical appointments, which means our involvement with the hovawart community has taken a backseat. We obviously still have our dogs at home, but I am sure you will understand the lack of breed notes.

I feel I have let the breed club down as I had agreed to take a number of jobs on and had considered their offer to be co-opted on the committee, but unfortunately life is full of surprises and they are not always pleasant.

Crufts 2010

We did manage to make it to 2 shows this year though, the National Open & Pastoral Society Open Show which was well attended by the hovawart community this year and Crufts. My participation at Crufts was from a chair by the bench while I watched my other half James and our good friend Flora handling the dogs. But I did really enjoy soaking the atmosphere. There was an excellent participation from abroad which provided a very healthy competition to our British hovawarts. I was also promised information about our Ranger's heart condition from Dutch folks, so am very much looking forward to receiving this to helps us understand better and study any possible genetic link or absence of it. It is great to be involved with a breed where we can talk openly about health problems and where international cooperation actually has a meaning.

This year Crufts best in show was the winner of the open male class Pines Saxophone 'DJ', a black and gold male which we don't need to introduce anymore as this is far from being is first Best of Breed title. It was the first time he managed to get hold of it at Crufts though and his owner and handler Maggie Spencer looked genuinely thrilled. DJ's win was welcome by much cheering and clapping from the audience.

I assume you all know the full results as I am reporting on this over a month after the event, but it you have not, then they can be found on the
Kennel Club website.

Harvey's inspiring story

We received in the post the latest news sheet from the club with a lot of interesting information. I was especially taken with the article written by
Harvey's owners regarding the showring. They speak very candidly about both their bad and good experiences showing their dog and I am sure it will help anybody who may have had not so positive experience with their dog and show that hard work eventually pays off.

Our import Oxane-Diable Animagus avec Spicemill 'Scamp' was also far from being a natural show girl at first and I remember taking her to busy places as much as I could, encouraging contacts with people and asking countless friends from the hovawart community to have a look at her teeth for me each time I had the chance to get her to where we are now. When you see her in the showring now, you just would not know we had any difficulties at any point.

So I hope both Harvey and Scamp's stories will inspire people to work at it and that we will see a lot of well behaved hovawarts, whether young or old, new to the showring or not, at future events.

Please keep in touch

I am hoping we will be back in the ring sometimes in the autumn, maybe even this summer if we get a change of our luck. We should also be involved with breeding again at the end of the year. In the meantime, we hope that you will keep sending us your news. Although I don't expect to write regular breed notes this year, I will put pen to paper, or I guess in these days fingers to keyboard, whenever I have a chance and we always enjoy hearing from other hovawarts owners.

Read the previous breed notes