At the Show...

Today, we visited the long-awaited Autumn Show at Peterborough. Aside from being a golden opportunity for Dawn, Ellie's foster-carer, to see how Ellie has been coming along, it was the best chance ever for us to expose Ellie to thousands of new sounds, sights, smells, people, and more importantly, dogs.

I'm still not sure whether Ellie was more pleased to see Dawn, or Dawn was more pleased to see Ellie, but whichever way it was, they were pleased to see one-another. Dawn attended with her friend who had a Black Labrador, Britney, I think it was called. Sorry, I can't remember!

There were dozens upon dozens of stalls at the show and I can see how easy it would be to empty a bank account there, particularly us soft dog-owners. As it was, we just purchased Ellie another new bed. (Pictured above -- click to enlarge.)

Ellie surprised me. Once she got the initial excitement over, she really did walk very well amongst the thousands of people and their dogs. Only the sound of the merry-go-round spooked her a little, but we got through that soon enough. She even managed to focus when her name was called, as well as sit when told, and perform tricks to show off to Dawn!

I'm pleased to report that there were no negative issues with meeting other dogs. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As there were dog agility displays at the show, there were, quite literally, hundreds of other dogs there, and with the exception of one dog, all seemed really well-behaved. A credit to the dog-owning community. I can only imagine that Ellie's confidence can have been positively boosted through today's experience.

After about three hours however, Ellie really began to flag and she kept looking up at me, almost asking to be carried around. At that point we decided to call it a day. She'd done really well, made us proud, and we wanted to quit on a high-note. Suffice to say that she slept like a, well, like a dog, all the way back home. It's the longest walk she's ever had I think!

Overall, it was a really good day, and well worth the price of the ticket -- £7.50. Though, having seen the dog agility displays, it's just made me more determined to hunt out other dog shows. I'm hooked.

P.S. There are no shots of the show, because idiot here forgot to take the camera. Oh, and Jan has just caught one of Ellie's puppy teeth in her hand!