When Covid 19 happened and the whole of England went into lockdown, I was dreading the thoughts of my boss walking in and saying ‘hi Louise, I am afraid we are going to be furloughing you’ the look on my face said it all. After being off work for the last 4 weeks unable to move my shoulder. The fear and dread of spending any more time at home wondering around the house thinking ‘I do not have anything to do’, made me feel very depressed.
I had not long bought a puppy and I was excited at the thoughts of being able to show her. I was so looking forward to her reaching 6months, as I had missed out on puppy classes with my first Lhasa. When one of my work colleagues said what are you going to do for the next few weeks, I surprised even myself when I said I am going to do an online dog show.
I spent the first night on furlough hardly sleeping a wink, and as I looked at the clock in the bedroom seeing every hour. That little voice in my head said, come on girl get your head together. You can either go into panic mode and cry or you can keep yourself busy and do something. Should I try do a dog show! Would anyone enter? Would I look silly? What would people think? As I sat eating my breakfast the next morning my husband looked at me and said what are we going to do? And I said I am going to do an online dog show.
With NOELAC been my local Lhasa Club I decided it would be good to go through them and hopefully get to see some lovely pictures of the breed I love. I had seen a couple of online dog shows popping up, however what I wanted to create was a feeling that we were all going to the show at the same time and a feeling of togetherness, a feeling of excitement and anticipation. I also knew that some dogs just take a really good photo and it is more about to see movement and structure and going over a dog.
How could we create this live, without being in the ring? I created an event on Facebook and asked if anyone was interested. Nothing! No response. I thought maybe a few were struggling with the filming, I will ask. Still nothing! As the deadline date came nearer, I thought to myself, what a ridiculous idea this was and why on earth had I even thought of bringing it up. I messaged a few people and amazingly a few started saying ok I will give it a go.
Friday night before the deadline date and still I was not sure if I had enough to go ahead. Saturday came the deadline day, suddenly out of the blue my phone never stopped. Ping, ping, what do I have to do? From the response I was getting everyone was a bit nervous. Oh, I do not know if I can do the filming. Oh, I do not think I can get a good photo. I do not think I have done a good job. But that was it, I had managed to get enough people to join in. 49 Entries, which wasn’t bad. I was quite relieved, but now all I had to do is to carry it out. With NOELAC been my local Lhasa Club I decided it would be good to go through them and hopefully get to see some lovely pictures of the breed I love. I had seen a couple of online dog shows popping up, however what I wanted to create was a feeling that we were all going to the show at the same time and a feeling of togetherness, a feeling of excitement and anticipation. I also knew that some dogs just take a really good photo and it is more about to see movement and structure and going over a dog. How could we create this live, without being in the ring? I created an event on Facebook and asked if anyone was interested. Nothing! No response.
Online Dog Show 2020I thought maybe a few were struggling with the filming, I will ask. Still nothing! As the deadline date came nearer, I thought to myself, what a ridiculous idea this was and why on earth had I even thought of bringing it up. I messaged a few people and amazingly a few started saying ok I will give it a go. Friday night before the deadline date and still I was not sure if I had enough to go ahead.
Saturday came the deadline day, suddenly out of the blue my phone never stopped. Ping, ping, what do I have to do? From the response I was getting everyone was a bit nervous. Oh, I do not know if I can do the filming. Oh, I do not think I can get a good photo. I do not think I have done a good job. But that was it, I had managed to get enough people to join in. 49 Entries, which wasn’t bad. I was quite relieved, but now all I had to do is to carry it out.
I spoke to Chris who suggested it would be a nice idea to ask Madeline to Judge as she had missed out on judging the previous year. Chris had messaged Madeline and she said she would love to judge. Fabulous I had an experienced judge and people wanting to attend.
The week before the show was spent bathing the dogs, walking up and down the road with Beth filming and the neighbors wondering what on earth I was doing. Trying to get the best photos. When it came to be filming the dog on the table, oh lord I thought it was difficult in the ring, well not as tricky as filming it is on the table, I hate looking back at myself.
Finally, the day had arrived, could I pull this off? Or would I not dare to show my face ever again. Half an hour before the show Mandy had done a little test and said she was struggling to post. What had I done? This was not going to work. This is going to be a disaster that I wish I had never started. I quickly, tried changing the settings on the events page. Right I’ve got that problem out of the way. I phone Madeline just to make sure she was ok
and we were on the same page, we were struggling to find the right part of the event, but unfortunately everyone had started posting, it got a bit crazy for a bit, everyone messaging at once and all out of order. I looked at my husband and daughter and said l really need your help. We had 2 laptops out on the worktop and me on the phone. We started again, we were on a roll, things started to run smoothly, and people were having groupconversations with each other and it was becoming great fun.
We had messages constantly popping up on the screen and myself either on the phone or posting photos. It was only after that in all the craziness of the show I realized that I had posted a different picture to the one I had tried all week to get, and I had forgotten to post my dog walking.
We had some fabulous dogs entered and being shown. Everyone had done a great job at filming what they could. Finally, the results were in. Amanda White’s puppy ‘Bobellam Bubbling Over’ won best Puppy in her last puppy class. Jill Lock took Reserve best in show with Littondale Replay Kutani and Best Veteran with Ch Littondale Valentino JW. Best in Show went to Michaela Hall’s Ch Shenedene Miss World.
From the response I got, everyone really enjoyed the day. The day after I made a film of all the dogs in the show and found a track that summed up the day. The track was called everything will be alright, perfect. It was so much fun to feel like we were altogether with a love of the Breed. It did not make any difference what place we got. I was so pleased that we had managed to carry the show off and I beat my anxiety and fear of something not working out. And I suppose that goes for showing in general. Sometimes life brings problems, but it is how we deal with those problems that makes us the people we want to become.
Louise Gregson.