The Best Things About Being At Crufts

The Best Things About Being At Crufts

Crufts, arguably the greatest dog show on earth and possibly the maddest four days in our Little Dog Laughed calendar. What’s so good about Crufts? Thrilled you asked! In no particular order here are my top four answers.

 Friendship

48hrs with my longest serving friend, Little Jo. She actually uses up precious days of her annual leave to help with Crufts. We met at infant school and Crufts has become the unexpected facilitator of two working the stand days together. In those hours we cover all the catching up on life topics, and then the chat goes completely off piste and we get to the deeper stuff, conversations and opinions modern life doesn’t often afford you the luxury to hear or enjoy. Our journey from Derby to the outer reaches of the NEC North car park is always full of laughter, sometimes foul language (sorry mum) and these days sweat as we navigate our menopause symptoms and the trudge along the NEC skywalk. This is done with numerous finely balanced bags laden with stock, thermos flask and the day’s snack essentials on a flimsy porter trolley. Friday and Saturday have become mine and Jo’s Crufts days which is great for being busy but does require extra grunt work at the start and end of each day. It only took eighteen years to purchase a pull-along-trolley. A game changing small investment that I can guarantee will be marvelled over again by both of us as it makes another appearance. Life lesson finally learnt. DO NOT WAIT to make life easier for yourself, buy the ‘thing’ today!

Food & Friendship

A McDonalds Sausage and Egg McMuffin meal from Bassetts Pole. A once a year guilty pleasure we save for our Crufts experience. Michelin star dining is I’m sure, a wonderful experience, but bizarrely so is a fast food breakfast in the NEC lorry park with one of your besties! Sitting in my dented wagon of a car, usual English mizzle outside, steamy windows inside, taking a moment to finish our cup of tea and enjoy our deliciously dirty hash brown before we begin the show. Truly priceless! Perhaps it’s also the knowledge that at some point in the next two days, a fit of giggles will begin, typically triggered by tiredness, crazy rudeness or a shared memory from over forty-five years of friendship. Our eighteen-year-old hot, young selves (so sad we didn’t know it at the time) would never have guessed on a night out, as we applied our lip-gloss and readjusted for the millionth time the gusset poppers on our on-trend body tops beneath our Bros inspired ripped jeans, that we’d still be sharing a Friday night in our early 50’s, only this time at Crufts! No longer hot except in body temperature and swooning over dog breeds rather than making eyes at handsome young males.

Dogs

The Dogs! It’s rare we get off the stand during the show so it’s always a joy when the dogs visit us or pass by on their way to the ring. The sheer size and cool, laidback demeanour of the Irish Wolfhounds always stops both of us mid conversation and nothing beats the visual memory of the line of hundreds of English Bulldogs making their way into the venue. All completely different but also exactly the same! And then there was Messi the rabbit Dachshund.  What a superstar. He melted everyone’s heart that year. Probably my most pedigree Crufts moment was the time I spied a standard poodle on his grooming table. To my untrained eye the floor beneath his platform looked like a furry crime scene. With my preference for wire haired and scruffy, the bobble legs and tail of a show poodle were eyebrow raising insane. Questions do get raised about the love and care for the canine contestants and the breed ethics set by the Kennel club. Undoubtably Crufts does attract humans who are driven by the competitive element but from our Little Dog Laughed stand experience, we have only ever met genuine dog lovers, many of whom share their life with a rescue and do lots for their local dog welfare charity. And the show is much more than the competition. Agility is awesome, the bond between canine and human never fails to impress. One of my favourite sections is the Discover Dogs area. A great chance to see and chat to owners of dog breeds you never knew existed. It was here I first came across the Irish terrier, definitely one of my pedigree favourites and the same goes for the Ibizan and Pharaoh Hounds. Both breeds more regal than all of the world’s monarchies combined!

People

The returning customers we have met over the last twenty plus years are definitely a Crufts highlight. It’s amazing what life experiences get shared from a starting topic of dogs. Introductions at Crufts have continued on-line and before you know it you’re on first name terms and then old friends. (Hi Dawn and Babs, Sara, Alison Bev) And not that we are completely driven by food but it’s especially heartwarming when they arrive with a pastry treat or a hot brew. (Honestly, that’s not a hint!) You can’t beat the joy of random acts of kindness. The thing about sharing a love of dogs is that the people we meet are really nice. Nice, a word my English teacher banned us from ever using. Being nice is wholly underrated these days and it deserves to be held in far higher regard. Maybe humanity is reaching a point where it will begin to see the true value of nice and kowtow to wealth and power less s0. Until that time, we’ll do our best to champion the kind movement via our humble little stand.

And that dear readers is a brief glimpse into what Crufts means to me. If you are heading to the show, safe journey and perhaps, if you have time, come and find us in Hall 3 Stand 144. We’ve opted for a different stand layout to showcase all the newness. If you are enjoying Crufts from the comfort of your sofa but feel sad you won’t get to peruse the show bargains, fear not, we’ve been working hard to bring you the online version of our Crufts experience with our four days of Crufts@Home sale. Discover 20% discount codes and amazing special gift bundle offers. It’s 100% worth a google if you have any upcoming birthdays to buy for. Until then good people, bye for now!