“Bath Championship show is one of the largest and best all-breed championship shows in the country, with over 9000 entries this year. The society purchased a field some years ago and have now developed it into a top notch showground. The show is held over four days in May. Unfortunately the first couple of days turned out rather wet, to say the least, and the car park suffered big-time. A tractor was needed to pull people both onto and off the area, but dog people being the crazy sorts we are just got on with it. Not much fun if you had a pale coloured dog or one with a long coat but the Labradors only required a dry 0ff and a wipe to make them ready for the ring. It wasn’t until I reached home that I realised how full of red soil my car was. Not to worry.
The main showground area was immaculate and the rain drained away very quickly and gave us an almost a cricket pitch surface. I had entered my young black Lab bitch, Ch. Fabracken Trust In Me and was delighted to win the Open bitch class, and even more so to then go one and win the CC, her sixth, following up her CC win at Crufts this year. To top the day off (or so I thought at the time) she then went on to win BOB over the male CC winner. By winning BOB she was then expected to compete with all the other BOB winners in the Gundog Group at the end of the day. I had expected to be well on my way home for the six hour journey by then. But you’re there to represent your breed and this is what we did. Even though Labradors regularly bring in the highest number of entries at these shows, which had happened that day, they are very rarely placed in a the Gundog Group awards, let alone winning. I was thrilled when we made the last few in the Group, but even more so when we went on to win it ! Completely out of the blue. What a day and after that we sailed home on cloud 9. The long journey didn’t seem so long…………….. One other thing for those of you on the working side. This bitch has her Working Gundog Certificate, SGWC, and is worked hard on shoots all winter. Whilst we could never compete in trials we do enjoy our many days out doing the job the breed should be capable of doing. For show people – why not have a go at training your gundog. Anne Taylor”