Lichfield and district dog training society: secretaries report.
Thank you to everyone who made this years show a huge success.
We are very lucky that Lichfield club has such a fabulous team spirit and everyone always pulls together to make the show run smoothly. Everyone knows what needs doing and they just get on with it, making the weekend run like clockwork.
We have a fabulous mix of experienced people and new enthusiastic helpers, which hopefully will ensure that Lichfield show continues for many years.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped…the show committee, Lichfield members, our chief steward and assistant chief steward, judges, stewards, scoreboarders, scent decoys, first aiders, people making drinks, ‘the boys’ and the competitors who came to offer help. Every little makes a difference and we are grateful for every single bit of help. I’m not going to name people, as there are so many I would probably miss someone!
Thank you to all of the competitors who entered and tested out this new venue. We hope you enjoyed yourselves.
Congratulations to our ticket winners Robin Arblaster and Francis Tye, we wish you the best of luck at Crufts.
Congratulations also go to our good citizen special pre beginner winner and our YKC and obreedience winners!
If you’re now off to Crufts, good luck and enjoy the experience!
Huge apologies to the obreedience teams for managing to misplace the rosettes in the organised chaos. They have now been located and I will send them out to your team captains to distribute.
The run up to the show was stressful to say the least. Due to health issues, I had to ask for far more help from our show committee than usual…and I want to say a huge thank you to you all, for stepping up without hesitation and taking on as many jobs as you could. I really appreciated it and everything was done perfectly.
Our new printer, Rebecca, made the rest so easy, organised everything perfectly and answered my millions of queries about the new 25 day rule! Thank you so much!
It definitely felt like the show was cursed at times. We always expect problems, but this was one big problem after another and at one point both Bea and I doubted whether the show would even be able to go ahead.
The venue was fabulous. We were very lucky to be able to use it, the space, the ground conditions and facilities were all amazing, although I swear by the end of the weekend the venue was stretching every time I walked up it!! Thank you all for looking after it, it was immaculate when we went up for our final venue check.
As lots of people knew, it did however come with a pretty hefty price tag, which meant this years show had to be run more like a business than usual. We changed suppliers for most of the usual food, drinks and other essentials. We spent far more time price checking and hunting around for bargains than we’ve ever done before, cutting the cost of everything we could, except for our normal trophies and rosettes.
Everything we needed was worked out to exact numbers, to ensure we wouldn’t be paying for anything we didn’t need. We were determined to at least break even…which we did, with a bit to spare!
Thank you to our sponsors: CSJ for sponsoring the whole show, providing the winners packs and Rick Van Vereen for sponsoring the YKC classes, providing a lovely tuggy toy for every competitor. We are very grateful for the support.
Obviously, there always has to be a negative.
We had a small minority of people who thought it was acceptable to be rude towards our show team. Please remember that the rules we put in are there for safety. If you are asked to park or camp in a particular place or keep something clear or to slow down, it’s not just because we feel like it. We have a responsibility to every person and dog on the venue and a lot of time and effort has been put in prior to the show to venue plan and risk assess.
I don’t expect to hear that people have ignored requests to follow instructions and have been rude, or that people have been shouted at.
Please remember that the people out there helping, are the people keeping the shows running. If they get that kind of treatment, eventually they’ll decide that helping is more hassle that its worth…and then shows will disappear.
I was therefore, even more disappointed to hear who that minority were and that they were experienced competitors. You know who you are and hopefully, reading this, you will consider the impact of your actions in future.
That said, the majority of people were lovely and everyone looked like they were having a good time. We even managed to keep the weather nice, until Sunday night. The sun dancing clearly worked!
As most people know, this was our last year as show secretaries. Whilst we love running the show, various issues mean we are now stepping down.
We would like to thank everyone who has supported us during our time as show secretaries, you’ve all been very kind and we’ve both learnt a lot during this time. A special thank you has to go Stephanie Evans, who taught us everything we needed to know about running a show. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Thank you to all of the judges who have joined in with our craziness…from inviting George Clooney to join us at the show, to serving scabby horse at lunch!
It might be busy, but it’s supposed to be fun and that’s always been our aim.
We leave the show in very safe hands, with Carol Hartland and Stephanie Evans taking over the job. Everyone knows you’ll both do an amazing job and that it will continue as it always has been, a friendly, well run weekend!
That’s the very long Oscars speech over!
Tracey and Bea.
