In order to learn more about the Welsh springer spaniels and to get to know some of the breeders and owners involved with these dogs, I decided to go to the National Specialty this year. It was held in Perry, Georgia on May 8th through May 11th. Because money is tight right now and Josh has to work during the week, I booked a hotel for Saturday night and planned to leave early Saturday morning and leave on Sunday. It's about a 5 hour drive out there and not knowing exactly when dog shows normally start and finish I figured that we could leave around 5 or 6 am and get there with plenty of time.
Then I got an e-mail from a breeder I had gotten to know and who was going to be at the show. She told me that I should get there as early as possible as the showing usually starts around 8am and finishes by early afternoon. Yikes! I certainly didn't want to miss any of the showing, but I didn't want to have to pay another $50 for another night at the hotel. So we decided that we would just go to bed really early Friday night, wake up at 2am, and head straight the Perry. And so we did.
That was a mistake. While me made it there just fine, although it took us about 6 hours because we made several stops and ate at an IHOP along the way, we were exhausted by the time we got into Perry. Poor Josh insisted on driving the whole way, and I know that by the time we got there all he wanted to do was go to bed, and he certainly did not want to watch dogs prance around the ring for several hours. But he was a wonderful sport.
We arrived into Perry around 9am. The fairgrounds where the showing was taking place was not hard to find once we got into Perry, but we quickly realized once at the fairgrounds, that it was huge! There were tons of different buildings and all kinds of different events taking place in each one. As well as the Welsh springer Nationals there was also a huge dog show for all different breeds going on, there was obedience and rally competitions, and a horse show nearby also. We had no idea where to go to find the Welshes, so we ended up wandering around through all the different buildings for about half and hour trying to find thier building. On the plus side I got to see a ton of rare and unusual breeds, including Salukis, a Puli, and even a
Swedish Vallhund(on my list of dogs I would love to own)! Finally we found their building way in the back, and I entered into a world of Welshies.
No where else would you be able to see so many of this breed in one place. It was so amazing and I could hardly contain my excitement and urge to go up to each one and give them a big hug. Of course I did not, and in fact I was quite intimidated by large amount of people rushing about to get their dogs ready for the ring and did not want to get in their way. We found a spot to sit and watch the show out of the way of everyone else, and I watched with fascination and explained to Josh what little I did know about conformation and what was going on. Soon we found our breeder friend and her husband, and they introduced us to some great people and explained some about the showing and what was taking place. We watched the showing and chatted with a few people until about 2pm. By that time Josh looked like he was going to pass out, and I was getting pretty tired myself. We decided that it would be best if we checked into our hotel room and rested up for a bit. We had signed up to go to their awards banquet in the evening, so we wanted to be prepared for that.
After resting for a bit at our hotel, we headed out to the Holiday Inn where the banquet was being held. Upon arrival we found out that it had apparently been pushed back an hour at the last minute, but because we had left early we did not hear about that. Oops! We decided to wait there for the next hour until everyone arrived. The banquet ended up being a lot of fun and the food was delicious. We met some more awesome people, and everyone was so nice to us and very eager to talk about the wonderfulness of the breed. There was a raffle and lots of cool prizes, but unfortunately I had spent so much already I decided not to enter. We left the banquet around 10pm or so.
We woke up Sunday morning to huge thunderstorms and tornado warnings. Lovely. Luckily by the time we checked out around 9:30am it had finally settled down. We headed back over to the fairgrounds to see a bit more of the events before we headed for home. Things were winding down quite a bit but there were still a few things to see. We wandered around to see some of the other dogs showing. I got to see a lot of beautiful English springers and some other breeds, and we watched some of the obedience competitions(which Josh really enjoyed) and the end of some Rally. Then we went back over to see the Welshies one last time, and I got to say good bye to a beautiful little boy Welsh before we headed back home.
All in all it was an amazing experience, and I really learned a lot about the breed. Hopefully one day I'll have a chance to go to one again(I'll plan our leaving time better this time!), maybe by then I'll have my own Welshie to show off to everyone! :)
