|
Winning a National Specialty with Helios of Parnassus "How
You Look After Winning A Specialty-You Can Fly" I remember walking Helios in our favorite park before the National Specialty. Walks out-of-doors in massive open fields have always been my preferred way to enjoy and admire our breed. Helios has always been enthused with almost any activity out-of-doors and it has been a real joy over the years to watch him cover ground as he explores the open expanse. It was no different on this sunny August day before the National, except I knew the National was approaching. I had been unlucky enough to contract virile meningitis in late June and I was still debating as to if and how I would get to the Specialty and if and how I would take my Helios. Helios had always been a difficult dog to show. Too happy and excited, he would puppy prance around the ring, even as an experienced vet. Corrected with a word of caution or a flick of the lead, he would sink into himself and look as guilty and contrite as if he had raided the whole refrigerator and eaten everything in it. Invigorated and focused, he would go-around with the best in the breed or group and give them a day’s worth of stiff competition. The problem was I would never know which Helios would be affixed to the end of the lead, and for which portion of the show. We needed to talk. “Helios, I am not going to drag my sorry butt down to the Specialty and drag yours along, only for you to give me a puppy or guilty-looking performance. You take a minute, here, now, and decide if you really want to go and if you will give your best while there.” He convinced me to take him by a particularly athletic run through the tall grass. He had seen or heard something across the field in the stream and was trucking there lest it get away without a good scare. I love to watch these dogs move, especially as their profile cuts rhythmically across the tips of the tall tassels on the high grass and then in the next instant the whole profile goes invisible in the brownness of the thickets and underbrush. The flight down to Dallas was nearly an unmitigated disaster, with Helios being overheated, choked to the point of collapse, not once but twice, by a baggage handler, and otherwise nearly rattled to death. But we did make it, even though the poor old man looked like a bag of nerves. Gaul darn, I said, he won’t show worth an apple sheen...or something like that. But he did. I will never forget how Helios showed for me in the Veterans Class. For a few hot, long, tense, sweaty, minutes out there going around (and around) (and around), he reminded me of his Dam, Penelope, and how I loved to show her at the Nationals. With Isis (Helios’s pick get) also making it through to the final cuts, and thinking a bitch would surely win, I decided to stay on her (not least because she wouldn’t show for Michelle). But lucky I was to have found Michelle to handle the old man. When BSB called out to bring the Vet Dog to the front, my heart stopped for a long second. After that, I really didn’t get to see him again – working with Isis in the back of the line with the other bitches - until he WON.
Oddly, the first thought that went through my mind when I realized he won was: Thank you, Penelope. Thank you.
|
