Dear me, the weather was frightful on Saturday at the Spring Show organised by the South West Alpaca Group. I was wearing A LOT of layers but still shook with cold as the rain lashed down. Every so often there would be some big gusts of wind and there would be a straw storm with loads of bits of straw flying into the building and the show ring.
However we did have a very good day with Dovecote Jaquinto’s babes winning the sash for the best progeny group. The threesome did look absolutely lovely and we were very thrilled. Simultaneously at the French Show in Vierzon our stud male Shanbrooke Distinction’s progeny were winning the class there. Distinction spent last year in Belgium and John Peters took some of his youngsters to the show.
Our young female Classical MileEnd Venus won her class and was Reserve Champion Junior Female whilst Paris was Champion Junior Male and the fawn Adonis won his class. The two intermediate fawns Francesca and Athena were first and second in their class with the order reversed from the result at the Futurity where Athena was first. The white junior classes were huge and had to be split with 37 junior males and 20 something females so we felt we had done exceptionally well and were forced to celebrated with a bottle of fizz. Ummm, life can be so trying!
The success of the Jaquinto progeny, given that these are his first youngsters and we haven’t got that many, made us even more sure that we had made the right decision when we wrote that big cheque.
It was if we were in a different country on Sunday when the wind died down and the sun came out. It was still cold by the show ring but at least you could go outside and warm up in the sun. This was the day when the adults and seniors were shows, we didn’t have any, so we watched Karen Oglesby of Meon Valley Alpacas whizzing in and out of the ring with lots of sashes and eventually the one for Supreme Champion for one of her girls – fantastic.