Phew the SWAG Show was a bit of an ordeal with a very cold and damp wind on the first day, slightly better on the second if you could get into the sunshine and somehow avoid the biting wind. Alice, the puppy, came along too in her new puppy cage and cosy cat basket. She enjoyed it as she had loads of attention from the puppy lovers present. On Day 1 typically two of our girls at home decided to give birth at the wrong time. Why haven’t they read the book? One was at three in the afternoon and the other about seven. The first was a big 10 kilo Paris son and the other a seven kilo Ntherough daughter. She got plasma as when we got home she was still a bit damp and wobbly and we couldn’t be sure she had suckled. Both sets were confused as they were in the same large catch pen in the barn but once we had separated them things calmed down a bit.
We were pleased to get two championships, one for our beige female Flora who is incredibly fine but has a killer extended kick. Happily she did not get the judge as he has a bad knee and if she had got him rolling around in pain I fear he might have strangled us with the ribbon. The other championship went to our brown male Prometheus, now an adult. The other alpacas in the show team who got ribbons, four firsts, two seconds, three thirds and a fourth, were very similar to their placings at the Futurity. They might have moved up or down the front line slightly but you’d expect that especially as the weather conditions were so much more difficult. It was really tough for the white juniors (and the judges) as they were not dry when they went into the ring.
I sometimes think that the organisers want to make the exhibitors lives even more exhausting as we were expected to clear up after the show. I am over 60 and a Type 1 diabetic so I get really tired and I just gave up in the end. Luckily Dan Childerley, Keith Taylor and the delightful Liam from Houghton Hall helped us out. It really puts us off going to shows as at the Futurity the exhibitors just pack up their animals and leave. We always have a grunt team to do the clearing up and that is how it should be!