35) Assistant Secretary

We started going regularly to the Doberman Club each week for training and Cindy was doing quite well. I started entering her into obedience tests in shows held by other clubs. Most breed clubs had an all breed’s obedience section at their championship shows so there were lots of opportunities to enter. I never thought that dogs could have nerves about entering shows but I think Cindy did. When I first started entering her she would without fail do a poo in the show ring while she was competing and so disqualify herself. I used to take her for nice long walks before the show, change the time she got fed, and all sorts of things to get her over this embarrassing habit. Eventually I talked to the vet and he gave me some medicine to sort out her problem and then we started to do much better. I remember the first time we won a Special Beginners section was at the Hatfield Dog Club’s Championship Show. The judge was Ossie Hosgood and we got a silver cup and were very pleased with ourselves. Once we had won a Special Beginners we had to move on to the Novice section and we started to do well there too. A typical Novice test consisted of - Heeling on the lead, heeling off the lead, a one minute sit, a two-minute down and a recall. Cindy and I had a very good year that year and won most of the Novice sections that we entered. The following year we progressed to doing “A Test”. This was pretty much the same except that the heeling course was longer and more complicated and the two-minute down was with the handler out of sight. Cindy did not like that one and would usually follow me when I left her. All the competitors would be asked to line up with their dogs they would be asked to place their dogs in the ‘down’ position and to leave them. We would all say, “Stay” and walk briskly away and go behind a building or a wall so that we were out of sight and stay there for two minutes. Sometimes Cindy would stay a few seconds and then come to find me; sometimes she would leave the show ring so quickly she was out before I was. Loosing all her marks for this section meant that we were not doing well. I was training hard with her and I took her just about every day out to the local golf course for training and she would do much longer ‘stay’ with me out of sight there but not in the show ring. I remember one show we did on a particularly hot day; I went behind the building with all the other handlers and sat there for five minutes willing her to stay where I had left her. As we were called back I saw she was laying down just about were I had left her, it looked as if she had crept forward a little and a lenient judge might not dock too many points for that. We all took up our positions next to our dogs again and I realised that the audience were laughing at something. The judge came over and explained to me that when I had left Cindy she had got up walked into the shade and laid there until we were called then she had got up and laid in the approximate place I had left her. He said he wished he could have given her extra points for having the intelligence to get out of the heat and a few more for the way she had made the crowd laugh but rules were rules and so we lost all our marks once again. She did eventually get the hang of it though and we won a few “A Tests” too.

By then I was on the committee of the Dobey Club, Charles Briggs was the Chairman of and his wife Pat was the Treasurer/ Secretary but they were leaving to go and live in South Africa and new officials were needed. Pat asked me if I would take over her position as Treasurer/Secretary but I told her that I could not count and I could not spell so I would be no good in either position. After a few days she approached me again and asked if I would be prepared to be Assistant Treasurer/Secretary and I thought about that and agreed to it. I was a bit slow on the uptake and about a week later I thought to ask, “If I am going to be Assistant Treasurer/Secretary who is going to be the Treasurer/Secretary?” Pat avoided the question for a little while but then had to admit, “I can’t get anyone to agree, so we aren’t going to have one”. So that is how I got lumbered with the job. I had never taken minutes at a meeting before and found it very hard but the rest of the committee were very good and would repeat things that I did not manage to get down straight away. My spelling was a source of great amusement and they teased me about it all the time. (I only had a manual typewriter and no spell check then) At one committee meeting I was asked to send a letter to the German Shepherd Dog Club asking if any of their members would be prepared to give a helping hand at our show and that we would reciprocate. One of the group said “She will never be able to spell that, just tell them we will do the same for them, Marina”. Of course he was right, I couldn’t spell it but I did look it up in the dictionary and made sure that the word appeared in the next set of minutes, underlined and highlighted.

When the Briggs had left Jack Lawrence took over as Chairman of the committee and he did a good job and worked hard for the club. He was in the Air force in the security dog section at the time and his shift work gave him the time to spend on the club. Together we organised our Championship Show that year, I could not have done it if I had had to do it on my own as Pat had always done. Jack knew a lot about what needed to be done. Pat had organised a long time ahead for the show to be held on 1st Aug which was Dominic’s birthday so to compensate him for losing out on his party he was given the honour of presenting a gift to The Hon. J.J. Wrathall, Rhodesia’s President who was the patron of our club and who had agreed to present the prizes after the show. I remember as Secretary it was my duty to greet the couple when they arrived and to sit and chat with them for a while. I had been busy all day, running a dog show and working with dogs and at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Wrathall arrived looking fresh and elegant in a pretty dress and a large picture hat. I felt like something the cat had dragged in, and wished I had thought to at least put a comb through my hair and wash my hands but she was a charming and gracious lady and did not appear to notice my dishevelled state.

Cindy and I won a number of cups at that Championship show, one for the winner of “A Test”, one for the Doberman Club member getting the highest points in “A Test”, one for the most improved member of the Doberman Club, one for the Club member with the highest aggregate but the one that I think I enjoyed most was that the Doberman Club Obedience team consisting of four club members and their dogs won the team trophy. It was a shield donated by our club but in all the years we had been running championship shows it had always been won by teams from other clubs, mostly the German Shepherds, so it was good to be able to help win it ourselves for the first time.