At the beginning of this year I was drawn to an article in the Telegraph newspaper about a couple of dogs rescued from Afghanistan by Royal Marine, Paul Farthing. He has since set up a charity to help animals, predominantly dogs, to get the care and medical attention that is so lacking out there.
Although the article stated that they were settling in well, I made contact with Paul and it turned out that Paul did have a big concern; one of the dogs had been used for fighting and they had been put forward for “The Friends for Life” award at Crufts 2008 and, as it stood, Nowzad (the fighter) would most certainly not make it into the ring without munching a dog or two en-route and there was the added complication that the noise, cheering, clapping, etc would sound just like the biggest fight this dog had ever been to!!
I put myself forward to see if there was anything I could do. Paul welcomed this as he had just finished reading Jan’s book. A date was set and Robin Glover very kindly accepted a request from me to make the journey down to Devon.
Robin and I gave our all, it was a long consultation but, as always, the time flew by and progress was made. We left them with the Battle Plan and sent a larger step-by-step version after a day or two.
As usual, we kept in close contact; this was a very demanding case due to the huge mountain this dog had to climb and the public appearance at Crufts. It was never a forgone conclusion that he would make it in to the ring, and we were prepared to pull the plug at the eleventh hour.
Robin and I travelled up to Crufts and although it was clear that our services were no longer required, we did make sure that they knew they could call us at any moment for help. We decided to make the most of our trip to Crufts. We landed a meeting with the show organiser, who was fascinated with the story of getting Nowzad to Crufts using Amichien Bonding and she was very pleased that we were there; she indicated that it was a great weight off her shoulders, bringing Nowzad up had been a concern for her, we assured her we would be there for the run-through and on the night.
We offered our services to them to help with the rest of the nominees for the “Friends for Life” award, which was gratefully received and we spent the rest of the 2 days based at the Metropole Hotel, escorting the nominees to and from the show, giving advice when asked and general support for a few rather nervous people.
Paul did come to us for advice an hour or two before the big moment, we escorted them into the collecting ring, and acted as “body guards”, making sure no one eye-balled Nowzad or got too close. They went into the ring with out any problem, Robin and I were gob smacked; it was an amazing moment for us. We are now planning a meeting with the Kennel Club to coordinate “The Friends For Life “ Award next year.