THE NPPA REPRESENT THE PORTUGUESE PODENGO AT DISCOVER DOGS       IN LONDON 22^ND & 23^RD OCTOBER.

A REPORT BY ONE OF OUR COMMITTEE MEMBERS, DIANNA CURTIS ON DAY ONE.

I have attached a few pictures from yesterday, attached at the end. It was all hands on deck when we were busy and of course we always forget to take some pictures!!  My thanks go to the parents of the child who agreed that I could take some pictures of her with the pods and allow their use on our website and newsletter. They were more than happy to give their permission for both.

As Jenny and Eileen have said, I can only agree that it was indeed a very successful and tiring day.

Both humans and dogs were flagging by the last hour with having been enormously busy throughout the whole day. Peanut Podengo could have gone on right through the night and into today (Sunday 23^rd), although I think, she obviously had brand new batteries in and was full of energy and enthusiasm!

There definitely was lots of interest and having been breed advisor on breed information stands at various events (Estrelas and Podengos) you know when there is just cuteness and/or 'never seen them before' interest to the interest where people really are considering the breed. One visitor had been coming to DD for the last few years to meet breeds on their shortlist - with the Podengo on it from the start - and yesterday it has been moved up to the top slot.

Both wire and smooth coats were there yesterday and confirmed some people’s decisions as to wire or smooth, made some think again, and others it just showed them for real what the difference was in coat - pictures can only do so much.

Plenty of NPPA cards and breed information leaflets were handed out with many of them going to those really interested people for contact details, so hopefully we shall see some new prospective owners coming up in the very near future.

My two girl Podengos had some small neck ruffs on (you can see them in the pictures). They are meant to be for cats for Christmas time, but of course they were the Portuguese colours so I just HAD to have them!!! They had tiny bells on and so they jingled as the dogs moved. Not only did they attract the viewer (general public love the cuteness factor don't they), but jingling meant they were also heard too. As you can imagine, it also took us a while to take a little exercise walk to the dog toilet area. Oh well, all good promotion of course. Having said that, the Podengo does look seriously cute walking round and about anyway, so they all turned heads when we were out of the pen as well as in it.

All the breed booths were in alphabetical order and the best part of it was that we had three booths all in a row side by side, with Portuguese breeds and the effect of all the red and green - bunting and flags - was amazingly impressive!! It felt very much a Portuguese area. (A really good friendly bunch of advisors on each of the three stands who all had one thing in common. One of the guys from the PWD stand, who is Portuguese himself, kept popping by and he also popped in to see if we needed any help when some of the banners on our stand decided they just couldn't hang up any longer so we needed to clamber up to stick them back up.

We met quite a few Portuguese people actually - one lady who actually comes from the same town as where the Monografica is held! She admitted to never having seen the Podengo until now. Yes it amazed us too, but I have heard it a few times before.

Lots of children enjoyed the Pods and the pods enjoyed them. Out of all of them there was only just the one little toddler that I had to watch very closely and 'talk to'. She obviously loved dogs, had no fear, but her hugs for Tink and Peanut were just a little too tight at times

Getting to the venue was relatively easy - luckily for us the ExCel is 'our side' of London so not too much driving through the city for us. We found the car park straight away and the walk into the venue wasn't too horrendous. Signage at that point was slightly lacking so we didn't see the 'Dog entrance' that was positioned half way up the level path (which runs alongside the river). Well we made the most of it for the trek back to the car and the dogs enjoyed the fresh air and exercise before crashing out shattered in the car for the drive home.

Hopefully Sunday will be as rewarding as yesterday was. Enjoy yourselves Trish, Rob, and John.

SUNDAY REPORT BY ROB DUNNING.

Approach to the car park, on Sunday was a lot easier than on Friday evening, when I went to set up and decorate the Podengo booth. All the roundabouts in the vicinity of the Excel were blocked off because of an incident at nearby London City Airport, which also virtually cut off access to the Excel. However, I finally found an access route and arrived over an hour later than intended.

Sunday got off to a relatively slow start, and, initially, I thought I was to man the booth single-handed. Jenny and Nigel Folds, who had volunteered to help, were unable to attend due to a serious injury to Nigel. We all wish him a speedy recovery. This left 3 of us, John & Trish Bellenie and myself. John arrived shortly after public opening time, since he had been directed to the Millenium Dome, across the thames from the Excel, and he had to find his way, then, to our venue. John was alone, because Trish was unwell and unable to attend. Once the public had filtered from the main entrance to the far end of the venue, where we were situated, we were busy all day, with neither of us having any real time to take any kind of break. As with Saturday, there were quite a few truly interested people wishing to learn more about Podengos, and, of course, there were those who were just fascinated by them. The interest in wire over smooth, or vice versa, was about 50/50. So more are becoming to realise that smooths exist. This can only be good for the breed long term.

By about 4.30PM, the crowds began to diminish slowly, which gave us the opportunity to strip out the booth of all the decorations, pack up, and make our weary way back to the car park to journey home, with some pretty tired dogs, and two very tired, but satisfied committee members of the NPPA that they had performed a good PR job on behalf of the Portuguese Podengo in the UK.