Airedales at the Montgomery County Kennel Club - Terrier Show

Our second Airedale, Bridgit, was a rescue dog. We got her from Airedale Rescue when she was about two years old and she brightened our lives for the next eight years. Airedale Rescue has groups all over the world and is probably one of the best organized Rescue groups. Marianne has been involved with the group for many years, particularly with the annual quilt raffle which is drawn each year at the Terrier Show.

The event is held at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA. They have a campus with extensive grounds which are beautifully kept. When we arrived about 9:30, the front parking lot was almost full and a kind gentleman gave us a ride on a golf buggy down to the area where all the action was taking place.

The purpose of this blog is mostly to give people who bought raffle tickets a chance to see what it all looks like.

Not all of the photos are flattering. There are so many people milling about, it's difficult to take a photo without a human appearing. If you are upset by any of of these photos which will be seen by people world wide, let me know in the comments section and I will remove them.

If you have information about the dogs, add comments.

The main quilt. The Airedales are wearing hats. You can click on the photo to enlarge it and more about the quilt can be found here.

One of the bonus quilts made by Carolyn Finlayson and Sharon DeBoer.

More bonus quilts. Marianne created the quilt on the right and Candy made the lower left quilt. Linda Bell made the quilt on the top left. The wind was so strong that Lori was having some trouble keeping everything ship-shape but everything seemed to stay in place where it needed to be.

Airedales in primped condition, waiting to be judged.

Un-primped, no judging required.

The judging ring. The judge is the woman with the grey hair. Most of the dog owners were well dressed. To be honest, it's not a hobby I would want to get into, but I can understand the appeal.

Like most dogs, Airedales love to chew. 

Two puppies. It's good to bring your dog to these events because they get used to other dogs.

Airedale Rescue had three tents that were doing good business. One of the people who manned this tent was Candy who also maintained the web pages for the quilt raffle.

This is a picture of the first rescue quilt. More about it here.

Another Airedale Rescue tent that was getting set up.

Pinky owns Candy, but she had to sit in her cage.

The judging continued.

Our Airedales usually looked like this, quite woolly. Airedale hair needs to be stripped, not shaved or cut, so it is quite a process.

Presumably, the centerpiece is the prize for the dog that can jump the highest to get at the water bowl on top.

Of course, while an Airedale is the largest terrier, there are many other kinds of smaller terrier.

One of the huge tents where owners primped their dogs prior to showing them.

"I'm downright miserable in this cage". You can see it in the eyes. Most of the dogs seemed to be enjoying themselves.

I suspect the winners get their official photos taken here. Then the owner gets a ride on the Segway in the background.

There were quite a few tents where stuff was for sale.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about other terrier breeds so let's just say these were small ones.

Another huge tent.

Porta-potties. 

I suspect there would have been bathrooms in the college building in the background where lunch was available. In the foreground are generators for the primping equipment.

Other breeds had tents, but Airedale Rescue was the only breed to have tents dedicated to the Airedales that have been rescued.

I did not know that Airedale Rescue had an official car.

This is an enormous event and there were parking lots filled with these campers. People who show their dogs a lot are very serious about it.

Somehow I can't imagine a fully grown Airedale doing this but it would have fun trying.

More tents with items for sale.

These were nice looking dogs.

Resting, but paying close attention.

The judging continued. It seems to be quite a lengthy process, taking much more time than what you see on TV when they show Crufts or the Westminster dog judging. The audience members were paying close attention. I couldn't tell what made a champion dog. They all look good to me.

There is nothing like giving your dog a friendly pat. 

Now that is a tail. It used to be that Airedale tails were chopped off at birth but fortunately that practice is now going away. You don't need to see a tail wag to know that an Airedale is happy.

Well, hello.

That woman with the tan dress forgot the proper colour for this breed.

Primping paraphernalia.

This link shows a West Highland Terrier.

I presume this is not a Westy.

Yet another huge tent. Large tents like this are often used at college graduations, particularly for large colleges.

Flat out.

Kerry Blues. It's worth reading the Temperament section of their Wiki article.

The judging seemed endless.

We had a good conversation about Australia with the owner of Phoebe who is eleven years old. As an older dog, she was quite happy to lay on your feet. We recommended staying at Wombat Bend near Melbourne which is a B&B with Airedales. Read about it here and here. By the way, Sue, one of the owners of Wombat Bend, won the quilt a couple of years ago.

All I can say is that if I was that dog at the back, I would be worried.

We left shortly before lunchtime. This was the first cold day of Autumn with temperatures in the low 50's. A strong wind made it feel much colder.

The raffle raised $16,522. It takes a lot of money to get a rescue Airedale ready for its new owners, particularly vet fees. For all of you who bought tickets or helped with the raffle in any way, the Airedales thank you.

Finally, an old photo of Bridgit and Robin.

A summer where I am not a complete bludger

Marianne has been receiving comments about the dearth of blogs since we arrived back in the USA. You will be pleased to know that I have not been completely idle. Of course, Marianne has been quite industrious downstairs working on her scrap-booking. Packages have been arriving virtually every day and the postman actually asked me to thank her for keeping him in business.

I too have a hobby which is to build tube (valve) amplifiers. I have been doing this for about fifteen years and it gives me something to plan and think about when I am not planning trips. My hand motor skills are not as good as Marianne's, but I enjoy the physical aspect of soldering and bolting components together.

For most of the fifteen years I have been running a small group of DIY amp builders in the Mid Atlantic area called the Bottlenecks. We held a meet earlier this year and decided to hold another competition. We specify what kind of amplifier is to be built and also the type of container. For our first competition, the container had to come from Ikea. The next competition required a container from Target.

This year, the amp has to have a push-pull architecture and the container has to be some piece of electrical gear that is no longer being used. The other theme is that the bulk of the parts have to be recycled. Many of us have projects that either failed, did not turn out too well, or we are just not interested in anymore.

Since I am retired and have plenty of time on my hands, I am building two entries with the hope that one actually works.

Just a jumble of parts to be positioned and hooked up.

The first uses an old receiver that originally belonged to my brother in law. It stopped working when we were visiting and he bought a new one. I took the old one back home and got it working by replacing a relay. I was using it for a while about a year ago but the cat was sitting on top of it, vomited, and managed to short out the power supply.

The cat was not electrocuted but it has made me wary of using tube amps because of the high voltages involved. We had an interesting discussion on one of the forums I subscribe to about animal / child proofing our stuff.

The power supply was too far gone to fix so I've stripped out the innards and am installing some of my old components. Yes, those are tin cans (from Aldi) holding it up. There was not enough room inside for the large power transformer and choke. When the amp is finished it should have 10 4P1L tubes and four Australian 50 watt light bulbs poking out the top.

By the way, I use a glue called Goop that I get from Lowes that does an amazing job of holding metal objects together. The bond is quite strong but not strong enough that you cannot separate the objects if you need to.

The other amplifier mostly uses items that were given to me over ten years ago such as the case, the grey transformer and the red transformers. The bloke who gave me the red transformers was famous for using old organ amps and converting them into very good sounding amps. He used duct tape to cover up the holes and that is what I will do with this amp. Unfortunately he died soon after giving me the transformers. I hope this amp turns out well so that I can keep it in his memory.

You can see a photo of one of his amps here.

Perhaps in late October after the competition, I will do another blog to let you know how they turned out.

Thoughts on the trip

Our flight from Sydney to Dallas was long but uneventful. I watched four films.

At 15.5 hours, QF 7 is the longest regularly scheduled flight in the world. Each time we fly Qantas, we find that something is missing that used to be standard. This year, I noticed that we no longer were given the bag with the bottle of water, the tooth brush and the sleeping mask. The staff are still friendly and efficient, the food and wine were fine and I enjoyed my glass of Bundy rum and ice.

Immigration at DFW now has passport scanner machines for US and Canadian  passports. It reduced the time waiting to have your passport inspected significantly and there were no long lines for US citizens. Unfortunately, all that time saving becomes wasted when you have to line up in a very long queue to exit through Customs. There was only one desk operating for all US citizens and every person had to have their passport and custom form inspected.There was a separate long line for non citizens.

I traveled around the world in 84 days, which is four days longer than the days allotted in Jules Verne's novel. It was good to stop living out of my bags and to sleep in my own bed. However, I do miss being able to go out every day and see stuff that I had never seen before. It's mentally very stimulating.

I wore out some of my clothes on the trip so I have been ordering some new travel clothes. I just received a new pair of cargo pants from LL Bean. What I really like about them are the buttons on the cargo pockets which are perfect for storing your passport and other valuables. The buttons make it difficult for pick pockets since it's difficult enough for me to get at anything in the pockets. It's a lot more convenient and comfortable than a money belt and I think I will get another few pairs of these pants.

I've been going through the blogs on a laptop with a big screen and the quality of some of the photos really impresses me. When I create the blogs, I don't get the full effect on the small screen of the netbook I take with me. All I can do on it is crop, adjust the exposure and try to straighten up the tilted photos.

So nothing big is planned for quite a while now. We have arranged exchanges near Leipzig in Germany and Selestat in France for July and August next year. It's time to get back to listening to classical music on my hi-fi system and also building amplifiers.

Catty-watty has been glad to see us but I do miss the dogs in Sydney.