Our wonderful Gareth and Tippi were at Crufts last Thursday as part of the NI Rally Obedience team for the interregional competition.
This was the second year they’d been part of the team. Last year I couldn’t go to Crufts because I was only a few days post knee surgery, so I was determined to go this year. I booked my flights and Crufts tickets in January, and by Wednesday evening last week I was getting excited.
Himself had grudgingly agreed to get up at 5am to take me to Belfast City airport for the 06.55am Flybe flight to Birmingham. I’d packed my rucksack (plenty of space for purchases), sorted out some English money, downloaded my tickets and remembered my passport.
I had a relaxing bath and came downstairs to catch the news – to hear a breaking news story about the imminent Flybe collapse. I sat with fingers crossed that if it was going to happen, it wouldn’t occur until the weekend so I could get to Crufts. But without success.
At 02.06am my phone bleeped – a text from Flybe saying all flights were cancelled and telling me not to go to the airport. I wailed. Himself grunted, muttered about thank goodness he didn’t have to get up at sparrowfart, turned over and was snoring away within a minute. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and tried in vain to find another way to get to Crufts. EasyJet flights from Belfast International were fully booked, I didn’t have time to go via Dublin and a ferry was definitely not the answer.
After all that planning, anticipation and excitement, I never got to Crufts. As much as I was gutted about not being able to go, in the great scheme of things I suppose it wasn’t crucially important – I was even able to watch our team compete via the live feed on Facebook. But it certainly was an important life event to the poor Flybe staff who, without warning, lost their jobs, literally overnight.
The team did really well and Gareth came fourth in level 5, so he’s now the proud owner of a beautiful Crufts rosette, along with three other people from the team of six, two of whom have attended our Rally classes.
Well done everyone involved.
Perhaps I’ll get there next year…
Keep training,
Carol
PS If you’d like to know more about Rally, check out Devotee membership on the website here