It was a very pleasant surprise to be asked to judge your show in Finland and for us an honour to oblige.

The travel plans and various E mail messages sent from Sari and Mari to ourselves help to ensure everything got off to a good start and the travel arrangements having been planned we set off from England in the early hours of Friday morning and still managed to find a traffic jam but thankfully not to big.

On our arrival in Finland we were met by Mari and her Mother in Law Kristina (in Mari's words "her friend") and immediately made to feel welcome.
We were taken to Mari's home where we met the rest of the family, Michael, Anton and Iida. In the evening we enjoyed a great meal and a wonderful evening with them all. (Aided by a couple of whiskies to help us along)

The next day Kristina took us on a guided tour of Helsinki. We saw and enjoyed some excellent sites and we could not have enjoyed this city as much without Kristina's excellent knowledge, and information, about the sights we were seeing.
It was such a shame that it rained so hard, and for so long, as we are sure Kristina must have been wishing she was somewhere else but she never complained once and was the perfect companion to spend the day with.

Back to Mari's house and again a fantastic meal with a fantastic family. If we had come home then the trip just to meet them would have been worth it. After our meal Mari and Michael drove us to our hotel where we were to stay for the night prior to the show. It was over a three-hour drive for them and, they still had to return home straight away. We said goodbye to Michael knowing that we would not be seeing him again on this trip.

That evening we met some of the committee members who were busy preparing for the show and spent some time over a coffee talking with Juhani and Marjut who again made us most welcome.
  
We awoke next morning to a nice bright sunny day. We knew everyone had obviously been very busy, organising events to ensure the day went well, so the fine weather was a bonus to all concerned.

Now it was time to get down to what we had really come for and to start judging the dogs and we were in for a really big surprise.

Before we start we would like to say that the following comments apply to all the breed types that we had the pleasure of judging.

The classes from the tiny puppies upwards had an abundance of good dogs and it was easy to find the ones we liked but, placing them in order of 1st to VHC was a bit more difficult and many of these dogs will change places with each other on different days.


All of the dogs were fantastic. Well presented, handled perfectly, clean, and in top condition. The overall quality was an absolute joy to go over. We were both so pleased to not only find so many good quality dogs but also to have been given the opportunity to judge dogs of such a high standard. Whatever you are doing, don't stop, it must be right.

Our final line up in both the dogs and the bitches was superb and neither of us found it easy to choose best dog or bitch from those we had in front of us. But choose we had to and when both the best dog and bitch were together for our decision on Best in Show we knew that our choices were good ones.

It is never easy saying one dog is better than another when having two such fine animals in front of you but we both agreed on the bitch going BOB and finally Best in Show. She looked superb.

It is very difficult for us novice English judges to try and give our critiques as we are going over each dog. We tried to be honest in our comments and hopefully did not cause anyone, or ourselves, any embarrassments by saying anything that could have been interpreted in the wrong way. Our comments above are an honest reflection on how we viewed the dogs that were presented to us and, we would like to thank our stewards who were so understanding and helpful to us while carrying out this task.

The show over it was time to go back to the hotel to freshen up before being taken for a lovely meal at the rapids accompanied by some of the committee members.
Almost a perfect day except England lost to France in the football but that was a different matter.

The next day and it was a couple of train journeys back to Helsinki aided by various committee members or spouses.

On the first train we did not know that our tickets gave a carriage and seat number so we just got on and found a seat. It must have been quite a shock when arriving at our first destination for Juhani to find us not where we should be. He looked very relieved when he saw us walking up the platform towards him.

At our final stop we were met again by Mari who kindly took us to the airport and stayed with us for a while to keep us company.

Finally we arrived in England to be met by traffic jams and all the other difficulties endured while travelling around our part of the country.

Our thanks to all of you for making this visit so perfect in every way; we will never forget the friendliness and kindness you showed to us both.

Good luck and best wishes to your club for today and in the future.

Gwen & Gordon Edney.