“Dog Show People are Crazy!” says the bumper sticker prominently displayed on many vehicles this morning at the Piedmont Kennel Club dog show. And outside of the Bible, truer words were never written.
My brother John had, without my knowledge, signed me up to do parking this morning at the PKC dog show.
At six AM, on a perfectly good Saturday morning, it was time roll out of bed. The drive over there was beautiful, past mist covered fields, a deep purple sunrise. Shumann’s “Three Romances” playing in the background on WDAV. The dog show building was quiet and empty on our arrival. The air was cool. The big field to our right was still, serene, and covered in mist.
In two hours this place was going be a packed, hot, madhouse.
When you see a car coming toward you, you know that only only have to wave your hand, and they will go where you tell them. The same applies to SUV’s and pickup trucks.Van’s however are harbingers of trouble. One out of every two vans will either not park where you tell it, park so as to take up three spaces, or do something incredibly stupid like set up dog pens behind their van in the aisle, sealing off. When you try to tell them to do differently, they will rant, storm, and generally make your life miserable.
Today we found a solution to the “dog show vans”. Whenever a particularly rusty van, or one with lots of stuff hanging off of it came into view, or one that ignored our initial instructions, I would walk up to the drivers window, and sweetly say, “Would you like to park down by the woods?” They would say yes, for even though the woods are the farthest away from the showing ring, it offers shade. They would say “Thanks!” then drive off to the woodline, as I flashed them a thumbs up. Suddenly they were out of our hair, and could argue amongst themselves about who parked where.
Today we pulled out all the stakes and ropes that the cars normaly park up against, and managed to both give the average car more space and park perhaps fifty more cars by being able to add another row of cars.