MADOR STORY Chapter 3 - Travelling abroad

On the 23rd May 2004 we've participated at our first CACIB show abroad in Varazdin, Croatia. At first we were a little preoccupied due to the international vaccinations documentations: when travelling abroad, we need a certificate stating that there was no rabies since the last 3 months in our environment. Some think our vet's stamp is sufficient into the yellow international book of vaccinations, but others state that an Official Veterinary Document is needed (an A4 format document). At the frontier I gave the stamped yellow book with our passports but the officer did not have a glance at it, when coming back I tried not to show it and nobody cared about it.

We left home at 3:45 a.m. to arrive on time, taking into account the planned stops. I was a bit afraid how Mador will cope with the long journey since he's such a baby, but his leonberger-blood showed itself: there was absolutely no problem with him, when we stopped for a safety stop I asked him to do his job and he started immediately, just "comme il faut" with a good boy, there were no accidents in the car.

It was not easy to find the show location since there were no signs at all to indicate the directions, and there were few people on the streets this early hour. Finally we went to the market where at first we met an old lady who ran a flower shop, she only spoke Hrvatski (Croatian) and has no idea where the show would be held, but she introduced us to another woman who understood a bit of German. She got into her own car and drove us to the show site. It was so good to meet such wonderful helpful people.

At our ring we arrived first, we asked for the catalogue, we assembled Mador's home-made cage, we had a walk and took our start number and waited for the judging. Our judge was the Croatian Mr. Niksa Lemo, we found him very kind at first sight. His judgeing was absolutely professional, he was very critical with the dogs both in standing and in movement. At the end of the judging, we hold hands and also Mador had a little carress. We traveled to Croatia with the open intention to meet Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Italian etc. leonbergers, but interestingly there were only Hungarian leonbergers presented. We met many Hungarian exhibitioners with different breeds (i.e. grey hound, English mastiff), it was interesting to discuss our dog's advantages and disadvantages and the topics we were all interested in.

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We thought we would wait for the BIS program. The spokesman had no idea what breed I had (so I whispered 'Leonberger'), finally the Baby BIS judge decided for a pekingese, but we had a good time anyway. When we got home I thought Mador will have a rest (juste as I did), but he seemed to be totally relaxed and started to play with Alex.

© Mador.hu