Passion By the Beach by Classifieds

Tiger's fren Cookie trying the Ball-Catching Segment

Sit-Stay Segment

Tiger's new friend checking him out

Scary huge dog almost my size!

I don't know how classified came up with such an X-rated name for a pets event at East Coast Park but well, this is the Straits Times we're talking about...journalists feeding the whole of Singapore with up-to-the-moment, gahmen-coloured news. Apparently, I'm so late in posting this up. This happened on 5th April 2009, exactly one month ago. I had a very valid reason to be late, having just moved house.

The event was a really wet, rainy one. But there was a gi-normous tent to house all of us. It got rather misty with all these Cool-Mist fans blowing. There were some activities like Doggy Weddings, Ball-Catching going on, and stalls were set up selling pet-related stuff.

Anywayz, Tiger participated in the Fatal Distraction (another X-rated name by these testorone-driven journalists) segment. This involves total obedience to sit and not move. It was rather poorly organized. There were about 40 dogs participating, but the judges had not thought up how they were going to test the pooches, whether they had to sit or down stay, whether to use the bubble gun on all rounds, etc.

Anyway, Tiger being the best pooch (in my humble and biased opinion), passed every round up to the pre-finals, even when the owners (includes me) had to hide backstage. He gamely sat stay and even resisted some yummy Bak Gwah (pork jerky) the MC (dog trainer Patrick Wong) used to tempt them. So I was really surprised when they disqualified Tiger.

Apparently, they promoted the dog who ate the jerky to the finals, but disqualified Tiger cos he turned his head to look at the golden retriever beside him, who had decided to down stay. Come on, if the person beside you was 3 times your size and he decided to break the rules and move, YOU would turn your head to have a look! Tiger didn't move away at all from his position. 3 judges and all of them blind! 

That dog went on to win 3rd prize! I was so indignant and really pissed off with the error of judgement. Last week when we went to doggy school, the dog trainer confirmed that the judges made a mistake. So Tiger was a real good boy...better luck next time babe.