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Herman
(Roanoke Flax)
and me at
Herts and Essex
in 1997.

chase I eventually caught him and returned to the show. Judging had finished, all the dogs, exhibitors
and judge had gone and my third-place prize card was on the table waiting for me. In retrospect, I
suppose I was lucky to get it as the dog was not in the ring, but things were much more relaxed in
those days.

I was once told that you will ruin your first dog, you will spoil your second dog and you will do
something with your third dog. In other words, you learn with your first dog, and Curt was certainly
my learning dog. From the show point of view, he was very average. He won a bit and lost a lot, but
I learned what the breed should look like, how it should be shown, what all the main bloodlines were
and who all the people were in the breed. I also learned how to control a male Dobermann who was
only too happy to pick a fight or to respond to an invitation from another dog. My, I learned a lot very
quickly in those early days. I also learned to do working trials with him and remember spending a
weekend with Barbara Woodhouse on a working trials training weekend. This was long before she
became a television star but it created a friendship that lasted for the rest of her life. There were just
six of us (five Alsatians and a lone Dobe) from the Ipswich area. Most of the training was done by

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