Photoblog: the Royal

Wow, sorry for the silence. I'd meant to get this up before o'er long, and then life/stuff (*coughRock Bandcough*) got in the way. As I had mentioned, the main impetus for going to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair was this:


Superdogs
... but we did the traditional Royal stuff, too.

We managed to catch a horse demonstration, for example:


It was for saddlebred ... something. (The reverb on the announcer was tremendous; it was really hard to make out what he was saying.) It was very cool, until the horse threw a shoe. Then it was still cool, but we were distracted by the shoe.

We also looked at cows, including wee dairy calves:

The term "wee" is relative.
We petted animals who deigned to let us touch them in exchange for food pellets.




Including little baby ones!


There were also Silkie chickens dyed odd colours ("for fun," they say), and wee little bunnies ... but not for petting.




Also popular, and I sort of regret not getting a picture of this: stands of Dyson Airblade hand dryers next to the "washing stations" at the petting zoo. Pd wanted to take one home, but I thought someone would notice and take umbrage. I was, however, terribly impressed with the branding opportunity. Who would have thought petting zoo = product placement for $1,000 hand dryers? Not me, but perhaps that's why I'm no longer in publicity.

Moving on.


Piglets! These were behind glass. I noticed a distinct lack of pigs on display at the Royal, which Pd explained by pointing out that, despite what I've been taught by Babe and EB White, pigs are actually very ornery and not calm enough to just keep around like this. Well, fine. But I can't believe EB White would lie to me like that.

So we moved on to the sheep.


Of course, being me, seeing sheep immediately leads to ...


Fleeces! (And fleeces lead to yarn. Yum. And I'm not sorry, either.)

And finally, the traditional agricultural fair competition: butter sculptures.




These were not the winners (I think they were second runner up and critics' choice, respectively), but we liked them the best. The winners were technically superior but kind of boring.

We also saw the displays for the other traditional competition — giant vegetables — but declined to document it. As Pd says, giant vegetables are odd: they never look quite real. Maybe years of watching CGI has spoilt us, but honestly, Mother Nature really does not upsample well at all.

Meanwhile, on our way to queue for Superdogs, we passed by (I think) a display for canola. It had interactive stands for kids. Anyway, we are pretty sure we shouldn't have been able to access the systems utility, but we did:


Somehow, Pd always seems to find the broken computer. I don't know how he does it; it's a gift. Or a curse. (He fixed it, though. He rebooted it. Don't tell the IT guys.)

And then ... Superdogs!

We had decided to make our way to the arena about an hour before the scheduled showtime, as it was the last show of the day (we had gotten to the Royal late, and they don't have evening shows). It was lucky we did, too: they had already started letting people in — we didn't have to queue, at all — and there were so many that they decided to start the show half an hour early. In the end, they supposedly turned away something like 500 people. If we had opted for the suggested-arrival time of half an hour prior to the show, we wouldn't have gotten in.

It was a show, not a competition, so it only lasted about 25 minutes. It was super cute, though.


Noah, a Pyrenean sheepdog. (I had to look up his breed later, but I should have known that it was a sheepdog, judging from my reaction. I loves sheepdogs.) There was also an Afghan, which I didn't get a picture of, but it was absolutely beautiful; tall and elegant.

The main event was an obstacle course race run by eight dogs (four for each team). The Boston terrier ran for our team first, and he was pretty good:


The other team had the Old English sheepdog, later, and ... okay, the sheepie was nowhere near as fast as the Vezla or as smart as the border collie, but it was really, by far, hands down, no contest, the cutest.


Especially since it got confused and skipped the high jump on its side of the course, but turned around and ran half of our side of the course. And then ran back and had a tug-of-war with its trainer, who was trying to get it to do the weave properly. And then it may or may not have slid off its pedestal at the end of the course by jumping onto it too fast.


I got to pet it later, after the show. His name is Puff Daddy and he is five years old.

I want one.