JSTA Scottie Festival 2009

My blog has been absent for some time. Two weeks have passed after the "Golden Week" was over, during which I have been fairly busy with dealing with the counter measures of my company against the new flu and with playing golf in the weekends.
"Scottie Festival" of Japan Scottish Terrier Association took place in Tokyo on Sunday, May 24.
Unlike the JKC-certified dog shows, which has highly-charged atmosphere with professional handlers swaggering around, this event is full of fun with Scottie fanciers. The festival consists of open shows in the form of dog show, speed-eating contest, food catch competition, funny performance competition, fashion show, and photo contest.
It is also a good opportunity to meet twin brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents of one's Scottie. Meeting in person with Scotties which are known through blogs is another pleasure.
Pieta met her daughter and Piacere's twin sister, Noel. Surprisingly, Noel shows the "prairie" posture, which Pieta is proud of. Noel's owners told me that Noel started showing this posture only three days after she was brought to their home. Pieta and Noel immediately formed a performance duo and challenged the "funny performance competition" and won it.
This shows the reunion of two generations back from the previous one. Melchior on the right-hand side is watching his twin son and daughter, Pizzicato (center) and Tim (left).
Well, the open show was the high-light of the festival. Piacere challenged female baby class, and the competitors were Nanki, who was born ten days earlier than Piacere sharing the same sire, Max, and Piacere's twin sister, Noel.
Despite the bad condition of the ground, rain-slippery tiles, Piacere walked very well. She, however, has not been trained to stay still during the individual examination by the judge and while waiting in line with competitors, and the winner of this class was Nanki, who has ten days advantage and better trainer, Nakahara-san.
Pieta participate the female adult class, and the participants to this class were six Scotties.
By letting her go around at the beginning of the examination of gait, Pieta held her tail erected from the first step of gait.
Pieta showed nice gait in spite of the weather, and won the class, but lost against the winner of junior class in the winners match. The judge told us that he valued more on the consistent gait in the rain than the appearance in still posture, and the younger competitor walked more livelily than rather elderly Pieta.
The blood relationship of the Scotties, who appeared in this blog is shown below.

This festival has already been reported in the blogs of many Scottie fanciers, in which some photos of Pieta and Piacere are shown.