Dear Sir,
A youngster you did a small story on back in 2018 at the age of 12 years, when he attended and handled at his first Crufts competition has, this year, once again taken part at the age of 16 years, handling one of the family’s show dogs Arya ‘Vukasin a Song of Ice and Fire at Lyfearon VW’ a Siberian Husky.
There was an entry of 161 Siberian Huskies and Ashley and Arya started their winning streak by taking the top honours, 1st place, in the Veteran Bitch Class, beating eleven other dogs.
Later, after the completion of the other classes, they challenge all the bitch class winners and stepped their wins together, taking not only the Best Veteran Bitch award, but also Best Winning Overall Bitch.
After this the pressure was on, and it was absolutely amazing and beyond our wildest dreams, as we are only a small show kennel, but they challenged the top winning Male Siberian and, amongst huge cheers, got awarded Best of Breed Crufts 2023 and, alongside this, Ultimately Best Veteran in Breed also.
Ashley was absolutely amazing and, after his initial shock, he became cool as a cucumber and stepped out onto the prestigious Crufts Main Ring Best in Show Green Carpet to represent the Siberian Husky in the Working Group alongside all of the days other top breed winners.
They didn’t get any further in the competition but, at the age of 16, for Ashley to have that amazing experience, we are so, so proud and still floating on cloud 9.