A sunny Sunday in Suffolk. My friend's bitser, suitably primped, has been entered at the local dog show. She parades haphazardly with pedigree mutts who trot upright and stiff-legged like City gents. The judge checks her teeth. She bares them and growls. He feels her stomach. She barks. He goes to lift her. She runs away. My friend is not one to give up. Her pooch is entered in four further rounds. For the pairs section, the owner of a large dog of indeterminate origin is invited to partner them. The two mutts stand side-by-side like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito in Twins. "Did you not realise they had to be matching dogs?" I hiss, as a minging pair of Border Terriers grab the prize. She's nonplussed: "They didn't say." Finally, in the Family Dogs section, there's success. The judge, I suspect, has made a sympathy call. Over dinner we relive the highlights. This includes a timed hurdles over a line of haybales. "They said our little darling was almost a good as a lurcher," my friend reports proudly. Her poor pet, meanwhile, has passed out in the corner.