Lieu day!

I am fortunate to live in a very dog-friendly part of Ashford with numerous walks and green spaces to exercise my now nine-month-old Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen Merlin.

Every morning Merlin gets a circuit of Singleton Lake before he comes into the DOG WORLD office. Each morning he has his 'constitutional' - a few circuits of the office, usually with a toy firmly gripped in his jaws, or anything else he can get hold of - door wedges are a notable favourite. He also has a penchant for tuna sandwiches as DW employees have found to their cost!

After greeting the office staff Merlin will settle until lunchtime when he enjoys another walk. With the beautiful weather we have been having he has enjoyed some free running with our news editor's lurcher Star in some fields near to the office. With Star being at least twice the height of Merlin it is amusing to see Merlin attempt to keep up with him!

With a day off in lieu for working at Crufts Merlin and I had a couple of lengthy walks around Singleton today. The playing fields at Great Chart are a favourite for free running although, being a hound, Merlin does possess a devilish streak. Whether it's sneaking into neighbouring fields through the smallest gap, rendering me unable to get to him, or diving into nearby streams, walking Merlin is never boring!

Dee wun (day one in Geordie) through to Dee seven (or thereabouts)

My first blog....

Not too sure what format these blogs will take or whether the novelty of committing my thoughts to the web will die out - or indeed if they should be posted! But here goes...

I'm sitting with a can of Fosters by my side recovering from the the busiest two weeks of my professional life - Crufts. Well, the event has actually taken a fair bit of my time since the beginning of the year.

As a child I always looked forward to Crufts, flying or ferrying across from Jersey when I lived there or training/driving up from Brighton when I was at uni. However for the last few years I have seen the show from a different angle working for DOG WORLD newspaper. Seeing the show being set up on the Wednesday before the public and exhibitors descend on the NEC in Birmingham and being there for 12 hours a day for four days is exhausting, but with a plentiful supply of extra strong mints and of course Alpen bars I did it.

The four days fly by with work beginning at 8am each day until the groups end at around 8pm before returning to the hotel for the obligatory drinks. For me personally Crufts is also an opportunity to see my family dogs and Minstrel, Rolo, Taj and Ces spent the show in their usual haunt, The Manor Hotel in Meriden with the DW team.

In terms of the coverage the DW team provided of the show we managed to provide unrivalled coverage of the world's greatest dog show with photographic coverage, Twitter updates, video interviews and blog updates - all at www.dogworld.co.uk/crufts.

Crufts is always a good laugh with the DW team 'on tour' and I count myself lucky to be one of them, even if I am the subject of some of the ribbing (my Lambretta T-shirt mainly)!

For me this was the most tiring Crufts I can remember as the team stayed at the NEC until best in show had been declared at 9pm on the Sunday. Driving (or maybe flying) back to Kent in James' Honda Civic made a change from pounding the tarmac of the M6 in my more modest Fiesta!

Arriving back in Ashford at 1am on Monday Crufts 2009 wasn't over yet with the hard work of putting together the DOG WORLD results paper. With three of my team of sub-editors in the office over the weekend they had kept the results updated leaving me to concentrate on laying the pages with the editorial and photos from the show.

Our hard working team pulled out all the stops and the final page was signed off at 7.29pm on Tuesday evening - a record! And when the finished product landed on our desks on Thursday morning all that work was worth it.

A huge thanks to my editorial team and the other DW team members for their hard work.

Now what to do.....?