Napo Dog Fete

Last weekend we went to Battersea for the Napo Dog Fete and here is what we found.

We seem to spend a lot of time in Battersea these days, with the dog for her Hydrotherapy at the Dog and Cat Home and also around the Power Station, shopping and sampling the latest beer at the Battersea Brewery (this is probably our most frequented pub!)

But last weekend, with dog in tow we headed to the Park instead. We had been given tickets (we know why, but we went anyway) to the Napo Dog Fete.

Exiting Battersea Tube Station we walked as the rain started to spit, by the time we were in the park it was fully raining and by the time we were around the lake it was like someone was scooping buckets of the lake water out and throwing it at us! But we carried on and found a small fenced in area – that may have been a bowling green – and a lot of blue flags and signs. We signed in and started to look around.

It was quite busy despite the rain (which thankfully was ebbing). We wandered to the pagodas, first off was the scent training with a pit of blue plastic balls, which was an overload for our pooch, who is ball obsessed and she wanted all five hundred of the balls and was not interested in searching for the pouch of scent in the ball pit – why would you want a smelly bag when there are 9,000 balls?! – We tried to get her to eat the hot dog out of a pool of water – another challenge – but again, ball or food, the ball won!

We then waited to have her photo taken, this time the ball was a help, making her focus on it above the photographer’s head, not that we really need another photo of the mad dog, but hey!…

The maze was packed and there was a 20 minute wait to get in and the bail jumping was a fail as our little pest struggles these days with jumping due to the back injury.

Instead we got a coffee and listened to another opinion on the great Harness Debate – this time the speaker was in favour of Y and X shaped harnesses, unlike the stupid woman at the recent Amazon Pet Fest.

And that was it, there wasn’t anything for sale, no freebies except a bandana for the dog – and a Pupa-chino at the coffee van and the blue ball was bitten to death by the time we left the park!