8 March 2026
Crufts, as most will know, is the largest dog show in the world, this year having over 24,000 dogs at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham over four days, 5-8 March.
This amazing annual event showcases a wide variety of competitions and demonstrations including breed classes, agility, heelwork to music, obedience championship and flyball, demonstrating the best of British dog breeding, training and handling.
The entry this year had nearly 18,700 dogs participating in breed competitions over the four days of the event with more than 200 pedigree breeds competing for the coveted Best in Show title. Of this number there were 56 Chesapeake Bay Retrievers taking part in the Breed Judging and Gamekeepers’ Classes, and another handful representing the breed in the Discover Dogs area where the general public visit to see and find out about all the different breeds.
Debbie Herring does a great job organising volunteers for the Discover Dogs stand and in decorating the stand itself. Tragically Debbie took a tumble last week whilst taking her dogs for a walk and managed to dislocate and fracture her shoulder, which obviously put her out of action for the event and whilst she managed to attend on the Sunday, suitably trussed up in medical dressings, the input she normally makes was severely curtailed.
Those volunteers who manned the stand this year were Laura and Sharon on the Thursday with Hemi and Tasha; Vroni and Togo (missing Debbie) on the Friday; Richard and Rhian on the Saturday with Roly and Otto; Jo with Quince and Lena with Zena and Aruba on the Sunday. This is a time consuming and tiring day so a huge thank you to all mentioned for taking on this job on behalf of our breed.
Our breed certainly make an impact in the Gamekeeper classes at Crufts, with brown dogs being present in various categories, the Oakmarsh team really making their presence felt. Mary and Des Murray made the trip from Ireland and won the BASC AV retriever class, taking the impressive Agria Insurance Trophy with Yeats who was imported as a puppy from Germany.
A total of 56 dogs were entered in the Chesapeake breed classes under very experienced gundog judge, Richard Bott. Eight of the 56 entries had travelled from Europe to compete and made this a truly international entry. It was one of these eight who took the top award of Best of Breed, a lovely young male from Czechoslovakia: Fair Filippo od Hostalky, whose dam, Daisy, won the bitch CC at Crufts in 2024. Owned and handled by Gabriela Kucharova this lad won the dog CC, thereby starting his journey for his UK championship. The reserve dog CC was won by Tilly Thomas and Richard Playle’s homebred working wildfowling dog, Roly (Riptide Gentlemans Relish), very ably handled by Gemma McCartney.
Onto the female classes and the best bitch and CC went to Mayhew and McCartney’s BBs Chesapeake Breeding Dory for Arnac, imported from Switzerland and at her first Crufts, winning through from the junior bitch class. Caroline Huber, whose mother bred Dory, had flown in the day before and was thrilled to see Dory do so well. Reserve CC went to last year’s best of breed winner, Sh Ch Arnac Bay Hebe, handled by Emily Evans, and owned by Mayhew and Middleton. Best puppy was Janet Morris’s homebred Penrose Water Pistol and best veteran was Hebe.
While many are proud to qualify their dogs for Crufts and rightly so, it takes a lot more effort and training to qualify for the field trial classes at Crufts. After many, many years of no qualifiers in our breed, this year we had a Chesapeake enter, namely Irish Show Champion Riverruns Everybody’s Friend, owned and bred by Mary and Des Murray. This lovely bitch earned her field trial award in Ireland having been trained and run by Mary and is often winning or in the top awards at our UK Chesapeake working tests.
For those who wish to see all the results from Crufts, they are on the Fosse Data website under Results – Crufts – Gundogs – Chesapeake Bay Retrievers.
If I have missed out any significant news, please let me know.
More pictures next week.
Christine Mayhew
bobmayhewqhorses@aol.com
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