It was a Burmilla that was "caught" with it, it wasn't anything that any vet would normally look at twice, but you see it happened when I was tidying him up before judging, found a sort of mini-knot (you know the sort of thing you find on a shorthair occasionally) and like a fool tried to comb through it - out came his hair. It was on the top of his head so rather obvious even thoguh tiny and I imagined a judge would spot it straight away. A fellow exhibtor suggested that I would do well to go back to the vet who passed me at vetting in and point it out to him in case the judge spotted it. Bad move! That vet called in the duty vet and that was it, out we were.

What made it REALLY annoying was that I had a girl in at the same show for her third CC which she probably would have won, and if I had kept my mouth shut she would likely have been judged before the "call the vet over" process was complete. Then to cap it all, after all that, I have no idea how, the said girly got some sort of bald spot on her ear - tiny and no lesion but still, a bald spot - and the hair never did grow back. I did not dare show her again so she never did get that third CC. I never got a viable litter from her either despite several attempts, she just wasn't cut out for motherhood at all. But I comfort myself sometimes with the knowledge that she beat the first UKGRCH of her breed at the supreme show in 1995, aged exactly nine months (though I admit I was surprised!)

Liz