Hot dogs help keep Haling Park friends in the shade

insidecroydon

13 years ago

Hot and bothered: one of the entries at Saturday’s Haling Park dog show

This year’s Friends of Haling Grove Dog Show saw pets from across South Croydon dragging their owners to the annual contest in the park on Saturday, the hottest day of the year so far.

The Friends of Haling Grove come up with numerous ways of securing donations by holding events in the park.

The park also receives money from the Eleanor Shorter Trust, which was set in 1986. Money for the Trust came from selling a bungalow belonging to the original Haling Grove Estate.

Historically, the Haling Park country estate, of which Haling Grove was a part, stretched as far as Duppas Hill further north and can still be re-imagined today in the peacock and wallaby-strewn grounds of Whitgift School beside the Brighton Road.

Haling Grove Friends’ events include a summer Big Lunch and a St Nicholas yuletide celebration in early December.

The dog show was mercifully, for the owners as well as the dogs, held under the shade of the park’s long established tree cover.

Haling Grove: in full summer bloom

The competitions included a timed obstacle course, a best tricks test, a waggiest tail contest and the most characterful dog category, where bloodhound Harley showed such an eminent disdain for the proceedings throughout that he was the obvious winner.

The clearly missing category from the proceedings was “human most like its dog”, although this might have presented the judges with a particular challenge, since there were many strong candidates on show.

Inside Croydon: Croydon’s only independent news source that is actually based in the heart of the borough – averaging 44,000 page views per month, Jan-Jun 2013
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