I was just thinking, because all the Dorothys seemed to work really well with Bobby last night, and he's already a trained professional..

I just think it would save time and money on the training of whichever dog wins the role of Toto..

Thoughts?

The toto that wins will only be doing one gala performance, they'll have a properly trained dog for every other show

I've got a Westie but I have no shame in saying Bobby is much cleverer than mine

Just agreeing with last poster. The prize is for one night only. It is likely that the dog you saw last night will be one of the professional Totos as Gerry Cott one of the judges has several Westies which he has trained.

(My dog got into the last 25 out of 1000 entrants!)

What a lot of effort/screentime for one gala performance. It's quite misleading. I'm sure many people assumed it wasn't for one performance.

You can't put a family pet into kennels in London for the duration of the show. It would be completely unfair to the dog and that is why they are only being used for one performance. Then a professionally trained dog will take over the role for the rest of the run. If you think about it, it makes sense.

But they've said several times over the weeks that it's just for one gala performance.

I must have missed that, I probably should have guessed though. It would take way too much time to train an amateur dog...