Showingdogs

So you want to show your dog:

The following post was written by a fellow breeder to help shed some light on a few of the strange behaviors you may encounter. It is incredibly well written and I am grateful to Joanne for allowing me to share it here.

"There is NO QUESTION that some breeders are in dogs because they can't
get along with people. There are, in fact, entire breeds that seem to
attract people who don't share the sandbox very well. But on the
whole, dog people are good people. They just have a culture that seems
completely bizarre until you've lived in it a while.

The dog show world is like going to a smallish college - your first
day you think "OH NO! How can I possibly figure this out; there are
millions of people here and I have no idea what to do." By the time
you've been involved for a few years, you realize that it's actually
the same thousand people all going to the same fifty events. You not
only know everyone in your particular classes (or breed), the faces
from other breeds or groups start to look awfully familiar. And by the
time you've been in twenty years (I am not there yet!) all you have to
do is lean across to the person sitting in the camp chair next to you
and say "Priscilla," and fifteen people from all different breeds nod
their heads because they know exactly who you're talking about and why.

In other words, the dog show world is very, very, very small, borders
on incestuous, and it's based on relationships of decades, with all
the mess and baggage that entails.

If you mention a breeder's name to another breeder, and suddenly
everybody stops talking and walks away from you, it MAY be a weird
jealousy thing. But it's actually far more likely to be some history
or some conflict of philosophy or judging or preference that you have
no idea about and could not have avoided. What was going through your
mind was "Oh, I'll mention this name to try to let her know where my
dog came from and to show that I did get this dog from a respected
breeder," and what was going through her mind was "OH CRAP. That means
this is probably an Otis puppy, and remember that whole debacle with
the Smiths at Sweeps in 2002? She's going to ask me whether I like the
head on her dog, and I'm sorry but Phyllis hasn't met a good head for
twenty years, and I don't want to have to tell this nice lady that I
cannot stand anything Otis ever produced." And the conversation comes
to a grinding halt and you feel "snubbed."

I had a very similar experience when I came to a show for the first
time with a new puppy; I was not new to showing but I was new to that
breed. I had someone come RUNNING across the show site, come panting
up to me, say "That is the prettiest puppy bitch I have seen in years,
where did she come from and is she for sale," and I said "She came
from XXX, in [state]," all smiles, and the runner pulled her whole
body up short and said "Oh. Well, she's nice." and walked away. I
didn't find out for years that that particular breeder did not like
breeder XXX, so she was absolutely dismayed that she had inadvertently
complimented a puppy from XXX's breeding. Something I NEVER would have
figured out on my own; I just figured that the running breeder was
bizarre.

So - the moral - once you are more established in the culture not only
will a lot of the hidden messages become more clear (and you may find
yourself abruptly clamming up and fumbling in your bait pocket when
somebody tells you that they got their show dog from someone you
absolutely cannot stand), you'll be judged more and more on who YOU
are, not on who you were or are "in bed with" in terms of pedigrees or
whatever. You'll find a natural group of friends and it will all seem
a lot more fluent; you'll very rarely feel snubbed and when you do get
the cold shoulder you'll know the history behind it.

Don't feel discouraged, and don't judge the show world by your first
show or even your first fifteen or twenty shows. I do think that we
sometimes do new exhibitors a lot of harm by the way we run things;
there are judges who go the entire day, through all their breeds and
their group, without saying a single word except around the lunch
table. It's finger twirls and pointing. When you've done it fifty or
two hundred or two thousand times, you don't even notice, because you
know ring procedure and the order of things so well that you could
show a dog to a traffic cone in the middle of the ring. But for new
exhibitors it all seems completely crazy, with no directions, no
suggestions or help, no smiles, just people grunting at each other and
pointing at mysterious corners, and breeders who abruptly turn and
walk away because they know that your dog's sire had a chest spot that
was dyed (or substitute a thousand other things). Hang in there,
because it DOES get better, and once you have friends to enjoy it with
you'll have a much, much better time."

Joanna Kimball (NH)
blacksheepcardigans.com