Successful breeders know that they must be practical and patient in estimating the time and number of litters it will take to solve a problem or produce a special dog. Thus, when a planned breeding occurs there is usually the expectation for something good.
President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office which said, “The buck stops here.” This derived from the slang expression “pass the buck” meaning that you shunt the responsibility off to someone else. In Truman’s world, once the problem reached his desk, there was no one left to whom he could “pass the buck.” Well, the same thing has occurred in the dog world only in this case the buck stops with people who show their dogs and with the conformation judges.
I hinted that our behavior at dog events may be aiding and abetting our antagonists, those groups that might like to see us wither and disappear. In how many ways has the world of dogs become a “dog-eat-dog” world; a world in which we care solely about our own interests and the devil take the hindmost? This self-centered, every-man-for-himself attitude can take hold before we are even aware of it, especially so, given that we are a microcosm of our world which seems more and more to be “all-about-me” as well. Is it really so hard to compliment each other… a fellow breeder, exhibitor, a fellow judge? Just how rare is this? Probably more rare than you and I would like to admit.
Great Western was Margaret Young Renihan’s brainchild. Quite a few claimed it would not fly, but it has become one of the great Terrier shows in the country, second only to the Montgomery County Kennel Club in Pennsylvania.
Hence this revisit to the themes and variations of how we interact with each other and how we relate to the sport and to the dogs themselves. This subject is, of course, multidimensional and no attempt is made herein at comprehensively examining behavioral patterns or exhaustively exploring motives.
The history of the Drentsche Patrijshond can be traced back to the 16th century. Inventing of the gun meant a pointing dog was needed.
