A Passion For Performance
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By Chris Robinson
On numerous occasions, I have wished that my dogs would show just half the animation and interest in the show ring as they do when I merely pick up a shotgun. For Bo, my current Chesapeake Bay Retriever, the shotgun isn’t even necessary. He starts barking, whining, “aarooing” and dancing when I take my hunting boots out of the closet. Oh, all my champions have liked the treats, the happy talk and Stan and Jane Flowers, their professional handlers in the show ring. They’ve been successful show dogs with group wins both north and south of the U.S./Canada border and one even owned a Canadian BIS.
However, watching them trot around the ring, most often with a slightly bored air about them, it has been obvious that there’s big difference between liking what they’re doing and having a white-hot burning desire to do it, such as they exhibit whenever they think there’s a chance they’ll get birds.. But, there is some small comfort in the knowledge that many others with successful show dogs have uttered that very same wish and made that very same discovery.
“My dogs are happy in the show ring but it is not a passion–I think that’s the proper word–for them like field work or hunting or even agility,” says Maureen Kolasa who, with her husband Michael has owned several champion, master hunter Flat-Coated Retrievers, some of which have also reached the master levels in agility. “They would choose field work or agility over food any day. Their passion for anything in the field runs deep in their bones and is something so innate in them that even when they are old and near death, it’s something they want to do. Working dogs truly only live when they are engaged in their passion. If we are lucky, we have something in our own lives that drives us to the depth of our souls like the chance to hunt birds does for most sporting dogs.”
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Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=197107
Posted by AnthonyA
on Mar 1 2021. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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