NOHS Newbies Bitten by the Dog Show Bug!

By Phyllis Gowen

We are relative “newbies” in the dog show world and our lives have taken a turn we never expected. Here’s what the AKC NOHS has brought to our lives.

Both my husband Mike and I have always had dogs – he had rescues and I always had purebred pet quality dogs (mostly beagles). On Memorial Day in 2014 we had to put Wiggles, our 12-year-old beagle, down. I was beyond heartbroken and wanted another beagle. Mike was OK with that but wanted a “bigger beagle”… knowing that a 15” Beagle wouldn’t satisfy him, we started looking at other hounds. I remembered seeing something on Westminster that they referred to as a “big beagle”. After extensive research, we decided that the Harrier was the breed for us… same temperament as a Beagle, but noticeably larger and still able to live happily in a suburban townhouse. They are definitely rare in this country, but with a combination of luck and persistence (and a lot of Facebook conversations), we found a breeder with a 5-week-old litter on the ground. We convinced the breeder to sell us one of the bitches. Although we were looking for pet quality, the one she had available was show quality. She suggested we try showing her, that we might have fun… our initial response was “Nope – not gonna happen!!!!”

Three weeks after our initial conversation, we drove down to Miami InternationalAirport to meet our first harrier, Blythmoors Jump At The Chance, aka “Emmy”. She was the most beautiful puppy we had ever seen, and it was love at first sight.

The next few months were spent loving and teaching our new pet. She excelled in puppy kindergarten and everything she did.

In December 2014 we agreed to work the Meet the Breeds booth at Eukanuba for the Harrier Club of America. All we knew about dog shows was what we saw when watching Westminster. Eukanuba was overwhelming, yet we had a blast. The funny thing was, judges and hound experts were coming up to us asking us why we weren’t showing our now 8-month-old puppy, consistently commenting on her head and her incredible “topline”. We had no clue what they were talking about, but after having such a great time sharing our rare breed puppy with so many people, we came home thinking “maybe we should give this dog show thing a try”.

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Posted by Alex on Jul 24 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.