The Junior’s Perspective – Looking To The Future

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186 – October, 2023

By Jessica Braatz

Like many others, I stumbled into showing dogs. When I was nine, my neighbor took a chance, knocking on my door and asking for my help. I’d never even walked a dog before, much less considered showing one. I remember tentatively nodding before running my first ever down and back with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever happily bounding beside me. From that moment, though, I knew I was in the sport for the long haul. Since then, I have had numerous breeders offer me once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that have shaped me into who I am today. Without them taking the chance on me, I would have stayed stagnant.

Now, with the AKC rule change removing the ownership requirements for junior showmanship, the chance is so much smaller. We’ve all experienced or heard about co-ownerships going wrong. They were not few and far between. With this rule change, however, Juniors can now show breeds until they find their fit, or dive head first into one breed with little to no risk to the dog’s owners. Now, there is no excuse to not offer dogs to juniors; and so many juniors are flourishing.

This change hasn’t come without potential negatives, but I’ve covered them before. With all the controversy surrounding the rule change, I think it’s time to look at the positives of this program. There have been many successful juniors all across the country who have benefitted from this change. I want to zoom in on one junior in particular, though, who I had personal experience with over the summer. She is an example of all the ways this program works and the endless opportunities it can afford juniors.

I met Carly Satterfield, a sixteen-year-old junior handler from Bowdoinham, Maine, in Cumberland over the summer. Her previous juniors dog, a Welsh Springer Spaniel, had a bad experience leaving her without a dog to show. The dog show community came together, and Julie Kent Bremser–a long-time English Setter fancier–drove from New Mexico to Maine, presenting Carly with an incredible opportunity to show her boy, Deacon.

Click here to read the complete article
186 – October, 2023

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Posted by AnthonyA on Oct 17 2023. 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.