Ringside Thoughts – Humiliation and the Sport of Purebred Dogs

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228 – March, 2024

By Kerrin Winter-Churchill

I write this for those imperfect souls who dream of taking their dogs into the ring themselves but are too afraid of looking the fool. My advice is to do it anyway.

In the dark ages when I was a child, I showed in Juniors and the Breed ring with our family’s homebred dogs. These early experiences perfected my ability to lose because I lost so much that if I ever won, I was stupefied. My sister had the hands in the family and I was okay with that. My keenest interest was in breeding. My biggest childhood dream for my future was the day I could send my sister across the country picking up wins for my homebred dogs. Back then, I didn’t know about college, careers, raising a family, and the host of obstacles that can wipe a dream right off the table.

Even though breeding dogs remained a constant throughout my life, I quickly learned to hire the best handlers for my breed, and I left the presenting to them. For years I was satisfied with that arrangement. My dogs would leave the nest and come home as champions. As fun as it was to hear of my dogs’ successes, a creeping desire to show my own demanded that I do this for myself. But oh, God, I’m so terrible at it. And so, taking my dogs to conformation classes I have studied, trained, and practiced, but there’s nothing quite like diving right in the deep end. From years of studying handlers, I’ve learned that each is unique. From watching styles, I’ve picked up nuances that made their work successful. Now, emulating my best Robin, Stacy, Evan, Dan, Karen Miller, etc., I’ve lived in my head and tried to let my visions translate through my hands. But what you can’t learn from observing is how to chill. Quickly I noticed what a nervous wreck I can be in the ring, and nerves uncontrolled can be your undoing.

Handler Forgets Her Skirt and Lives to Tell the Tale

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228 – March, 2024

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Posted by AnthonyA on Mar 21 2024. 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.