Morris & Essex 2025 – A True Celebration Of The Sport

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280 – November/December, 2025

By Amy Fernandez

Photos by Lisa Croft Elliott

Quite likely, Morris and Essex was a minor blip on the radar when it debuted in 1927. There was a lot of breaking news crowding out any developments within the sport. For instance, Charles Lindbergh successfully completed the first transatlantic flight; the legendary trial of Sacco and Vanzetti competed with multiple other horrors like the Mississippi flood–which killed over 500 people–and the rise of Stalin. Mainstream attention vied between the first actual “talking” picture and Babe Ruth breaking records. Dog biz of any sort was not a headliner.

But in this case, it didn’t last long. You might say that Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to create her own vision of the greatest dog show. AKC was still playing catch-up–as far as creating rules and regulations–so they didn’t have much say in the matter. On top of that, Dodge could easily run rings around their finest dog show efforts, which partly explained her motivation to teach them how to do it. In the process, she broke all their vague “gentlemen’s agreement”-type rules.

?She personally decided which breeds were invited, and it was hard to see the logic of her inclusions and exclusions. The simple reason? It was her party. She handpicked the judges and they were invariably the most renowned experts in each invited breed because, hey, money was no object. The 1927 panel featured Enno Meyer, Herbert Mellenthin, Alf Delmont, and Mrs. Belmont. Impressive as it was, the first year’s judging panel was nothing compared to what was to come.

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Posted by AnthonyA on Nov 22 2025. 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.