Successful breeders know that they must be practical and patient in estimating the time and number of litters it will take to solve a problem or produce a special dog. Thus, when a planned breeding occurs there is usually the expectation for something good.
President Harry S. Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office which said, “The buck stops here.” This derived from the slang expression “pass the buck” meaning that you shunt the responsibility off to someone else. In Truman’s world, once the problem reached his desk, there was no one left to whom he could “pass the buck.” Well, the same thing has occurred in the dog world only in this case the buck stops with people who show their dogs and with the conformation judges.
I hinted that our behavior at dog events may be aiding and abetting our antagonists, those groups that might like to see us wither and disappear. In how many ways has the world of dogs become a “dog-eat-dog” world; a world in which we care solely about our own interests and the devil take the hindmost? This self-centered, every-man-for-himself attitude can take hold before we are even aware of it, especially so, given that we are a microcosm of our world which seems more and more to be “all-about-me” as well. Is it really so hard to compliment each other… a fellow breeder, exhibitor, a fellow judge? Just how rare is this? Probably more rare than you and I would like to admit.
Great Western was Margaret Young Renihan’s brainchild. Quite a few claimed it would not fly, but it has become one of the great Terrier shows in the country, second only to the Montgomery County Kennel Club in Pennsylvania.
Hence this revisit to the themes and variations of how we interact with each other and how we relate to the sport and to the dogs themselves. This subject is, of course, multidimensional and no attempt is made herein at comprehensively examining behavioral patterns or exhaustively exploring motives.
The history of the Drentsche Patrijshond can be traced back to the 16th century. Inventing of the gun meant a pointing dog was needed.
It was mid-January and the Knicks and Nets seasons were going as most recent ones had, in the tank. If it weren’t for the political scandals at the New York Board of Education, there wouldn’t be any headlines at all. It was too early to worry about baseball and the Rangers and Islanders weren’t worth talking about. Snow was falling and traffic as usual was an abomination. The subway workers were again threatening to go on strike. You will notice they always threaten a strike before an important holiday. The coffee machine wouldn’t even belch out stuff that resembled coffee. In short, a typical New York City day.
Many stories describing the history of a breed proudly start with: “This breed was known in Roman times” or “The ancestors of this breed can be seen on Egyptian tombs.” We could start the history of the Kromfohrländer with: “This breed is by far the youngest breed in Germany” or “This breed is the result of a meeting between two neighboring dogs shortly after the Second World War.” And indeed this breed is the result of a chance hit with two leading actors, a French pointing dog – probably a Grand Griffon Vendéen – and ‘Fiffi’, a black-and-white female Fox Terrier without a pedigree. It is not sure whether the Griffon was purebred or not. If nothing had happened afterward, the puppies would just have been mongrels, and if they were lucky, they might have found good homes. End of story.
What is it about that last qualifying score or those last few points that makes them so difficult to acquire? During the years I judged hunt tests, time after time I saw dogs going for their final qualifying score manage to turn the go into a situation that folks in the U.S. military describe as FUBAR. (Since this is a family publication, if you don’t know for what that acronym stands, you’ll have to look it up on a military slang website.)
Most of us consider PETA and HSUS the enemy, although I understand there exists a difference of opinion regarding the latter. Following introduction in Washington of the Puppy Uniform Protection Statute (PUPS Act), HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle stated, “Yesterday’s (May 25, 2010) report and legislative introduction should serve as a warning to all those who protect this dubious industry – from “kennel clubs” to pet stores to lobbying front groups who claim to care about purebred dog breeding, but in fact only care about how much money they can make peddling loads of puppies. Your days of abusing dogs for profit while snubbing the laws of this country and many states are coming to an end.” No matter how you choose to slice Pacelle’s statement, connected as we are to a “kennel club,” we, as purebred dog fanciers, are part of the animal rights group’s long-range plan to at least seriously curb our passion if not cause its total demise.
