So one day last week, requiring a few minutes in the dog free zone (and don’t pretend this is news to you) I stepped into the corner bar. It’s nice. The only place where my total information gap about major league sports serves me well.
When and how did we all become experts? Why do we feel compelled to even be one? More importantly, what makes us an expert? Who decides that someone actually is one?
Possibly the greatest thing about dogs is their infinite adaptability. Our rainbow spectrum of breeds is the ultimate testament to that. But even within those parameters, they demonstrate remarkable flexibility. Chihuahuas in Siberia, what’s the problem? Great Danes in studio apartments, well that one’s practically a modern-life stereotype.
Not long ago, several of us were sitting around talking about dogs. Dog people in general like to do this and people who hunt with their dogs are especially prone to telling epic tales about their canine partners in much the same way, I suspect, as the ancient Greeks and Romans used to sit around telling stories about their great warriors.
A little kid sat on a park bench, eating happily out of a bucket of candy. An older man approached the kid and said, “You know, you shouldn’t eat so much candy, it will kill you.”
We’ve all been there. We take our chance on a permit judge. We watch while the judge proceeds to butcher the stan- dard. We blame the judge. Maybe we should blame our parent clubs’ Judges’ Education Committees (JECs).
Recently, I was being mentored outside the ring. It was a Working breed with a good entry and a permit (aka provisional) judge. The person mentoring me thought the judge was doing a good job and I could see what she was looking for.
Cannabis is a genus of plants with multiple species and “strains”. Hemp includes varieties cultivated for fiber and non-psychotropic drugs, seeds, and their oils. Other varieties (marijuana) are used for medicinal purposes and as a recreational drug.
For IMHO this month, I decided to put a world-wide slant to the questions and invite well respected American and foreign judges to respond. Mr. Michael Canalizo from New York, NY USA, Dr. John Reeve-Newson from Toronto, Canada, and Mr. Frank Kane from Yorkshire, United Kingdom–all icons of the dog world–kindly agreed to give us their insights into the changes they have seen in dog shows over their decades of participation and the differences in judging procedures they have experienced.
