By Wayne Cavanaugh

Photo by Lisa Croft-Elliott

After finishing my assignment in Ring 4, I walked over to my next ring, Ring 8. The judge in Ring 8 finished his last breed for the day, marked his book, and on the way out, saw me waiting and started a conversation. Quite excitedly, he asked if I agreed with his breed winner. I did. Well done. He then proceeded to tell me who the sire of his winner was, a dog I know quite well. But something didn’t feel right–how would he know who the dog’s sire was? Perhaps the exhibitor told him, but I didn’t notice them having any exchange while handing out the ribbons. With a vague sense of guilt, I asked him a trick question: “Weren’t there three others in the ring who were also sired by the same dog?” He quickly responded with absolute certainty: “No, he was the only one.” It was that moment that I realized we have a problem–the online catalogs and instant results.

There is only one way a judge would know the sire of all the dogs in the ring. He must have checked the online catalog prior to judging. It could have been the night before, the morning of the show, at ringside, or during lunch. He could have even read it in the ring on his cell phone while pretending to check the time or review a breed standard.

I suppose that reading a catalog online the night before the show could just be a case of harmless curiosity or hotel room boredom. But reading it and using it to make judging decisions is absolutely unacceptable. It’s all there online for the taking. How insecure of their own abilities must judges be to study the catalog before judging? And why? Are they afraid of missing the bandwagon?

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84 – May, 2026

By Matthew G. Stroud

There was one weekend when I drove nearly across the country for a big dog show. I was excited. Optimistic. I thought we had a real shot. I had imagined how it might feel if everything came together after a dry spell.

In the end, we walked out empty-handed every day.

On the trip home, somewhere between gas stops and potty breaks for the dogs, I replayed those days in my head. I was focused on what hadn’t happened. The lack of placements. The missed opportunities. The handling errors I wished I could do over.

And then it occurred to me: What did I actually enjoy?

It took a weekend like this before I was willing to ask that question.

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76 – May, 2026

By Tom Grabe

The hot topic around the rings these days seems to be, as usual, the quality of judging. Big surprise, huh? Unfortunately, this subject has been beaten to death for longer than I have been alive and it seems to be a problem that just won’t go away. However, the lack of quality judging seems to have become a bigger problem as of late.

I have written before about some of the problems facing judges, the judges department and, most importantly, exhibitors. I am hesitant to tackle the subject again at the risk of just repeating my and others’ ideas, but I am going to take another swing at it.

As I see it, there are several problems that contribute to poor adjudication in the ring. No, it’s not the heavy promotion of dogs; it’s not handlers and dogs chasing judges around the country, and it’s not the lack of quality stock supplied by exhibitors. Those are all factors that can be controlled by the judge in the ring. They don’t have to point at the heavily-promoted dog; they don’t have to put up a dog or handler that chases them from show to show; and they can easily withhold ribbons from sub-par specimens.

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10 – May, 2026

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10 – May, 2026

By Jessica Braatz

This issue marks the beginning of what we hope will become a new tradition at The Canine Chronicle: taking traditional judges’ critiques a step further and going inside the minds of breed judges at the Westminster Kennel Club. These features will roll out monthly in their respective Group Issues, with our Sporting breeds leading the way.

Mr. Tyron Atkinson, 

Ballarat East, Australia

It was an honor and a privilege to judge so many beautiful Sporting breeds at the Westminster Kennel Club’s 150th show. Kudos to the stoic exhibitors for getting to New York City in such trying conditions. After a 29-hour journey from Melbourne, Australia, I arrived in NYC to news that many travel plans had been impacted by the extreme weather, so to walk onto that green carpet and see so many beautiful dogs was a relief and a joy.

German Shorthaired Pointers

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258 – April, 2026

By Nikki Riggsbee

The Sussex Spaniel was among the first ten breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club when it was formed. The breed was developed in the 1700s in Suffolk County, England, as a long, low, rather massive dog to hunt in dense cover.

The initial individuals registered in the AKC stud book were not recorded as producing any litters. Other Sussex Spaniels were imported from England in the 1920s. These and their descendants produced the dogs in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s. After World War II, there were more Sussex in America than in the United Kingdom. None of those imported before the war are in the breed’s pedigrees today.

Interest in the breed revived in the United States in the 1970s. Dogs imported then are behind the Sussex Spaniel lines that are active today. The breed has likely always been a low entry breed. It is listed 175th in the most recently available AKC list of breed popularity based on registration statistics.

We found thirty-one Sussex Spaniel experts to invite to take a survey on their breed’s priorities in evaluating conformation. Twenty-two agreed to participate. By the deadline, fifteen completed surveys were returned. The experts contributing have been in the breed for an average of over twenty-seven years. Those who are judges have been approved for thirteen-and-a-half years on average. Most of them have judged their national specialty and other Sussex Spaniel specialty shows.

Sussex Spaniel Virtues

The experts prioritized a list of desirable characteristics taken from the AKC Sussex Spaniel breed standard. Below are the virtues–in sequence–by the average of the experts’ ranks, with 1 being the most important.

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242 – April, 2026

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233 – April, 2026

By William Given

It was, by all accounts, a wonderful day. Our Penny had won Winners Bitch and BOS; it was her third major, and she earned her championship title. We were on our way home from the Nebraska Kennel Club dog show–and I do not believe we had gone ten miles when I looked at my wife and said, “I am so glad she finished today.” My wife’s response was, “I am so relieved.” I asked, “Why relieved?” She responded, “She is 3½ years old now; it has never taken you this long to finish a dog.” And, my wife was correct when she stated how much we had spent to accomplish our goal. We knew that our girl was correctly constructed, a superior mover, and possessed an outstanding temperament. She deserved to be a champion, and our every effort to show her until she earned it.

Here are a few things we did not immediately think about:

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226 – April, 2026

]]> https://caninechronicle.com/current-articles/the-power-of-persistence-2/feed/ 0 https://caninechronicle.com/current-articles/helping-hotels-welcome-our-dogs/ https://caninechronicle.com/current-articles/helping-hotels-welcome-our-dogs/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:00:51 +0000 AnthonyA https://caninechronicle.com/?p=354614 Click here to read the complete article
212 – April, 2026

By Sandy Weaver

If you’re on your club’s show committee, you know hotels understand that allowing dogs is good for business–and believe that allowing dogs is potentially bad for their properties. They can be balky about how many dogs per room and the size of dogs they’ll allow, and it can be financially injurious to your exhibitors with those rising non-refundable deposits.

Those who show dogs know that it’s way more fun to stay in a hotel that not only allows dogs, but also welcomes them. Here’s how you and your dog-showing travel buddies can help more hotels not just tolerate show dogs but welcome them. (And if you’re on the show committee, read this all the way to the end–there’s something here just for you!)

1. Be a great guest. This should go without saying, and yet so many people treat hotel rooms and properties far worse than they’d treat their own homes. Being a great guest means bringing sheets or blankets to cover the hotel furniture that your dog will be allowed on, not using hotel towels, the sink, or the tub to wash your dogs, and putting plastic sheets under your crates in case of spills or accidents. You can use tablecloths from the Dollar Store. They work great and can either be folded for reuse or tossed when you’re packing for home.

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212 – April, 2026

By Jessica Braatz

As someone who aged out of Juniors relatively recently, I’ve found myself drawn to the numbers. While rankings or total entries may first come to mind, my favorite statistic is actually lifetime wins, and even more so, the stories that those wins tell.

When you talk to past great juniors, the majority of them won’t tell you about their wins. They’ll tell you about the fierce competition they faced throughout their entire career–from large entries in the Novice classes, to extremely competitive Open Intermediate and Senior classes, all the way to Best Junior. To place was a good day, and to win was an honor. Those days, the entries of a single class would rival the total entries at a local show today. These previous Juniors have now gone on to campaign dogs at the highest level, and many are assets in the form of breeders, handlers, and assistants. They’ll tell you that they won 10, 20, or even 30 Best Juniors throughout their entire career. For most of them, they won’t come near the inflated numbers of today. Now, I regularly see Junior Handlers approaching “the hundred club,” a term I never would have even considered possible when I first started competing.

Even throughout my own time in Junior Showmanship, I watched as both competition and entries dwindled. I vividly remember watching the Open Senior class and Best Junior Handler at the Manatee Kennel Club show in Brooksville, Florida, when I was a Novice Junior. The juniors I watched battle it out became my icons; I wanted to be just like them. By the time I was their age, there was much less of a draw–and entry as a whole. Had we become the next generation for the youth to aspire to? Or had we all become a little more lax, with priorities shifting and judges becoming less enticing to compete under?

I want to revisit some of the past juniors whom I so admire. When asked about their time in Juniors, they describe it as a time of learning, a time of showing their puppies, new breeds, and a never-ending quest for knowledge. They raised their own dogs and pivoted to new projects when they became comfortable. Junior Showmanship was practice and preparation for careers in dogs. It was not an opportunity for a “junior’s career.”

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208 – April, 2026