Will Alexander Drops Some Knowledge About What’s Happening in the Sport of Dogs. It’s Deep… It’s Humorous… It’s Provocative… It’s Will Unfiltered! Will Alexander has an in-depth conversation with George Alston. Click here to watch on Canine Chronicle TV!
Brand-new, first-time breeds have become a regular feature of Westminster. Generally, multiple breeds receive the star treatment as they make their debut on the green carpet. That aspect of the show has become almost commonplace, as has AKC’s almost constant introduction of new breeds. More than a few exhibitors have suggested that this is too much, too fast.
This year’s 148th Westminster Kennel Club dog show saw many new changes. Most of them were fantastic, but one area left me wondering. Why did Westminster delete and replace its dedicated dog photography staff with subcontracted, generalist photographers? In my opinion, this was a huge mistake.
There is an important technicality that everyone who decides to enter the sport of purebred dogs must embrace. I should capitalize the word “EMBRACE” because every little (or big) thing you’ll experience in the dog sport will have some relationship to this word. The word “Standard” is the elusive word. I will try to break down–at a basic level–the role the Standard plays through various levels of our participation. Understanding a Standard isn’t just reading the words. Many of the details of specific structural details have to be coupled with the many “non-tangible” elements of a Standard that typically highlight a breeds purpose and functionality. And as the well-known saying of Alva Rosenberg goes, “Any Mutt can be sound.” We have the Standards to keep breeds unique and predicable unto themselves.
I’ve been writing for many years now and, as a commentator, I quickly learned to grow a thick skin. You have to since not everyone showers you with platitudes; in fact, quite often the opposite happens and you and your ideas are ridiculed and attacked.
Dog shows are nothing like they used to be. How often do you hear that? I am being sarcastic. That question invariably leads in to a long list of exactly how things have changed for the worse. It’s fair to say that similar critiques are frequently applied to just about everything in life–mainly because we conveniently forget about the really crummy stuff. Still, the subject really comes up a lot in reference to dog shows.
At a typical 10AM meeting one morning in August of 2006, I began to reconsider the way I look at our sport as a truly international affair. It’s not only the differences in the culture of dog shows around the globe that struck me. It’s the differences in the phenotype and genotype of the breeds that we think of as ours. And it’s the differences in the opinions of judges that comes with that international diversity.
Will Alexander Drops Some Knowledge About What’s Happening in the Sport of Dogs. It’s Deep… It’s Humorous… It’s Provocative… It’s Will Unfiltered! Will Alexander has an in-depth conversation with Michelle Yeadon. Click here to watch on Canine Chronicle TV!
“Why are people so nasty,” my friend said. This was how she opened the conversation, so I was taken off guard for a moment. I replied with, “What people?” She said, “Dog people!” I asked, “Which dog people are you talking about?” She countered with, “ALL?dog people.”
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