Do You See What I See?

By William Given

In all my travels across our great country and around the world at- tending shows, and talking to breeders and judges, I have never quite understood how two intelligent people could look at the same dog and “see” it so differently.

How many times have you been at a show, sitting ring side watching the dogs in the ring, and in your own mind placing them first through fourth? Then, when the time comes for the finger pointing, the judge places his entry in a different order. Did you find yourself wondering if perhaps the judge was either uninformed on the standard or was he or she just plain “blind” with enmity or partiality?

I have, and recently, and I try very hard not to question a judge’s place- ments because I am not the guy in the ring, and because I do not enjoy being second-guessed myself. Something also happened recently which gives me cause to ask the question, “Do you see what I see?”

My wife and I were watching (for the umpteenth time) the movie, The Da Vinci Code. Yes, I know it is based on some half-truths which are presented as historical fact and that some people have a difficult time separating fact from literary fiction, but it is one of our favorites.

In this film, there is an important scene where Robert Langdon (Har- vard professor of Symbology and Art History), Sophie Neveu (French National Police cryptographer) and Sir Leigh Teabing (Holy Grail scholar and historian) discuss the possibility of hidden images in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper. At one point in this scene, Teabing refers to “scotomisation,” a word not currently in the vocabulary of most dog show enthusiasts. Teabing hints to the meaning when saying, “The eyes see what they want to see.” Understanding this concept is one of the keys to unlocking the mystery of why a judge (or any person) does not see a dog’s strengths and weaknesses in exactly the same way.

“Scotomisation” is the psychological tendency in people to see what they want to see. And, not see what they do not want to see. Perception involves seeing and processing information through the filter of our in- tellect, life experiences and our emotions. That is why people often see the same thing differently. Scotomisation can be the cause of a false de- nial, but also a false affirmation of our perceptions.

However, it is now obvious to me that different people (even confor- mation judges) do actually see the identical dog differently. And, we see that dog differently for some of the following reasons:

We are all victims of what we have seen before:

For example, if someone has never before seen the correct shoul- der in a dog, it is awfully hard for that same person to see the varying degrees of correctness in the shoulder of a dog that he or she may be looking at. In any breed, where the type has not yet been firmly “set,” if someone has seen dogs of a given breed in his or her part of the country, it is difficult, if not impossible, for him or her to see other types as correct. It is easy, therefore, to understand why a breeder or judge could look at a dog and say that he is sound when he is not sound, or fail to see certain aspects of a type other than the type he or she is used to seeing.

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Posted by Alex on Apr 10 2017. 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.