Morris and Essex 1941 – Saddler Tops an Entry of 4000 Dogs!

By Amy Fernandez

By 1941, Geraldine Dodge had been running her annual private dog show for 15 years. Show planning had morphed into a fulltime job and she had a staff working on it all year long. No detail was left to chance. And it showed. People came to M & E simply for the marvelous experience, which was a stark contrast to the overcrowded frenzy of Westminster. Lush, posh and eminently civilized, Morris and Essex was at the other end of the spectrum.

Except in terms of competition, of course.  It was as cutthroat and competitive as any show gets. That year, Ch. Nornay Saddler made his fourth bid for top honors. He’d actually been retired a year earlier after giving up his last hope of taking Westminster. His owner/handler James Austin had shown Saddler to two group wins at M & E in years past, but he was old news by 1941. Actually, the odds on favorite that year belonged to his wife.  Mrs. James Austin had imported Eng. Am. Ch. Che Le of Matson’s Catawba, and with Ruth Sayres handling him, that Peke was running through shows like a freight train. And he walked into M & E having recently taken the group at the Garden. There was also good money on the California German Shepherd Ch. Odin v. Busecker Schloss. The other safe bet was whoever won Sporting since Sporting breeds seemed to have the current edge at M & E with recent BIS wins going to two Irish Setters, an English Setter and a Cocker (Brucie of course).

And then there was the BIS judge, Enno Meyer, the preeminent Working breed authority. In fact, the entire judging panel was a pretty formidable assemblage of talent. Jones wrote in his Gazette show report “Once more Morris and Essex followed its policy of giving the exhibitors in all the breeds-and there were 91 of them-just what they wanted in the matter of judges and in the way of judging, in breeds such as Cockers, Dachshunds and Fox Terriers, a three-judge system was employed.” However, individual clubs decided how to divide their entries among their chosen judges, by sex, coat, color or size- those decisions were left entirely to the clubs- which definitely was NOT AKC policy. Arguably, that unique arrangement made the show even more competitive. Predicting winners certainly got a lot more complicated.

Still, by any measure, this did not seem like the time and place to put your money on the geriatric Fox Terrier. Austin had already taken plenty of heat about Saddler’s ludicrously endless show campaign. He had been such as superstar, no one wanted to watch him getting beat in Breed. But you gotta be in it to win it and he did. That BIS picture still surfaces occasionally in historical flashback stories, Geraldine Dodge, in her wheelchair with a broken ankle and Saddler ready to leap in her lap, James Austin looking all pleased and vindicated, and Enno Meyer not quite sure where to stand with that ridiculously huge trophy cup. It’s a bit weird, but everything about it perfectly captures the zeitgeist of our quirky sport.

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Posted by Jane Alston-Myers on Oct 2 2021. 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.