Rarefied Heirs – Andy Linton

Click here to read the complete article
130 – May, 2026

By Lori Sternola

Rarefied Heirs is going to take a brief detour from Rare Breeds… to Rare Talent. Andy Linton has kindly agreed to offer the fancy a few articles with his insights and recollections gained over a lifetime in our sport. It’s an exciting and humbling thing to have the opportunity to share these interviews with our readers here. I hope the writing rises to the worth of the subject.

As (just about) everyone knows, Andy has been showing dogs since his teens, and in February won Best In Show at Westminster for the second time; both times with Doberman bitches–first with Indy in 1989, and now with Penny. If you watched the Best In Show line-up at Westminster, or were lucky enough to see it in person, you saw one of the best final seven in a long time. It meant that Judge David Fitzpatrick had both an easy–and an impossible–job to do. Watching that near-flawless performance from every handler and every dog, there was a moment of subtle magic: The moment when you realized that you had watched six dogs being expertly and beautifully presented. And one dog rose to the level of being so perfectly in sync with her handler–physically and mentally–that she simply became the only thing you saw. Just Penny, alone, moving freely, then stepping confidently into what Lydia Frey called “the stack heard ‘round the world”. She wasn’t handled. She was simply… released, to be exactly what she was. For anyone watching, it took your breath away. For those of us who have watched our whole lives, it will remain one of those moments that defines why we’re here. Why we stay. What we hope we might see just once or twice more in our time in dogs.

Click here to read the complete article
130 – May, 2026

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=357307

Posted by AnthonyA on May 13 2026. 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.