The Junior’s Perspective – Sharing The Spoils

It happens all too often, you breed your litter, do your evaluation, and choose the best–deciding to keep the pick male and female, or at least one of the two. Many of us who don’t keep the pick puppy pass our best and brightest to friends, neighbors, or local owners so we can keep them close to eventually show and breed them. While we consider the success of our breeding programs by doing this, is it detrimental to our sport to refuse to share our best puppies?

Today, more than ever, I see the success of both juniors and owner-handlers being heavily debated. Many claim they are not as successful against professional handlers, but often they do not have the same quality of dog, handling ability, or connections. [Obviously, there are many exceptions to this. Many owner-handlers and juniors hold records and win at the highest level of the sport. For this article we will be focusing mostly on less experienced exhibitors and juniors.] While all of this could be a factor, I ask you how they are supposed to “find” a better dog?

Most people who show bought their dog from an ethical breeder in order to be a show dog. How do these supposed “lesser” quality dogs then end up in the ring? I believe this issue relates directly to breeders not offering their best to the up-and-coming members of our sport, or not educating them properly. How is anyone supposed to improve if the odds are already stacked against them before they walk in the ring? They can’t. They’ve already been set up to fail. Sometimes, new exhibitors may not understand that their dog is not of the quality necessary to win consistently, and that’s okay. Showing your first dog is a learning experience. It is up to us as breeders to bridge this gap by educating and helping new fanciers. No one is born knowing how to show or breed a dog, and without the help of a mentor they are often destined to fail. The sport, as a whole, relies entirely on breeders to spread their knowledge and their high-quality dogs with the fancy.

Posted by AnthonyA on Oct 16 2022. 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.