You Can’t Have It Both Ways
Kathy Lorentzen
Recently I was on vacation in Mexico with some doggy friends, and while sitting around the pool one day sipping margaritas the discussion turned (surprise) to dogs. One friend asked me what I thought of a dog that is currently the top winner in a breed that I hold near and dear. My response was to say that I love her, in my opinion she’s a great one. The friend, who also holds this breed near and dear, and has had much success breeding them, responded with, “Oh but her head is horrible. How can you think she’s a good one?”
Okay, I admitted to the fact that she has a couple of head faults. Her eyes are set too wide apart and slightly obliquely and she could use more stop, but the basic make and shape of her head follows the requirements of the breed standard and there is nothing about her head that would keep her from being able to do her job or being recognizable as her breed. So I consider her head faults minor and completely overshadowed by her other spectacular breed qualities.
My friend was adamant. He felt she should never win with a head like that. Then in the next breath, he started talking about one of his own dogs, a dog that I also loved and that had done much winning in the past, and how that dog’s critics focused on the fact that his legs were a little too short and didn’t stop to recognize his other qualities like his beautiful head, his wonderful front assembly and his excellent way of using his legs.
Oxymoron time. (If you don’t know what that means, you should go look it up, but I’ll let you cheat and tell you that it means a contradiction in terms). You simply cannot focus on one fault in somebody else’s dog and disregard all that dogs virtue and then turn around and forgive a fault in your own dog because you recognize its other great virtues. You can’t have it both ways!
This moment by the pool turned into quite a discussion about faults and virtues and the relative importance of each. I think that it is an important discussion for judges to take to heart.
A great many UKC judges are still actively breeding and exhibiting dogs, and I personally think that is a good thing. It keeps us in touch with the reality of how difficult it is to produce a dog that ‘has it all’ for the show ring. Judges who get far removed from the breeding aspect tend to forget just how hard it is to make a dog that has the breed type, soundness, health and attitude that are all necessary for a dog to be a big winner. People who have lost touch with the intricacies of breeding tend to become more critical and less forgiving of individual dogs failings. The truth of the matter is, every single dog has a failing or two, even the greatest dogs of all time. Focusing on those failings and refusing to let the good qualities take precedence is fault judging at its worst and something that we at UKC want our judges to avoid at all costs.
I found it fascinating to sit and have a conversation with an extremely successful breeder and listen to him easily admit that his big winning dog had a fault, but say that the judges who beat him based on that fault were not judging by the breed standard because the dog has so many qualities that are hard to come by in the breed that his fault should be overlooked. Then in the next breath he completely criticized those same judges for putting up the current top winner because she has a fault! This fellow could look at his own dogs, recognize their faults, put those faults in perspective, and still see the excellent qualities of each, but he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do the same thing for dogs that belonged to others.
I suspect that many of us fall into this trap and I think there is a big lesson to be learned here. We forgive our own dogs their faults and failings but are unwilling to see others in the same way. And this is what makes someone a fault judge. Let’s go back to that current big winner that started this conversation. Yes, she has wide set eyes and a lack of stop. And yes, it is something you see right away when you first approach her to examine her. But any judge who stops right there, disregards her from the competition and fails to see all her virtues is missing the entire point of being a dog show judge. You have identified her fault-but you have not recognized her qualities, and she is brimming with them. She is a perfect size and proportion, has a coat that absolutely fits the requirements of the standard, a level topline, wonderful bone, legs and feet and the most smooth, easy, breed specific way of going, on a dead loose lead and with her head and tail held perfectly.
Faults should certainly be recognized and taken into consideration when judging, but they should never be the main focus of judging. If you were judging this particular dog and you found another one that had all of her virtues in abundance as well as a better head, then of course the other dog should win. But you should never defeat her with a dog that has a better head but is lacking in all the other places where she excels. If you do that, you have put up the wrong dog. The danger in this happening is very real for any judge who focuses on faults instead of recognizing and rewarding virtue. If you remember to always keep it positive, you will be a much better judge.
Comments and correspondence are always invited at vincefan@centurytel.net.
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