Most national all-breed magazine ads today focus on what needs to hap- pen for an individual dog or handler to win more. There is not an obligation to add to the body of knowledge that may help breeders but is meaningless to judges. Handlers and owners who are not breeders tend to fall in that camp, too. The win or ranking really is more important than the dog’s background. The odds of magazines returning to documents that are as useful to breed- ers as they are to exhibitors are slim. The population to support that change isn’t big enough. But that does not mean it can’t happen at all. I applaud the breeders who are saying they are going to start adding pedigrees to their ads. And I want to encourage them to talk to the editors of their breed magazines to give them magazines that can support breeders and bloodlines. I’d also like to encourage national magazines and ad designers to suggest to their clients that running a pedigree from time to time would be useful. Per- haps the magazines could even set aside an issue every year to highlight breed- ing stock--whether it’s through a section on top producing sires and dams, his- torically significant pedigree sections or by highlighting some heritage breeders every month. I realize this approaches “reporting” rather than selling for these magazines, and that is financially pro- hibitive, but I think it could be useful and interesting. For now I am going to rely on the challenge I issued to the breeders who read the Facebook posts. My challenge to themwas to produce at least one ad in a year that includes a pedigree. I didn’t say no handlers should be in view, but I think that’s a good idea, too. It really is the picture of the dog that’s important in the long run. Both the dogs in the old photos look different from those breeds today, and the discussion of those dif- ferences was almost as much fun as the analysis of their line-bred bloodlines. It would be good to have discussions about breed qualities and bloodlines rather than the nauseating arguments about whose current ranking is really correct. In a year, or two, or ten nobody will remember a ranking, but they are likely to remember a beautiful dog in a beautiful picture and look for that dog in pedigrees. And that, after all, is what’s really important.
it just makes sense. We all do what we’re good at, and I’m a breeder, not a graphic designer. Not one handler responded to the post to say they agreed to that change or thought it was a good idea. I think it’s an uphill battle—sort of like asking politicians to agree to campaign finance reform. Nobody wants to give up on something that they perceive is beneficial to themselves, even if it may be bad for the system as a whole. Han- dlers love to have beautiful ads show- ing them with great dogs, paid for by the owners of those great dogs, who are often the breeders of those great dogs. I wonder how many ads would get run if handlers had to pay for them out of their own pockets instead of clients’ checkbooks. I understand that it is the client’s dog that is being shown—but it is also a handler’s face that is being seen with great dogs, and that is ultimately good for both the client and the handler who may be looking for additional cli- ents to handle. As a breeder I am virtually unknown to many judges, even if my dogs are not. Some older judges tell me they can tell if a Bedlington comes from my blood- line because I produce a consistent “look.” But in Bedlingtons I suspect that “look” is more a product of my groom- ing instruction than it is a result of my breeding. I can make my dogs look alike even if they are not built alike just by modifying their trims. However, there are some characteristics that my blood- line and the line I am foundationed upon do consistently produce because they are characteristics I believe are important to the essence of the breed.
This is true in both of my breeds. Anyone who breeds into my line of Bas- sets or Bedlingtons should know what those characteristics are, and how far back in the pedigree they go. In Bas- sets I have bred for good shoulders and sound fronts, but also for bitch vitality and ease of reproduction. While the former is important to dog show judges and breeders, the latter is exceptionally important only to breeders and will not show up in a photograph. It is informa- tion that we can reference in a pedigree discussion. And it is information that matters not one bit to a judge. Herein lies the dilemma. Breeders and judges need different information to do their jobs well. Breeders want their dogs to compete successfully, but they also want to preserve qualities in the breed that are important but not necessarily visible in every puppy they produce. Win pictures are great, and they can be informative, but they miss an entire piece of the dog picture that is important to breeders. Where that dog comes from, and what relatives contrib- uted to its beauty and soundness are important to breeders, but not so much to judges. As a judge I constantly inform exhibitors that I can only judge the dogs I see in front of me, so telling me who the sire is, or what its DNA rating is are totally irrelevant to me. As a breeder I wear an entirely different hat, and I want to know as much as possible about the bloodline and the dogs in the pedi- gree. If I am looking to add or lock-in a characteristic, I need to know where it is coming from in a pedigree. As a judge, I seriously could not care less.
104 • S how S ight M agazine , M arch 2017
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