Thoughts from the Sporting Breeders
1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? How many years in dogs? How many years as a breeder? What is your kennel name? 2. What is your “process” for selecting show puppies? Performance puppies? 3. In your opinion, is your breed in good condition overall? Any trends that warrant concern? 4. As a Preservation Breeder, can you share your thoughts on the sport today? How’s the judg- ing these days? What do you think about the number of shows? 5. In your opinion, is social media good for the sport? Is it harmful? 6. What are the biggest challenges facing the dog show community as a whole today and how can these be addressed? 7. What are some of the positive changes you’ve seen in the sport over the past decade? 1. I live in Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve been in dogs for 40 years and my kennel name is Clussexx. I have Clumbers, Sussex, Welsh Springers, Nederlandse Kooikerhondje, and English Toy Spaniels and I’ve been breeding since the late 1980s. 2. Any time you breed a litter, you hope to keep something. The process is a slow evalua- tion. You train and raise them to all be potential show dogs. As they mature, things change and you start to select from the better of the animals produced. Not every dog in a litter is a show dog. In fact, very few have the fortunate genetic lottery to score all those essential qualities all in one place. So, you have to always be monitoring and evaluating litters so that you keep only the very best in your kennel or show ring. We take a lot of time to stack the dogs, watch the dogs move, handle the dogs so that we can feel (and see) how they develop. Then, of course, it is how do they look gaiting, what is their carriage? How is the type, the eye placement, the ear shape and the leg length, proportions? All those things get weighed out. It just takes time. I don’t believe in placing show dogs very young and I always frown upon those who do. This is an investment of time. Performance Puppies? No. I don’t know that there is such a difference between a show puppy and a performance puppy. Every breed should be able to do what they were supposed to do. I don’t produce dogs that would be considered “a performance line.” Mine are Con- formation animals, and they end up doing all venues within their ability. It would certainly be that a dog that was doing a performance event would need a certain kind of drive than a dog that you’re looking to have in the show ring, but both animals have to have stable temperaments, drive, soundness—structurally sound, mentally sound, and be made well to perform according to the Breed Standard. 3. The Clumber Spaniel breed is probably at a pinnacle for health and genetics. The people who have gotten into breeding within the last decade have a long list of benefits from those breeders before them. So much benefit that they don’t even know how it once was. This is because they weren’t breeding from dogs that were so genetically inferior to today’s dogs, when we were trying to create something out of nothing, which is just what all of us were doing. We’ve been fortunate to capitalize on some very skilled breeders who started before me and we took what they were doing and kept it up. Concentrating on health and wellness of the breed to really create the current genetic gene pool of dogs that have a lot to offer breeders. That is something that I did not have the luxury of when I started in this breed. Make no mistake, that is why the Clumber Spaniel breed today is thriving. Because those people, me included, made a lot of sacrifices to make that happen for today’s breeders. Today’s breeder has a much easier path in terms of creating dogs that have good hips, good elbows, good temperaments, good bites, and look the part of the show dog that we know today. In general, there are concerns of an Americanization of show dogs across many, if not all, breeds! I’ve written articles about this where we see many breeds trending towards a very generic look in this country. It’s really a trend that is unique to the United States, where we like dogs that are flashy and showy and perform on a level to create these mas- terful show dogs but they don’t necessarily reek of breed-specific qualities. We see a lot of dogs with straight upper arms, and straighter upper arms that are set-on forward on the body, a long midsection in many breeds, with short ribs and long loins. Follow this by an over-angulated hindquarter and you have a winner for many of the untrained, or less knowing, Group aficionados. We grow more hair on them than is necessary to function
Doug Johnson
Clussexx Clumber, Sussex & Welsh Springer Spaniels, Nederlandse Kooikerhondje & English Toy Spaniels
160 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, MARCH 2024
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