Showsight - July 2018

World Dog Show: World Dog Shows: History, Facts and Figures

ARTICLE AND PHOTOS BY KARL DONVIL continued

tear gas bomb. There was chaos all over and people even jumped through the window of the hall door to get out. Fortunately there were no victims and only a few people hurt and no casualties among the dogs. On the contrary, after the first reaction, people started to run back in to the halls to save the dogs who were benched or still on the grooming tables. A moving wave of solidarity. The incident was even reported on the CNN news. The finals ended with four hours of delay. At least the show came close to the European standard with 3,187 entries and participants from 50 dif- ferent countries. They even had dogs entered from Russia, flown in with pri- vate jets as the owner was high rank- ing in the Kremlin. And as it was in the South American wintertime there were no problems with high temperatures. In 2006, Poznan welcomed almost 20,000 dogs for its WDS and it was a well orga- nized showwith lots of visitors although Poznan is not the capital of Poland, but just a big city. They had 57 dogs from

the States in competition. The following year Mexico was on term again for the second time and the third time in four years on the American Continent. I have no details of this show that I could not attend due to family reasons. The first time the WDS had more than 20,000 entries was in 2008 when the show was held in Stockholm, Sweden. In fact no less than 34,000 dogs were competing in all the club shows and competitions organized during this International event but on a different location. It is of course attractive to not only com- pete in the WDS but also participating in the Country Championship and Club titles. With some luck you can take your dog home as a club champion, national and international champion and world champion. Sweden has a very big Ken- nel Club and for the show no less than 1,000 people were there helping to organize this show. The WDS itself had 20,674 dogs in competition. That results in sometimes high entries in some breeds. For example, there were

716 Dachshunds entered! The local and international visitors were treated with folkloristic scenes in the main ring, scenes of daily life of the people and the Sami, an indigenous nomad people of northern Europe, Lapland. The capital of Slovakia is Bratislava and it has big halls and was hosting the show in 2009. However, there must have been double bookings so that not all the halls were available for the show and that only came to light at the last moment. It proved to become a show with lots of problems and improvisation of the last moment. 30,000 dogs were in competition, 21,830 for the WDS, but there was no room for hosting 80,000 visitors. It was difficult to move around and that accumulated with too much entertainment in the main ring. There was acro-gym and folkloristic danc- ing. Nice, but too much is too much and it took all too long. It was a show that caused lots of mixed feelings. Den- mark, guest country in 2010, proved to be a trendsetter. The show was held in

2004 Brazil WDS

2004 Brazil WDS

2005 Argentina WDS

2005 Argentina WDS

2006 Poland WD

2006 Poland WDS

152 • S how S ight M agazine , J uly 2018

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