DIFFERENT BREEDS Offer Different Lessons
O ne of the benefits of belonging to an all-breed club is having the chance to get to know people with breeds other than our own. Through handling classes and club meetings, the relationships established by becoming a mem- ber can offer insight into what it’s like to show a variety of purebred dogs. When I first joined my local dog club, I met breeders and exhibitors who came to class with their Irish Setter, Doberman Pinscher, Chow Chow, Lhasa Apso, Poodle, and Old English Sheepdog. Each week, I’d work with my dog and naively assume that everyone was experiencing class just as I was with my Irish Water Spaniel. It wasn’t until I took my first bred-by dog to class that I realized every dog is a totally different experience, and it wasn’t until I was asked to handle a few of those other breeds in class that I began to understand how incredibly different it is to show a Great Dane and a Great Pyrenees. Handling breeds other than our own can provide incredible “aha moments” for us as exhibitors. Showing a drop-coated breed when ours sports a tight-fitting coat, for example, will make a person acutely aware that a hairbrush needs to go somewhere. Similarly, walking into the ring with a short-legged terrier when your own breed is a long-legged sighthound will automatically enforce a resistance to running in the ring. And if an exhibitor stands in the center of the ring with a terrier that spars, experience in the practice will be critical. Many exhibitors are asked from time to time to be on “stand by” for friends to hold a dog ringside or to bring a dog back in the ring for Winners. These requests can provide excellent handling opportunities, especially if the breed at the end of the lead offers
BY DAN SAYERS
a unique experience for the substitute handler. Those few moments in the ring can be the best part of the day, providing an incredible opportunity to learn how that breed should be presented. Win or lose, the odds are good that the experience will prove beneficial to the exhibitor’s overall suc- cess in dogs. The impor- tant thing is to be open to the experience and welcome the (sometimes embarrassing) lessons that it teaches.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dan Sayers is Editor-in-Chief of SHOWSIGHT and a long-time member of the Irish Water Spaniel Club of America and the organization’s current AKC Delegate. He is a club-approved Breed Mentor and a former AKC Gazette Columnist. He breeds under the Quiet Storm prefix and has judged the IWSCA National Specialty Sweepstakes twice. Dan is a member of the Morris and Essex Kennel Club as well as the Dog Writers Association of America, which recognized his illustrations in the award-winning canine compendium, the Encyclopedia of K-9 Terminology.
A request to show a Borzoi for a friend of a friend was the author’s introduction to sighthounds.
166 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2024
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