The Seven Secrets to Show Success:...
BY MICHAEL AND CATHY DUGAN continued
“CATHY AND I HAVE LEARNED TO GO WITH THE FLOW OF THE DEMANDS OF COMPETING AT A HIGH LEVEL IN THE DOG WORLD.”
to doing what it takes to win the big shows. We now make little mini-vaca- tions out of the many shows that we attend. When the PWD National was in Rhode Island, we added a week to go to Cape Cod. Paris will always be there, I think. Because both Cathy and I are onboard to being as good of owners as we can and are willing to make sacri- fices of time and money, we can survive the craziness. Did I mention crazy? A great dog show owner is certifiably nuts. Now the movie Best In Show seems perfectly logical to me. Of course I’m going to become my local dog food store’s favor- ite customer. Of course I’m going to single-handedly pay my vet’s utility bills every month. Sure I’m going to send my dogs cross-country for a show because it’s the best place to be. It’s just fine that my entire schedule revolves around dogs and shows. And that’s not enough. Like any busi- ness or hobby-out-of-control, total per- sonal commitment means getting even more involved in the process. Breed- ing, training and showing dogs is not enough. Because you might actually have a few uncommitted minutes here and there, you have to start the pro- cess of being an AKC judge like Cathy, start being a ring steward like me, start attending judge’s and breed seminars and training sessions, join local ken- nel clubs, mentor other breeders, help owners become their own kennels, get involved in helping to put own regional and national specialties, write articles, track show and judging results and net- work in the broader world of dogs all over the world. Did I mention crazy? As with any obsessive behavior it’s therapeutic to ask yourself if this behav- ior is a good thing or not. To be a great show owner, try not to ask yourself that question. Cathy and I have learned to go with the flow of the demands of com- peting at a high level in the dog world. More important, when you see one of dogs competing for Best of Show in Madison Square Garden, the spotlight tracking her movement around the ring, you know you don’t have to ask that question; you know very well that’s it worth all it took to get here.
shows like the Golden Gate show in San Francisco, we started bringing as many as 17 dogs for competition and nearly 30 owners there for the party. With a formal set-up thirty feet wide with ban- ners, photos, dogs on the bench and owners, Aviator presented our best face forward to the 20,000 people that attend that show every year. Even with the move to the next level, we still weren’t fully prepared for what it takes to be a great show owner, prepared and willing to advance a unique dog like Ladybug. We had to really think about our answers to the hard questions confronting us to go to the next level. SO, TAKE THE QUIZ: First, were we prepared to make a total commitment of time, money and effort to leverage the success of Avia- tor to create and produce top ten dogs? We’ll talk about the amounts of money it takes to do this later in this series, but for now suffice it to say it costs a lot of money. Vacations? Forget it. Good- bye Paris, Hello Pomona. Even prior to Ladybug we had some top ten winners, but it was a real learning process even for Cathy. I had lots of time picking up waste in the kennel to think about how we could best market our dogs and our kennel. Did I mention waste? One of the striking things I noticed at dog shows that there were few couples there with their dogs. Almost always the owner and handler would be a woman with a couple of dogs. As I got to know more people in the business, I figured out that in a lot of cases, the husband was play- ing golf or at home in the woodwork- ing shop. Cathy and I had figured out how to share the dog business duties; she handled the intricacies of breeding, training and raising pups—I was the kennel boy. Whenever I talked to my sister in Texas, she would laugh about where destiny had taken me. More than once, she would ask, “Did you ever think your would be in the dog busi- ness, picking up waste?” Did I mention waste again? To be a great show owner, you and your part- ner have to both completely commit
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had the handler show all of your dogs except for those in bred by exhibitor or very young class dogs. Instead of going to shows constantly, we sent our dogs to show every weekend with the han- dler. We were going to shows in places like Monterey and let the handler go to Bakersfield (no offense to Bakersfield!). Believe or not, the second model was actually less expensive than the usual practice. More important, our dogs fin- ished faster, allowing Cathy the luxury of better planning about when dogs were actually ready to go into the ring. She had always carefully planned breed- ings; generally looking three years out to think about what she hoped to get for a particular breeding. Next, we started finishing seven to ten dogs per year, instead of two or three. That gave us a larger pool of champions and expanded the opportunities for breeding our own dogs in the future. Cathy now typically has ten bitches in the queue for breed- ing, allowing her to plan what the opti- mum time and best stud will give us what we want for competition. We also began to look at market- ing, beginning with our website Avia- torKennel.com . We had had a perfectly suitable static website as do most small businesses. What we did not have what a “portal”, that is, a large up-to-date web- site that offers a huge amount of infor- mation about us, the dogs, the kennel, PWDs, shows, health links and articles. We started to think about advertising and developing better links and con- tacts with our owners, our customers. As with any business, your customers are your best source of positive market- ing and sales. A happy owner walking around San Francisco with an Aviator dog is your best billboard. An owner invited to attend a dog show with you and watch as their pup wins a ribbon is very happy, indeed. At some of the big
56 • S HOW S IGHT M AGAZINE , A UGUST 2018
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