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when you’ll come home in the evening, why it happened. And maybe next time you’ll judge bet- ter!
You’re talking about honest judges, just making their honest mistakes. But unfortunately, not all the judges are even interested to know the breeds...
It’s a big problem today. Young people want to get the license very quickly. If they are going to judge their own breed, it’s ok, they can learn and start. But now too often and too quickly people come and say that they like to open a second breed, or a group, or more groups...
...or to become all-rounders as soon as possible.
Yes, for many of them it’s the destination. The way to get it is the same, and this is the problem. In Germany, when I was young, you had to judge your first breed for five years everywhere around, before perhaps they could give you a second one. At that time, the chairman of the Judges’ Com- mission visited the shows, looked at the judges, and when he thought: “This guy might be a good one”, – he could suggest you to become a group judge. Then you began to learn the group. It was not easy. You had to attend many shows, you were learning, learning and learning, and after two years, when you spent nearly every weekend in the ring as a student, you could go to the exam. If you passed it, you could start as a group judge. And you never expected that someone would let you start a next group immediately. In the period of two years you had to judge one group, and then they asked people from di erent breed clubs: “What do you think about him? Can we give him another group or not?” None of us became an all-rounder earlier than fifteen years after the moment when we finished our first group. As for me, it took sixteen years to complete this path, but most of my colleagues waited 18–20 years for the license of an all-round judge. So they had twenty years to learn! Today in the FCI, we have the rule that from the first to the last group you must have ten years. This means in ten years you have to learn nine groups.
So if you start at twenty, at thirty you’re already an all-rounder.
Exactly. In my eyes, it’s not enough and not possible. For example, in Germany, when someone comes to learn the Group II, we tell him to have practice on 80 Dobermanns, 80 Boxers, 80 Rott- weilers, then on 20 dogs in each smaller breed, and at least on five dogs in each rare breed. Ok, he worked down to this, he was at the shows almost every weekend around the year, he stayed near a judge, hopefully a good one, and tried to learn how to look at this or that breed. Of course, if he is honest with himself, he knows that seeing 80 Rottweilers at a CACIB show, where only better dogs usually enter, doesn’t really mean you understand Rottweiler. But after a year, as a group judge, he gets the possibility to judge these breeds... Not all the countries are as strict as Germa- ny in the point that you have to pass through practical studies with each breed in the group. Of- ten they say: “Ah, we don’t have many dogs in these breeds, so theoretical test will be enough to open them”. It doesn’t help to bring more knowledge in our judges’ score. Well, perhaps it’s be- cause today we like everything to be quicker. When in the older time we had the car that could run 100 km / hour, we meant it was fast; now, if it doesn’t go 380 km, we think it’s slow. The same about judgement. It’s not an easy matter. On the one hand, I often hear that if we save the rules which we followed in our time, we won’t find young people whom we could involve in this sport.
They are not ready to learn for so long! But on the other hand, we must ask ourselves: if these people really don’t like to learn and to understand what they have to do, how will we give our breeds in their hands? It can be a problem for the future.
But who could be interested to change the situation if the shows still have enough entries? The busi- ness is going on, even with these judges. Somehow, dogs are entering, and every show has the winners, and the quality of judgements doesn’t matter.
We have to look at this problem from many sides. On the one side, there are breeders and
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