Page 38 - WUT Magazine

handlers, for whom it’s important to have competent judges, doing a good job. On the other side, there are show organizers; when they invite judges, they also think about cost. When the judge comes from 100 km, it’s cheaper than from 500 km, and even if the judge from 500 km is much better, they will invite the nearest. Yes, it works like business, but in this point, we, the judges, do not have any influence.
As the breeder, I see that when we have to choose the producer for mating, we cannot rely upon his titles, because they already don’t mean the quality. They only mean that the owner has enough money and enough passion to go to the shows.
We can see that by the titles like VDH Champion in Germany, which you can get af- ter several wins in the classes. If you enter many shows, sooner or later you’ll have this title even with a medium quality dog. And yes, this is the problem: why do the judges give
“Excellent” to almost every dog?
Because they want to be invited next time...
Yes, exactly. And therefore, when I see that someone judges 60 dogs and gives 59 “Excellent”... well, it can happen that we have such a quantity of good dogs in the ring, but not often, maybe once in a hundred times, and in all the other cases we should understand that something goes wrong. When there is only one dog in the class, let’s say in the Working Class, and you give him
“Excellent”, because you like to do something for hunting breeds, – this point must come to the end! You have to say to yourself: “I give no awards for this, this and this”, and you cannot be tol- erant to the faults which will have the influence on the breed later. If you give “Excellent” and CAC today, tomorrow the dog will go to another show, and after hundred shows he will get the title.
Then he will enter in Champions, and you will wonder how it could happen that such a dog is here! Is this really a Champion?!
And you will give him “Excellent” too, just to be correct to the colleagues who did it before...
No, I don’t have problems with this. If the dog is “Very Good”, I will give “Very Good”, even in the Champion Class.
Not you personally, but most of the judges.
And after a while, someone will look at his pedigree, and will see four CAC and one “Very Good”, and won’t understand why those judges gave certificates... This is also not ideal for our reputa- tion. Therefore, it’s much better to be really strict in your judgements. When the quality of the dog is not high enough, give him “Very Good”, or “Good”, or whatever, and don’t go against the Standard! On one side is the dog, on another side is the Standard, and you just have to look if they are in correspondence or not; when they are, you must give “Excellent”, and when they are not, you must give your notes about faults. It’s clear that we have di erent points of view, and if you go to many shows with your dog, don’t think that the results will be the same each weekend, by
36 WUT Magazine. 2017/#1