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Kasey describes as pale gold?
OMG thank god Asha was home |
A set of recent Ch. Show critiques have caused an outrage with the exhibitors online. People are very unhappy, indeed one handler (Not owner) said he did not recognise the dog at all from the critique publish. Another owner, herself a Champ show judge told me that maybe the judge had got the front legs mixed with the back legs on her dog .. the comment of course followed by a LOL to keep it in context! As Ian said in his comment the dogs are what they are, yes I agree and I agree that we all see things slightly differently but my god the critiques at least need to be fundamentally correct. How can a Champ Show judge mistake a sable for a black and gold? How can she suggest a bitch of decent colour is pale? And that is before starting on the anatomical construction.
The other complaint from exhibitors is about the harshness of the critiques. There are two ways of judging and writing critiques, you comment on the good and bad bits or you fault judge, concentrating solely on the bad bits and basically rip the animal apart, and why would you want to do that? Surely a balance is all that's needed. We all know they are not perfect, the perfect dog is yet to be bred .. but surely they all have their virtues. Mind you there's nothing worse than a critique that tells you nothing, something like "Nice dog, nice colour good movement," are just an insult.
So she writes that Ross is narrow when viewed from the front? My god I can't see that. Even if the handler had stood him badly, and she didn't, a decent judge would see the correct construction. Wouldn't they? I've seen dogs winning recently who you could barely get a piece of paper between their forelegs. How can anyone look at Ross and consider him to be narrow? She then she says that Ross is deep in proportions, surely a dog who is deep in chest can not be narrow too, can they? A friend suggested I try putting thinning scissors into that chest hair to take half an inch off, but a judge putting their hands on a dog should be able to tell whether extra depth is hair, or not. Anyway, the boy is proud of his chest hair! Correctly the proportions are that the length of leg should be greater than the depth of chest, the overall height of the dog being 55-58% length of leg, so the depth of chest should be 42 -45% of the overall height of the dog. Without getting the tape measure out I've no idea what proportions any of these are, but to the eye they all look Ok to me, even with 2" of manly chest hair Ross does not look too deep to my eye.
I have no issues with her comment on his upper arm, I agree and I also agree that he has restriction in forereach, that has been obvious since he was a pup. He simply does not have the extension of front movement that for example Kaiah has and the fact that he sometimes puts little effort into his performance doesn't help. On the day his movement was hindered further when he saw the love of his life on the outside of the ring and from then on he concentrated solely on her and moved looking over his shoulder. One of those things, sadly it happens.
Anyway another day another dog show .. another set of eyes on my dogs and another critique. We live an learn, some judges go in the positive box and some into the "never again" box.
