A specialty show is a dog show in which dogs of a single breed participate (there are also specialty shows for dogs in the same group but they’re fairly rare). Our Samoyed club—the Chicagoland Samoyed Club conducts two specialty shows a year, one in the winter down at McCormick Place in conjunction with the International Kennel Club dog show and one in the summer up at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Graylake.
Hosting the show is enormous work—we rose this morning at 4:00am, left for the fairgrounds at 5:00am, arrived at 6:00am, and began unpacking and setting up.
We had a nice entry: 15 dogs, 22 bitches, and 9 specials. That’s enough for winning class dogs and bitches to each get a 5 point major (that’s points towards the championship).
The picture up there is our girl, Tally. Tally was the winning bitch in the Veteran Bitch class (female dogs age 7 or more). We’re so proud of her! That’s my wife in the center and our friend, Dorene, on the right. Dorene was kind enough to handle Tally for us since my wife was unable to do so due to the torn ligaments in her foot she suffered more about two months ago. I think the competition in the veterans classes were tougher than the specials (finished champions competing for Best in Specialty Show). The winning veteran dog took Best in Specialty Show. It’s something of a rarity for a veteran to take BISS.
Congratulations, Dave! I love to see the veterans out strutting their stuff.
For those who aren’t familiar with dog shows, or haven’t been behind the scenes to see what it takes to put one on, it’s a huge amount of work and a labor of love: months of planning ahead of time, lots of setup, club members who don’t get to watch all the dogs because they’re too busy working and then all the cleanup at the end of the day after everyone else goes out to dinner or heads home.