Yesterday the club to which my wife and I belong, the Chicagoland Samoyed Club, hosted our summer specialty show for 2006. For those of you who aren’t in the dog show world, a “specialty show†is a dog show in which dogs of only a single breed compete. In this case, of course, all of the dogs that were competing were Samoyeds.
The show is an enormous amount of work for us. After preparations that go on all during the previous we, when the day of the show arrives we rose at 3:30am, got ourselves together and the dogs fed and pottied, and headed up to the show. We set up for the show (that’s the awards table up above) and administered registration of handlers, catalog sales, facilitated the judging, and generally did all the things that are needed to bring off a successful dog show.
Here are some of the competitors preparing for the show:
And below on the right are my wife and our girl, Tally—Ch. Kendara’s Notorious, OA, AXJ, WSX, in the Veteran Bitch competition. Tally was competing, not my wife.
As you might guess we’re exhausted today.
BTW let me explain Tally’s full registered name, Ch. Kendara’s Notorious, OA, AXJ, WSX, to you. Kendara is the kennel of the breeders from whom we got Tally. Our breeders, Mary and Joyce, have been very good friends to us. That’s Joyce up above in the middle picture on the right.
“Notorious” is Tally’s registered name. It suits her. “Ch.” means that Tally is a finished champion. OA (Open Agility) and AXJ (Excellent Agility Jumpers) are Tally’s titles in canine agility. “WSX” is a working title offered by the Samoyed Club of America—Working Samoyed Excellent”. To obtain the title a dog must participate in a one or more of a specific set of working activities, in Tally’s case backpacking, recreational sledding, and therapy dog work.
We’re very proud of all of Tally’s hard work and accomplishments and remain committed to the idea that it’s a good thing for a dog to have letters before and after its name. Tally was the only competitor in yesterday’s show distinguished in that way.
Beauty, brains (you don’t mention that here but I’m assuming it because of the breed), talent, and a hard worker – I can see why you’re so proud of her.
Yep. And an incredibly loving temperament, as well. As you can see from the picture above she and my wife are best buds. It’s not surprising: they have a lot in common.