This weekend my wife, Tally, Will, Nola, and I dropped Mira off at the vet’s for boarding and headed to the Quad Cities (Davenport, Rock Island, Bettendorf, Moline) for the annual dog show out there.
As we usual we stayed with Bob and Nancy Varner at The Caboose. Nancy has a new toy—a truck with outsize wheels, a stunning flame paint job, purple undercarriage lights. She says that when she finally sells it, she’ll advertise it as having been driven by a little old lady to church which will literally be true. Of course, Nancy isn’t your run-of-the-mill old lady.
Tally is now completely retired from agility. This year it was the pups’ turn: they were both entered in the conformation show in the Puppy Dog 9 to 12 Month and Puppy Bitch 9 to 12 Month classes.
A conformation show is what most people think of if they think of a dog show at all although a dog show like the one we attended over the weekend may include obedience, agility, rally obedience events, and more as well as the conformation event. Conformation isn’t quite the beauty contest that you may think. At least in theory each dog entered in the event is compared, not to the other dogs but to the written standard established for his or her breed by the breed club (as contained in the head of the judge) and ranked based on how closely they conform to that standard. In practice it’s even more complex with politics, the judge’s personal standards and knowledge of the breed, and, yes, the beauty contest aspect of things all contributing to the result.
Will and Nola were pretty wild and crazy this weekend. This is only their second show (their first was the IKC back in February) and besides their inexperience there were lots of other contributing factors—the long drive, that they’re unaccustomed to being confined for long periods, the upset in the pack after Qila’s death (Tally is definitely in mourning), the unfamiliar surroundings, the people, the dogs, the food all working together to rev them up. Nonetheless I was proud of them.
I think that if they’d shown a little better one or the other of them would have stood a good chance to take a point this weekend. They’re both really great dogs with tremendous movement (Will in particular) and in my prejudiced view they outclass the competition. Each won their respectives classes once this weekend and, if they’d behaved a little better, might well have won a point.
Still a dog show is fabulous experience for them whether for their future careers as show dogs (if any) or for their undoubted future careers as therapy dogs.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a dog show. They’re wild and busy events with lots of extremely well cared for dogs and extremely poorly cared for humans. Perhaps it’a my imagination but the humans showing the dogs looked even scruffier and out of condition than in previous years.
It was a remarkable cross-section of humanity. People of every race and all sizes and shapes from men over 6’6″ and women over 6′ to both men and women who, if they topped 5′ I’d be surprised. Extremely thin people. Obscenely fat people. Kids. Old people. A female bodybuilder. An elderly women under 5′ tall and extremely fat trundling around in a mobility vehicle, looking for all the world like a Dalek.
Noise. Shouting. Erratic gaits. Shows of emotion. Joy. Anger. Disappointment.
And they were all united in the focus on their dogs.
Great experience for a future therapy dog.
Great post, thanks for the window into this wacky world—my hats off to you and Janice, they are sure to be great competors. Any ops in my part of the world to see them? Ann