MALTESE A DISCUSSION ABOUT TYPE
By Daryl Martin
This article originally appeared in the Maltese column of the December 2017 AKC Gazette and is reprinted with the permission of the author.
R ecently I had a phone call from an established breeder with a question about type. With the conversation we had, I felt it would make an excellent topic for this month’s column. The discussion was on confirming what “type” is. Interest - ingly, in one of our dog magazines, the same discussion was brought up at around the same time. Many people confuse type with fashion or their own pref- erences in what they want to see in a dog. Type in a breed is set and defined by the standard. The description of breed character and correct silhouette, head, movement, coat, and overall balance is told to the breeders by the AKC standard for our breed. The standard is what breeders should be try- ing to replicate to create our ideal Maltese. The standard is the keeper of our breed. It is written to set the bar and describe what makes our breed specific and different from other breeds! At one of our national specialties, the lateMr. Richard Beau- champ gave one of his famous and informative programs about the “five elements of type,” and a breeder stood up and said they liked the baby-doll heads and the big eyes. Mr. Beauchamp’s polite response was, “Then you need to breed another breed, as you are not breeding what your standard calls for in a Maltese.” That was so well said. The standard calls for type in its description of an ideal Maltese. When people say there are different types in vari - ous parts of the country, they are referring to “styles.” These terms should not be interchanged. Just because one part of the country may have dogs that are little and small-boned, and in other areas the dogsmay be bigger, with different heads or coats, that is not referring to type. Yes, there is a range within our standard; this does not make one style right or wrong, providing it is still within what the standard calls for.
Proper balance is very important, as our standard states in many places that everything is medium, with nothing extreme. There are people who talk about “angles,” but our stan - dard never mentions angles—or planes, or other terms written in other standards. It is also interesting to note the styles of topknots used by those who are trying to create round heads and short nos - es. Again, this is not what our standard calls for. Unfor - tunately, many of the new beauty aids, like hair straight - eners and other new products, have been used to change what our dogs look like, and many coats are not what they actually appear to be. Breeders who rely on such prod- ucts are only fooling themselves to the detriment of their breeding programs by creating coat qualities that the dog does not have naturally. Even though different breeders like different styles of dogs, they all should be breeding sound dogs that are of the same type as described by our AKCMaltese standard. “MANY PEOPLE CONFUSE TYPE WITH FASHION OR THEIR OWN PREFERENCES IN WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE IN A DOG.”
T op N otch T oys , M ay 2022 • 53
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