THE CURSE OF THE LAST POINT
by Jacqueline Watt
T here is a phenomenon amongst dog show competitors that most experience at some time in their show careers—getting that final point to put champion, grand champi- on (bronze, silver or platinum) or an- other title in front of or behind their dog’s name. Sometimes the route to a title is simple, wins that seam- lessly produce the needed certificates without difficulty, but this situation is a rarity. Most of us dedicate long hours to training, grooming, travel- ing, handling or finding the perfect handler, finding the proper show to enter in which state and which judge. All to obtain the necessary points to achieve success and getting that last point can be a challenge. Most com- petitors will have their own stories of the difficulties they have faced and will gladly share their tales—the num- ber of shows it took, the failure to get the crossover points, a suddenly de- stroyed coat, accidents, registration errors…the possibilities are endless. Ask anyone who shows dogs about the curse of the last point. Much time is spent on the calcula- tion of points for a dog’s win. No mega jackpot lottery player could spend more time going over the winning numbers on their ticket than those of us in the dog show world counting the points on our pups. We know to each point and date what we have earned and what we still need—especially when only one more point is required and we are facing the curse of the last point.
In our case the curse of the last point turned out to be very dramatic and made us true believers. With one point to go we entered an appropriate show, packed up the pups, loaded car and trailer and headed off for a show only 2 and a half hours away. It was to be situated at a lovely venue and we were promised full trailer hookup, a wonderful luxury for us, it was fan- tastic and as it turned out, too good to be true. We made it about 25 miles into our trip when the vehicle we were driving started overheating then pro- ceeded to billow huge clouds of white smoke—the curse had started. OK, no problem we had towing insurance and after a number of hours managed to get the trailer towed back to its yard and our now disabled fully packed ve- hicle towed back to our house. The dogs were puzzled but glad to be home after such a long day—us not so much—we still had a show to get to. Failure was not an option. We still needed that one point so arrange- ments were made to rent an appropri- ately sized vehicle, reload everything and continue to the show by driving back and forth each day. By this time, it was apparent that there were seri- ous issues with this trip and the car was rented with all available insur- ance along with its excessive cost just in case the curse struck again. Of course, our ring times were early, 9 AM, and our dogs have full, long coats so it required a 3 AM wake-up call and naturally because we had planned on having our full trailer
hookup with all its amenities, we did not arrange for grooming space—the curse of the final point. The showwentwell, thepoint success- fully won, the obligatory show pho- tographs taken and all seemed well until we were told the final points for the prior show had just posted to the AKC website. Unfortunately, when we checked, four points were missing from our dog’s record—a four-point major oops. The strange thing about this loss of points was that the judge’s record sheets had been checked at the prior show and all appeared correct so how could this have happened? The curse of the last point! Since this was Saturday and AKCwas not open until Monday, it was decided to repeat the experience of the show day before to drive back and forth to the show on Sunday to try for another point, hopefully whittling down the remaining balance to three if that was indeed the case. OnMonday it turned out that there had been some kind of repopulation or recalibration error in the AKC computer system that af- fected our dogs points because when the problem was described to AKC customer service they repaired the files and the points materialized. The Curse of the Last Point is now over for now until the next time we find ourselves in the same situation. However now we are educated and true believers so we can better pre- pare—rabbits’ feet, a four-leaf clover, good luck charms and a good sense of humor should do the trick.
T op N otch T oys , N ovember 2018 • 67
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