MAKING OUR AKC SHOWS LESS SCARY FOR NOVICES by Jacquelyn Fogel
show world today. Where do you start? We don’t have fun matches anymore, and all of our shows are point shows. Go to the tiniest show in the Midwest and there will be at least two or three handlers with trucks full of well-groomed, well-trained show dogs. Buy a beagle thinking it’s a no-groom breed, and imagine your surprise when you find out it takes as long to groom a beagle for a show as it does to put up a Bedlington. If you think there is any breed shown to- day that does not require some level of ring-ready grooming, or training to perform in a breed-acceptable manner you’d be wrong. Sure, there are a few short haired breeds like a Manchester that require very little coat preparation, but even they re- quire some level of training to be able to compete with a flashy Maltese, Shih Tsu or miniature poodle in the group. Is it any wonder that people gravitate toward the newer AKC breeds? Nobody knows what they’re supposed to look like yet, so a nov- ice can compete on a level field with other novices. I think this intimidation factor is a very real problem. Terriers, known for their extraordinary grooming re- quirements, are all becoming rare breeds. It’s true that many people don’t want to spend the time on end- less grooming, but it’s also true that they don’t know where to go to find out how to do the work. There is no grooming school that teaches the art of rolling a hard coat or the intricate detail of a scissored Bedlington trim. It’s a learn-by-doing environment with few good teachers. It took me three years of grooming a Bedlington
to finally master a trim that was not embarrassing, much less beautiful. It took another 10 years to get to a mas- ter level, and I still modify my trims. About 6 months ago I had an epipha- ny. If I wanted new people to join the ranks of Bedlington breeding and showing and help to preserve this breed for posterity, I was going to have to reach out to people > and of- fer to train them in at least the trim, and hopefully add in a little about the breed standard. I knew there was an interest in this breed among com- petitive groomers because I had been loaning dogs to several of them and had done some minimal training in the trim. I was never happy with the bichon-like styles they put on their competition dogs, and one competitor actually told me it would be impos- sible to win a grooming competition with a dog in my breed-appropriate pattern because it wasn’t what the judges were looking for. That was an- noying on two levels. First, who were these judges who knew so little about my breed that they thought gobs of hair was a good thing, and second, how would this novice groomer know she could not win with my trim since she had never actually learned it. I do know that one of the top-ranked competitive groomers won a Best In Show with a Bedlington I had just finished a championship on at our National Specialty a fewweeks before her grooming competition, so I was pretty sure the pattern that I had put on the dog was not so far gone that she dramatically changed it for her best- in-show grooming performance. My aha moment (actually it was an aha period of time that stretched
W e’re scary. We are so good at what we do that anybody who thinks about competing with us gets scared. How can they breed, buy, groom, train and show a dog that looks anything like ours? Where do they start? How do they learn? How much money will they have to spend to even come close to having a dog that looks and acts like ours? Do they even want to try? I believe the AKC groomers, han- dlers and trainers are the best in the world. Nobody in any other region of the world is as proficient at present- ing dogs as the people who regularly compete in AKC shows. We take our competition seriously, and we are the best. It is no secret that handlers and groomers from all over the world want to come here to learn how our AKC professionals manage their trade. They come here to learn how to breed, groom, train and present their dogs. We are the masters of the uni- verse—and it’s scaring novice exhibi- tors away from our shows. Think about breaking into the dog
48 • T op N otch T oys , J anuary 2020
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