Am I the only one who watches this thing? The husband thinks it’s weird that I love watching a televised dog show, but I’m at it again every year. I was even delighted to find I had picked the best in show before the judge did. Any other dog watchers out there?
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
I don’t want to rain on your parade but the really fancy dog shows, IMO, are akin to a beauty contest for genetic freaks. These poor creatures are victims of a snobbish eugenics cult, who think everything good in an animal (and a person) is determined by their breeding.
I’m a genetically well-rounded (ie healthy) mutt and so is my dog.
Sorry. That was a bit of a rant, esp. for MPSIMS. Spend 10 years of your life caring for a pure-bred Old English Sheepdog with multiple inherited disabilities, and you may feel the same way.
Hey Yankee, nope, you aren’t alone. I watched it all. Of course, everyone also thinks I’m a freak. But I love correctly identifying dogs I meet and having the owner say, “You’re the only person who has EVER known what a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Irish Water Spaniel/Chinese Crested was!”
We used to watch it every year and we don’t even own a dog. It’s one of the only specific things I’ve missed now that we don’t have a TV. I got to know some of the announcers schticks for various breeds almost by heart. “…and he requires an owner at least as intelligent as he is…”
See, that’s the weird part,Ursa, under normal circumstances I have been known to rant about the AKC being nothing but organized animal abusers. Breeding for looks only and those set arbitrarily, I ask you. But the Westminster show sucks me in every time, and I spent a good part of my youth with a bred to show great dane so I know whereof you speak.
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
I watch every dog show I find on t.v. I missed the last half of the Westminster last night, though, because it was TOOO long (had to go to bed). Who won?
I’m not invested in AKC breeding or mutts, either way, but when you say they’re arbitrarily bred for looks…is that right? I thought they were bred to conform to their original standards/work purpose, i.e., bassett hounds are low to the ground in order to be closer to the stuff their sniffing.
We have two purebred, registered dachshunds.
The older one is/was/could have been a showdog, IMO. Very fine lines, also very well-behaved. Never shown, though, AFAIK. (We acquired her from her original owner when she was 6 or 7 years old.)
The younger one is, well, not pretty. We got the AKC judging points for dachshunds off the net the other day. It’s about ten paragraphs long. She didn’t make it past the first paragraph. (Her ears are wrinkled and she has loose skin at her throat. In terms of general proportions you’d have to call her a “pinhead”.) She’s much less well-behaved, partly because she’s much younger (she’s only 2 years old).
But you know what? They are both devoted, loving creatures. One got the looks and the brains (although dachshunds aren’t the world’s smartest dogs – their intelligence is usually rated as “predictable”) and the other got, um, well, um, let’s see – four legs and a tail?
I try to emphasize to my kids that we love them no matter what. I point to our stupid, ugly dog and tell them if we can love her, we can love anybody. My kids remain unimpressed. (In fact, they get a little shirty about the comparison!)
BTW, we acquired the younger one from a niece who was staying with us. She picked her out specifically because she was the runt, and a little homely. But by the time our niece was ready to move on the dog had become part of our family, greatly attached to my wife.
No point to all this. Just mundanity.
well well said the royal desiccation my political opponents back home always maintained
that i would wind up in hell and it seems they had the right dope
Don Marquis
archy interviews a pharaoh
Golden Retrievers were ROBBED! ROBBED!!!
Just had to get that off my chest…
Inky
I watch it, too. I remember lounging in bed watching it last year, feeling like a beached whale because I was about 7 months pregnant at the time. This year my little baby giggled at the silly doggies in the toy category! (Especially that cute little Pug. He made me laugh, too.)
I fell asleep last night right before the best in show judging, so… Who won?
BTW, I was going to start a thread with this Q, but I will just put it here:
Who in the heck is responsible for deciding that those poor poodles need to look like that?!? I have always thought those poor things looked pathetic.
Chrome Toaster
Here’s for all the WKC deprived:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Dog-Show.html
Chrome Toaster:
I agree about the poodles. They could be so cool looking if they just gave them simple cuts. I think the answer to your question is “because they can.”
Oops. It just occurred to me that you might have to be a NY Times subscriber to get into that link.
The Best in Show was an English Springer Spaniel named Samantha.
I watched it, just waiting for the workign breeds to come on. (the best ones in my mind!) But wouldn’t you know it, I watched about 6 hours of that show and The only part i missed was the friggin workign dogs. Oh well all dogs are beautiful. (Except Poodles, they are covered in Pubes! yuck!)
-Frankie
“Mother Mercy, can your loins bear fruit forever?/Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?”
-Bad Religion
I love watching them too. I know it is a fancy schmanzy beauty contest for dogs, but the difference is, the dogs have more expression on their faces than the beauty contestants do!
I have a sloppy-looking male English Springer myself, plus a lab/English Springer mix. She’s got a great bark, she scares everyone, when in truth, she’s a big chicken if you actually come in the gate!
I like hearing about the different breeds, and watching how the dogs love the attention. They truly look like they are having a great time.
When I worked the dog shows way back when, it came down to two camps, those of us who had ‘working’ dogs those that were bred to a specific type of task, had intelligence and purpose (at least theoretically); and those that were bred for decor, toy poodle f’rinstance, with little in the way of brains or function. I still have a residual contemp for the latter, but still love the former. Hounds and working dogs are my favorite groups in the show.
I have to agree on the idiocy of the poodle cut though. A standard poodle, according to the folk lore, was originally bred to fight lions, fer criminy’s sake, the lions would laugh him out of the ring if he showed up with pom poms on his ass. Poodles are cool though in they do not shed.
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
Another watcher here! No dog even and hubby says,“what DO you see in that? It’s boring!”. I love it! Working and Hounds are my favorites too. Loved the Malamut and Samoyed, the Great Dane and the Boxer.
We’ll end up getting a mutt though. We had a boxer for about 6 weeks and he drove my husband crazy, eventhough I loved him.
I do have this thing for Pugs, though. What a great attitude wrapped up in a little package!
Another watcher. Started watching 5 years ago after we got a Bouvier des Flandres. (For you “ER” watchers, there was a beautiful Bouv on last week’s episode.) Before getting our dog, we had done a lot of research/reading but hadn’t seen a lot of the different breeds in action, so that’s why we started watching. We definitely favor the working dogs, herding dogs, and hounds. I have no use for toys.
Now we have the whole family hooked. My in-laws have two Springers – one liver and one black – and they were gloating about the show’s outcome. Too funny.
I have a question if anybody knows about showing. The terrier group is the most successful at Westminster, in that they have won the most best-in-shows by far. But isn’t judging supposed to be based on each specimen’s conformity to its own standard? Does this mean that terriers conform to their own standards better than other dogs? Makes no sense.
My conclusion is that it’s all a popularity contest. But I still like looking at the dogs and listening to Garagiola’s inane commentary.
We only got to watch the Terriers a few nights ago and we were pulling for the cute little West Highland Whiter Terrier, since we have a Westie ourselves (Duncan - The Chunky-Dunky Dog). Unfortunately that goofy looking Bedlington terrier won.
Duncan was purchased from a breeder an hour away and he was what we wanted: small-ish (22lbs.), smart, friendly, energetic and (fairly) easy to train. That is one of the big benefits of pure-bred dogs, you pretty much know what characteristics you’re getting when you get one, as opposed to a mutt that may turn out to be agressive, stupid, etc.
The only real problem with him is that he will NOT stop chasing the cat (only chases, doesn’t bite). But then again, Westies were originally bred to chase foxes out of foxholes so the hunt could continue, so I suppose he can’t help but to follow the cat under the bed and out the other side.
http://www.akc.org/breeds/recbreeds/westie.cfm
I would’ve watched had my tv been plugged in. (Still getting settled from moving last week.) My faves are the hounds and the working class. My current (and first) dog is a pit/boxer mix, and when he kicks off I’m getting an Afghan. Or I may get him an Afghan friend in a couple of years.
I have owned two purebreds. First was a Border Collie. He was a real beaut, perfect coloring, could’ve been a showdog if he had developed properly. He didn’t and we had to put him down (he was crippled and in pain) , it was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
The second is a beautiful Beardie Collie. He has health problems, but we knew when we got him (we “saved” him from being put down, we had to give up his registration but who cares). He is blind and has a few other abnormalities. He’s great IMHO better than those snotty show dogs