If you’ve been to shows on a regular basis it is easy to see why a dog that wins best of breed from a high entry breed won’t necessarily beat a dog that wins best of breed from a low entry breed. Just because there a lot of dogs of a single breed doesn’t mean that there is even 1 *quality* dog of that breed. Whereas a low entry breed may happen to have the best dog of that breed ever produced. And of course the flaw of it all is that an imperfect human is doing the judging. Sometimes there are shenanigans going on, but probably most of the time not.
So here’s how a show works, which I think they do a poor job of explaining when you watch a Westminster or Classic on TV. The part you never see on TV are the breed rings, where dogs of each breed are judged against each other. The winner of that “Best of Breed”, then goes on to the Group ring and is judged against other dogs within the same group. Sporting group, for example, will have the one best of breed winner from all the Setter varieties, all the Pointer varieties, the best of breed Golden, best of breed Lab, etc. What they fail to mention when you watch some of the shows on TV is that they often edit out some of the Group ring dogs, so you may think “Hey, there wasn’t a Golden.” But indeed there was, they just edited it out from what was shown on tv. So then each Group winner goes on to compete in Best In Show against the winner from each Group.
Yeah, I knew all that. BUT, since Goldens and Labs are the 2 most popular breeds they should let them win once in a while. JMHO.
Are you aware that a Golden has NEVER won Best in Show at Westminster in the entire history of the show?
If there are 150 entries that have come from all over the country and have won points in lesser shows to get to NYC, you’d think that there would be at lease ONE good example of the breed present. Perhaps the judges can’t recognize a good Golden! ;^)