Posted on 01/25/2014 6:52:56 PM PST by digger48
NEW YORK - When the nation's foremost dog show added an event open to mixed breeds, owners cheered that everydogs were finally having their day.
They see the Westminster Kennel Club's new agility competition, which will allow mutts at the elite event next month for the first time since the 1800s, as a singular chance to showcase what unpedigreed dogs can do.
"It's great that people see that, `Wow, this is a really talented mixed breed that didn't come from a fancy breeder,"' said Stacey Campbell, a San Francisco dog trainer heading to Westminster with Roo!, a high-energy -- see exclamation point -- husky mix she adopted from an animal shelter. (You can see Roo! in action in the photo attached to this story.)
"I see a lot of great dogs come through shelters, and they would be great candidates for a lot of sports. And sometimes they get overlooked because they're not purebred dogs," Campbell said.
Roo! will be one of about 225 agility dogs whizzing through tunnels, around poles and over jumps before the Westminster crowd. And, if she makes it to the championship, on national TV.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Just to play devil’s advocate: from a genetic standpoint, wouldn’t mixed breeds be more robust anyway (i.e. less prone to disease and disability)?
OK.
That’s just plain creepy!
Harry Reid and Janet Napolitano’s love child?
Every breed has genetic/inherited health issues and mixed breeds will still express those health issues just like purebreds will.
In some cases, combining the “wrong” breeds can even increase health issues exponentially, such as mixing two breeds who are predisposed to hip dysplasia or osteosarcoma, as examples.
With a purebred, you can make a reasonable guess as to which health problems you *may* face during the dog's life and it's easier to diagnose illnesses in your dog by deducing what it's likely to be afflicted by, according to breed statistics.
With mutts of unknown parentage, it's a crap-shoot.
That is the whole point of having a “pure bred dog” in the first place; to set type/temperament and homogeneity so you know what you're getting, as much as humanly possible.
Even the word “hybrid” is a misnomer as a mixed breed dog is still just a dog and not technically a “hybrid” of anything.
A mule would be a better example of a hybrid.
I dearly wish "hybrid vigor" ~were~ a real thing because I'd be busy creating the perfect Dobe mix that was disgustingly healthy and obscenely long-lived...:-\
Agreed. Unfortunately show entries across the board have declined, I would guess because of the poor economy. Add a new event like agility and you’ve just increased entries. I’m not sure it has much to do with the AKC as with the Westminster Kennel Club who hosts the event that is AKC sanctioned (ie it meets AKC requirements for a benched conformation show). AKC agility events don’t allow unregistered dogs, unless they’ve recenlty changed that rule? But there are others that do, USDAA for example. All the reasons Salamander listed for getting a pure bred dog andnot a rescue are absolutely correct. And while I help out with Shorthair rescue when I can, if someone asks me if they should get a rescue dog or a pure bred dog, I always recommend a pure bred dog from a reputable breeder (I don’t know what a “fancy breeder” is as mentioned in the article) over a rescue unless the person is a very experienced dog owner that knows how to deal with possible behavior issues.
Westminster is quite an experience. The benching portion is really horrendous, with the dogs having to basically stay in the assigned crate area all day while hordes of people walked through the already cramped areas to get a close up look at the dogs. They have a few wood chip stalls for the dogs to pee & poop in, my GSP didn’t want to step foot in the nasty things and waited all day and let loose the second we got outside at the end of the day. The carpeted show rings are really nice looking for TV, but the dogs always slip on it and never move their best. But, it’s exciting to do the show once and overall I’m glad we entered.
“AKC agility events don’t allow unregistered dogs, unless they’ve recenlty changed that rule?”
Check out the AKC’s “ILP”/now called “Purebred Alternative” registrations.
http://www.akc.org/reg/ilpex.cfm
While the dogs cannot be bred or shown in conformation, they may qualify for all other AKC sanctioned events.
For your $35 [!] and two photos, you can “register” a dog who looks “enough like” a recognized breed.
From what I’ve heard, they’re quite liberal in their visual interpretation of purebred.
“Fancy breeder” is a back-handed snipe at all the people who devote their lives to a breed because, in the liberal mind, they are the people who are somehow, employing tortuous logic, responsible for all shelter dogs.
IMO, the people who are intentionally breeding “designer dogs” should be beaten with a stick.
When I was a teen, a woman near my house mass-bred “Cockapoos” and got insane sums for those poor dogs whose feet never touched grass, being quartered in what could only generously be called “chicken coops”.
The Cockapoo craze started the whole “WhateverPoo” madness and now there are hundreds of bizarre “breeds”.
The *only* good to come of that is mixing the tragic Pugs with something that actually has a functioning muzzle, allowing it to finally breathe normally.
OTOH, with a “Puggle”, you now have a dog who is not only stubborn and willful, it takes off after small animals when it gets the chance.
*sigh*
It's because they never allow Labs and Golden Retrievers to win! ;*)
Yeah, I know about the ILP. I can handle that; the dogs are not allowed entry to conformation events, but can do the fun AKC events. I’ve seen enough rescue Shorthairs that you know they’re Shorthairs, but don’t know where they came from, and the ILP can encourage new owners to be active with their dog in AKC events. But this article makes it sound like any ol’ dog from the pound can compete in the new agility event at Westminster. The club maybe is trying to compete with the Eukanuba Classic, though only the top 6 ranked agility dogs in each breed are invited to attend the Classic. Used to be that only top ranked dogs were invited to compete in conformation, but they’ve now opened it to any dog that sends in an entry. That torques me off a bit. Especially after seeing the Shorthairs that were entered this past show. I guess this can be said for most breeds, but there is no worry that Shorthairs will have overangled front assemblies any time soon. Most that I saw don’t even have correctly angled fronts.
Heh, since Labs & Goldens have two of the highest breed entries of all the breeds you might be right!
Oh yes, I happened upon a woman with what she called an “AussieDoodle” in the pet food store a few weeks ago. Coloring of an Australian Shepherd with the coat of a poodle. I just bit my tongue and got about my errands.
ILPs dead-end, thankfully.
However, the problem with the yellow papers [and I speak from personal experience in an AKC litter investigation] is that, a fraudulently registered litter must produce just 3 generations of pups and the third generation is allowed full AKC privileges again.
In 2002, a litter was born that not only was the sire *not* the real sire, the pups had several different sires.
The submitted sire was chosen because the owner of all the other males refused to commit fraud but the owner of the bitch had no such reservations so she typed in the name of the *only* male of which she had full ownership.
I had to submit DNA for the investigation and two of my girls had different daddies.
The owner of some of the “Who’s yer daddy?” pups had titled all her dogs and was about to breed them when the yellow paper designation was issued.
ALL their titles were stripped away, even though she refuses to admit that, to this day.
Her entire “foundation stock” were “worthless” and she had spent a fortune on campaigning those dogs only to be cut off at the knees because of one women’s greed and treachery.
[she has new dogs and is quite successful now but she *should* have already “gotten there” 12 years and a *lot* of money ago]
Every dog they showed against, and every dog *those* dogs showed against should have had their points recalculated to reflect the WYD litter’s new ineligibility but never were.
Legitimately registered dogs either never received the points/titles they were due *or* had to be campaigned much longer than they should have.
In addition to yellow papered dogs being placed back into the gene pool, puppy millers are using yellow papers to register dogs of iffy origin, knowing full well that only a short 18 months of back-to-back breeding need pass before they can then sell “AKC pups”.
The AKC is rotting from within and no longer represents the pure ideals that created it.
Having owned a GSP in the past, I’m sorry to hear that their conformation is being compromised.
I truly do feel your pain.
What Dobes are now and what they are *supposed* to be isn’t even in the same realm of reality, anymore.
That is probably 80% of why I went with Euros this time around.
They have....DoberDoodles, now.
/bites tongue til it bleeds
It’s almost always some little fuzzball dog.
One exception was that *horrible*, grotesquely overdone Bull Terrier.
If people are honest, The Fifinator should have gone BIS but as soon as those idiot TV announcers mentioned Obama’s Portuguese, I knew who would win.
It’s all politics and pomp.
It’s the grotesque Pekinese that upset me. They look like an oversized blow up of a virus! They do not look t all like the Pekinese dogs I fell in love with in the 40s.
Precisely my point. There was a show recently where they mentioned that there were 150 Goldens entered in the part of the show that we never see on TV. The one that made it to the group ring (presumably) represented the dog that best represented the Golden standard. Yet, these dogs rarely make it to the best in group ring. And NEVER to Best in Show.
How can that be when they are supposed to be judged against their own standard of their breed?
Yet, they are judged against dogs that perhaps had only 5 entries in their breed ring when they get to group. It makes no sense that a dog that has won over 150 other dogs of their own breed cannot compete against a field of dogs that made it to group over only 4-5 other entries in the breed ring.
OMG...*that* hideous thing!
He won what, 2 or 3 years in a row?
Ugh.
Check this page out.
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/100-years-of-breed-improvement/
Do you watch the breed judging videos WKC puts online, now?
Every bloody year, I pick the top 3 Dobes and every year, they’re the first ones dismissed.
Gloriously solid and square dogs, true to type with flawless movement, perfect angles and elegant *single tracking* trots are tossed for over-angulated, swan-necked, crabbing “show pony fashion” Dobes.
I stopped watching about 3 years into it.
How The Fifinator managed to make the cut is a miracle.
She actually looks like a Dobe should.
Mostly.
I do not think they judge against the *true* standards anymore.
It’s all about the new fads.
[could an Irish Setter *really* hunt with “beautiful” floor length feathering? *no*!]
:-\
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! ;^)
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