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.
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.