How Long to Persevere
The dust has settled on another National. There will be happy winners and not as
happy losers, but it’s always been that way. We have more winners than in the past because we give out
more awards and some even talk about how many “cuts” they made. It’s all part of the game.
The old dinosaur has had an interesting past few
months. Fell and cracked my pelvis
in October, pneumonia in January and just diagnosed with a hernia that needs
surgery. Getting old is so much
fun, particularly when you’re too dumb to admit it. As the boy said when he swallowed the pincushion, “even this
shall pass!”
Dog breeding and dog showing have been changing over the
years even though some basics stay the same. One thing that hasn’t changed is the need to honestly
evaluate your dogs. Some folks
drag a dog around forever to get it finished. Once your dog earns the right to have a “Ch.” or “Gr. Ch.” in
front of its name, it’s still the same dog it was before. Titles are the result of opinions by
judges who may or may not be knowledgeable.
I used to tell folks if they took a dog or bitch in good
condition, groomed well, and trained properly to ten shows and had no points it
was time to quit. You can drag
them around and perhaps finish them eventually, but you still have
nothing. Be honest in your
judgement of your dogs, cull ruthlessly, and if you have a good eye you will
achieve success. If you don’t have
a good eye for what’s correct, get some help from someone who does. Some of the pictures I see of
dogs who have finished give me the shudders. The old evaluation game of “it’s my competition dog and it’s
no good, it’s my friends dog and it has lots of good points, and it’s my dog
and should have won the National if the judge was decent!” is a sad plot to fall into, but shows
how some people think. (all the
same dog)
Frank Sinatra made a lot of money with a song that said
among other things “regrets, I’ve had a few!” It further indicates he did it “his way.” Whether breeding or showing we all will
have some things we wish we’d done differently, but need to have the courage to
admit we did it our way. If you
buy a pup that doesn’t turn out, you pay your money and take your chances and
when you breed to someone’s stud dog you face the same criteria. When all is said and done it’s easy to
brag about your good decisions, but much harder to not blame someone else for
the ones that didn’t turn out so well.
When I was breeding and showing some regrets certainly
showed up. But most weren’t too
bad. A few were not so minor, but
they were all my decision and I lived with it.
I had a beautiful bitch courtesy of my friend, Barbara
Woodmancy (Ch. Gregshire Little Honeycomb). She was heavy coated, showed like a champ and finished with
four majors when majors were hard to get.
Her first litter produced Ch. Jadene’s Breezalong who won the Naitonal
for me in 1967. Breezalong was
sired by my Ch. Gingeor Bellbrooke’s Choice R.O.M., who was a fine sire. Bellbrooke’s Choice was sired by
Bellbrooke’s Master Pilot, an outstanding dog who sired two first rate
champions with hardly any opportunity.
I always regretted not having tried breeding Honeycomb to him.
Later I had the good fortune to acquire a bitch who became
Ch. Sontaw’s Trudy Fair. The day
she finished at the Cleveland Specialty was a real high point. Her daughter, Ch. Marnus Evening Breeze
won the Kem Sweeps, her son, Ch. Gingeor’s Jack of Tamarack was Winners Dog and
Trudy was Best of Winners to take five points and finish. Days to rival that are few and far
between. The others that come to
mind are the Mason-Dixon Specialty under Oren Kem where Phil Blevin had Winners
Dog with Gingeor’s Patent Pending, I had Winners Bitch with Gingeor Comanche’s
Legacy and Breezalong took the Breed.
There were also two shows where Steve Field gave me both sets of points
for Majors.
After that great litter by Breezalong, I thought it made
sense to breed Trudy to his sire, Bellbrooke’s Choice because he was a great
sire and theoretically would be done at stud sooner because of his age compared
to Breezy. Alas, after winning the
C.C. of A. In 1967 Breezy
developed a skin problem, the treatment for which rendered him sterile while
his dad was still going strong.
The Evening Breeze litter was never repeated.
Breezalong’s skin problem led to probably my greatest regret
as an exhibitor. In Columbus in
1966 Breezy fought it out with The Clown Prince of Floravale for B.B. Next year in San Mateo, CA he took B.B.
and was top Collie in the country.
In 1968 the C.C. of A. was at the Mason-Dixon C.C. in Virginia, a show that Breezy had
owned. I believe he won it three
years in a row and the judge for B.B. was John Lindeman who had put Breezy up
at the C.C. of Conn. and saw him take the group and nearly B.I.S. The catalog for the 1968 C.C. of
A. has a silhouette of a dog and handler on the cover. It was a silhouette of me showing
Breezy and a tribute to a grand dog who the club was honoring. I know of no other catalog for a
National that offered such a tribute.
The folks who decided on the catalog and the rest of the
club knew nothing of Breezy’s skin problem. I had had him to the Univ. of PA School of Veterinary Medicine,
but we found no answer better than the low dose of predisone to stop him
scratching and chewing. His coat
came in, but in nothing of the former beauty that it had shown. We went to no shows leading up the the
C.C. of A. National
As entry time approached the pressure to show him seemed to
intensify. This dog had a big fan
club and the show was in his backyard (I lived in NJ) with a judge who really
liked him. As I sent the entry my
thought was still not to take Breezy, but as the show approached I became sure
he’d look decent. To the National
we would go!
This is absolutely in no way a reflection of the winner that
day, Ch. Noranda Daily Double. His
owner, Dorothy Long, and his handler, Les Canavan always had my whole hearted
respect. “Buster” and Breezy
traded wins over the years, so I bear him no ill will in any way.
The only ill will in my heart was of a young fellow from New
Jersey who let himself be convinced to show a dog who should have stayed
home. This dog who had carried me
to the pinnacle any Collie person could aspire to had been let down by the guy
who should have shielded him when he wasn’t his best. That was my greatest regret and I’ve never forgotten in all
these years. Don’t ever take a dog
out that should have stayed home.
Think about it!!!
I still do.
