Tuesday, August 13, 2013

BULLYING AS STRATEGY



 CH Rock Ridge Night Rocket
BIS 1948 Westminster Kennel Club Show

We rarely pull out our soap box, but now and then something comes up that offends us so much we cannot ignore it.  It’s kind of like that neighbor that insists on repeatedly bringing his dog to your front lawn to relieve himself…the dog not the neighbor.  We know that there are inconsiderate dog owners out there.  Mostly we ignore them.  We have found that they are mostly small bands of self- centered folk of no real consequence.   However, when they start to stink up the whole neighborhood, there is no other option, but to confront.

We read today an article in one of our most credible dog publications, ShowSight Magazine, entitled POOR SPORTSMANSHIP, or STRATEGIC SHOWING? (sic), a piece that put forth a smell so strong we could not sit silent.  The facts are that at last month’s Reliant Series of Dog Shows in Houston, there was a reasonably large Bedlington Terrier entry, varying from 12 to 17 dogs each day.  For the first four days there were no more than three absentees, however on the closing day, ten of the 12 Bedlington exhibitors entered failed to appear for the judging.  We cannot really say that they were absent as some of the exhibitors sat in the gallery or stood outside the ring, WITH THEIR DOGS, eagerly waiting to see what effect their cleverness had on the targeted exhibitor and/or the judge.  These are the facts.  We were there and witnessed it, as did several other credible dog people.

The author of the referenced article was not there, though her dog and handler were, but has chosen to use her platform to self-servingly declare the mob action, “…commendable and courageous…”  The author even went so far as to threaten the judge, noting the power of social media to punish and urging the judge to use “caution”.  Wow…that’s the message we want to pass to our fellow exhibitors.  If we don’t like a particular judge or exhibitor, let’s organize a flash mob and see if we can humiliate them into submission.   Let’s take to the internet and spew anonymous vindictives against the exhibitors and judges that don’t put up our dogs.  That an article in a respectable magazine would deem such bullying tactics to be smart strategy to be employed by the savvy exhibitor is mind blowing.

Well here’s the flaw in the logic.  Most credible people will simply choose to ignore you.  No one can deny the Bedlington breed is in decline.  There was a time when Bedlingtons were routinely in contention for Best In Show.  A Bedlington Terrier, CH Rock Ridge Night Rocket, even won the Westminster Kennel Club Show.  It's been two years since the last Bedlington BIS.  The breed rarely makes it to a final, except at shows with embarrassingly small Terrier entries.  The breed is currently 144th in the registry.  Four years ago they were 118th.   We believe there is a nexus between how welcoming a community is and the health of the breed.  New exhibitors are sure to be discouraged and existing exhibitors know enough to avoid breeds where pettiness is a way of life. 

Here’s how we think this should have been handled.  If you did not like the judge, you should not have entered under him.  For those of you who did and decided you did not want to face the judge, whether you came to that conclusion on your own or succumbed to the influence of others, you should have packed up and gone home early.  Everyone understands a five day cluster is exhausting.  If you chose to stay, you should have shown.  The exhibitor you targeted showed her dog the four days before, with mixed results. She won the breed on day one and was walked out of the breed with no award on day four.   Now here’s an important point.  She showed her dog all five days because it was the Reliant Series, the gallery was full of knowledgeable people, and she knew her dog would be seen and admired.

On Sunday the targeted dog was denied eight breed points by your boycott.  Your dogs were denied the opportunity to be seen by the Series’ largest gate and several important people in the gallery.  This is where the offending behavior really disturbs me.  Dog shows are our face to the world.  The boycotting exhibitors thought only of seeking an advantage at a low level of competition.  They never thought that there might be dozens, even hundreds of people who came to the Reliant Center on Sunday just to see a Bedlington Terrier.  Many people...judges, professional handlers, & show chairs among them...have spoken to us about the behavior of the boycotting exhibitors.  None called it, “…commendable and courageous…”, but some did call it “rude”, “disgusting”, and our favorite, “hooliganism”.      

The real loser is our beloved sport.  We happen to think that our current group of judges are, on the whole, knowledgeable, fair, sincere, and honorable.  We don’t always agree with their decisions, but we would much rather trust an AKC judge than a popular vote by group of self-appointed “mean girls”.     We hope that the many decent Bedlington exhibitors will eschew this type of behavior and support the entries at the sport’s major venues, including the Montgomery County Kennel Club show, which has been boycotted by some of the same Bedlington exhibitors twice in the last five years.

Finally, we can agree with the author on two points.  Social media is a powerful weapon.  It is also a two edged sword and can cut both ways.  The author closed the subject article with the sentence, “I just hope someone is paying attention.”  So do we.  And that’s today’s Back Story.

31 comments:

  1. Excellent Billy. If people don't want to show to a judge and boycott, just don't enter under that judge. To enter and then sit ringside is indeed rude. And lets not forget the general public that does see the schedule and was ringside to see the Bedlingtons, what image does that give the whole "dog show" with the general public too see many sit ringside and not show. All they see or hear about is poor sportsmandship and why would any new person want to get involved with a sport that has people acting like this. I have personally seen it happen in my breed. Will win the first two to three days and then the other special doesn't get shown and handler sits ringside. I will always show my dog even if being beat. I have only left a show early twice, one time I wasn't feeling good and the other dog wasn't feeling good and I let the other handler know I was leaving. But way to go Billy

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  2. Thank you for this article, Billy.

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  3. Excellent!
    Armando

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  4. Didn't know all this had transpired, since I am not a Terrier person, but it was good to find out about it.
    Standing ringside with your dog, and not showing it is not only rude, but against the rules ( or at least it used to be).Thank you, Billy,for publicly calling these people out!!!

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  5. About a million years ago when I was still showing there were a handful of dogs entered at a local show. As I recall only about 6 or 7. We entered for a judge very knowledgeable about our difficult to judge breed (bulldogs). The judge that morning had suddenly been taken ill and was replaced by a local judge who was just horrendous. All of the entries had shown to her at one time or another and she did a truly terrible job, preferring to put up familiar faces rather than judging dogs. To make a long story short, all of the entries withdrew that day as was their right to do with a judge change. Several months later she was again judging and drew a very small entry. She did her level best to judge the dogs in a credible fashion. I think this was one of the few times that a "protest" actually worked.

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  6. A vote of confidence in a judge's knowledge of one's breed should only be cast by either entering or not entering. Any other way is simply the ego kicking in. This type of exhibitor behavior is one reason that after 30+ yrs I have decided to give up the showing. It's just not fun to be around anymore.
    There was day if you showed up ringside and didn't show your dog the Rep was asking you for the reason.
    Thanks Billy for speaking out and welcome home to DSP.

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  7. Thank you, Billy, for your article. I agree 100% with the points you made. I came into the sport 25 years ago when I was in my mid-20s. I did not have a family involvement with the sport and started at the very bottom of the learning curve. But, I was fortunate to have very good mentors early on. I learned all that I could about the finer points of my breed and I learned how to present a dog in the ring. I achieved success early on with my first show dog and the die was cast. Over the years, as a breeder/owner handler of one of the low-registration breeds, my dogs have achieved an all-breed BIS; dozens of group wins; hundreds of group placements and a few specialty BOB wins - in a very competitive area of the country. I am seeing a disturbing trend of exhibitors "eating their own" and this has the potential to ruin the sport for everyone. We ALL have a responsibility to take part in the sport with good sportsmanship at all times. What happened in Houston was, in my opinion, a very poor display of sportsmanship.

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  8. Great article! Thanks ever so much. Iv met some of the meanest people iv ever meet in dog shows. Iv also meet some of the best. Iv quit showing several times because of the meanest. The best bring me back. Win or lose, there's also nothing like that moment of zen that occurs between my dog and myself while in the ring.

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  9. The boycotting happened with Australian Cattle Dogs once quite a few years ago in MI. A group of people didn't care for who was put up the first day and so pulled all their dogs the next day and stood ringside while the entry left was judged. Thought it was tacky then, and think it is tacky now.

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  10. Please know that the littermate to the BOS, on the Sunday in Houston, was not pulled. She was absent all five days because she had finished her CH on July 4th, after Houston had closed. Violet was back home hiking Smuggler Mountain and the Rio Grande Trail ... high altitude training for dogs!! Had she not finished, there would have been three dogs present in the Bedlington Ring that Sunday, without question! You buy the ticket ... you take the ride!

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  11. We have a circumstance in our breed and I believe in many others where certain handlers like to intimidate judges and other exhibitors. If they don't win they, they storm up to the judge, throw a fit - and unbelievably it works! Time after time. Judges need to stand up to this behavior and call a bench on disrespecting exhibitors.

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    1. And....at the Reliant show in our breed, an AKC judge,who was exhibiting their own dog, when placed at the end of a class, proclaimed loudly, for all the world to hear - "you've got to be kidding!" Just one in a long stream of bad behavior on the part of this person - AKC has received complaints about the unsportsmanlike conduct of this person and simply replies, "they exhibited this behavior as an exhibitor, not a judge, so we have no input" PLEASE! Judges need to hold themselves above all that and AKC needs to see to it.

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  12. Please know that the littermate to the Bedlington BOS. on that Sunday in Houston, was not pulled. She was absent all five days because she had finished her CH on July 4th after the Houston entries had closed. She was happily home hiking Smuggler Mountain and the Rio Grande Trail ... high altitude training for dogs??
    Had she not finished earlier in the month, there would have been three Bedlingtons in the ring on that Sunday!! You buy the ticket ... you take the ride ... and the ticket carries responsibility to your breed and all those who assist in your endeavor.

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  13. Are we not to set an example for our children and others? Bullies are everywhere and it is about time others stand up to them! I have been showing going on seven years now and have witnessed the bullies myself. The AKC should not tolerate the actions of others whom act badly to others at the shows. I wish AKC would stand and put there foot down! I applaud you for not standing down to this kind of reporting!

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  14. Almost missed my ring time once because of this type of behavior. There were 8 or 9 class Cocker Spaniel bitches entered before me. No specials at all. All but one showed up, because the others knew it would win. Why not just let it win, get it finished, and out of the way?

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  15. I think an issue to raise is that there is no recourse for exhibitors or breed clubs to formally question a judge's ability to properly evaluate a dog's quality. Yes, we can just not enter under judges we don't like but that does not solve the problem of incompetent or political judges. And that's particularly acute with rare breeds that may not be that important to a judge's overall career. While this episode is a bit extreme, I can appreciate the frustration. If the AKC could develop some mechanism to ensure that judges approved for a breed maintain their qualifications that may help. In the business world licensed professionals need to continually take courses/seminars to maintain their license through Continuing Professional Education credits (CPEs). We need something like that in the show world so that judges continually demonstrate their qualifications to judge our breeds. Under the current rules, the requirements are just too minimal and lead to doubt, skepticism and frustration among the many who spend so much time and effort in this crazy world of purebred dogs.

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  16. Kudos to Billy for this article. And to you gutless wonders that call yourselves exhibitors, just remember that karma always finds you, mostly when you are not expecting it.
    -Susan Shephard
    Deja vu Pekingese ROM BOE

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  17. The 5 class Bedlingtons did not show that day they left early as the handler has only one lung and was very ill that weekend when she return home Sunday night she was in the emergency room with pneumonia, one of the specials that was absent all 5 days could not show due to an injury. with the major and points absent. I decided not to show my class puppy it was her first show the stress of a 5 day show is long enough and there was no points available that day . As for my special I did choose not to show that day. The Dog that won Breed that day.The owner of it has Spoken to me of the tight relationship with that judge. I have never shown to that judge and would have been happy to show under any other circumstances I had entered that day I was told long ago to always enter. you never know if a judge change could happen. As for the Bedlingtons out side of the ring ,, I only saw one towards the end of judging mine was not there. I enjoyed our conversation that day I did watch the judging then I supported the venders and went shopping. . that was 9 of the 10 bedlingtons absent that day..

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    1. Where was the AKC rep? I judge these dogs, have for years and watched the quality and entries decline. I have been verbally attacked by a breeder building an entry when awarding BOB to the single non-member entry.
      The self serving actions mainifest as pack and bullying behavior, both in the ring and out of some of these breeders speaks to the decline of these wonderful dogs.

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    2. I was one of the long time exhibitors sitting at ringside watching this debacle. I've been in the "sport" since 1988, and although this is NOT my breed nor my group, I was appalled at the "missing" exhibitors' behavior. To stand at rignside, WITH their dogs and whine about, "oh, my dog was so afraid because of all the noise...yada, yada... All I could think was that you all had been there for the previous five days and your dogs were not afraid and shaking then and you showed....What an insult to the judge and to the other exhbitors. As to the SS article, of course that is the author's opinion. Not much of one, but all hers. Karma can be a real hard thing to swallow.

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    3. Not to take sides but LOTS of dogs were shaking and panting from the deep thunderous noises.. mine was very concerned with that noise.. we do not know if it was the thunder or speaker thundering from the dancing Frisbee dogs music .. I'm sure other breeds were affect too..

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  18. Bravo Billy excellent article. While some comments above have cited extenuating circumstances we do know this behavior DOES happen. Years ago this happened in the Aussie ring. Exhibitors stood ringside with their dogs and would not show breaking the major. What was a great act of Karma that day was the winners bitch went BOS over a special making it a major and the winners dog went breed so he earned a major. We giggled and cheered that their plot was foiled.

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    1. if the judge was so inept then why enter, why then again enter under him in shows in your own back yard yet 2 weeks later. The author of the article is not without bias. The author of the article is point building as criticized by Mr. Wheeler in another piece about the cost of a title. Congratulations, Billy and DogSHowPoop are the big winners in his ability to ferret out the poor sport bullies lurking at every turn to ruin conformation dogs shows for dedicated breeders not counting cheap points. Why cant these people compete without packs of dogs behind them without boycotts at the most prestigious venues in the country.

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    2. Good to have this exposed, it's about time

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  19. Yesterday I spoke to the lady with the 5 Class dogs and the special that was absent all that week from injury. They informed me that early that morning they BOTH went to the breed winners set up and informed her that her health was declining she could hardly breath and was getting weaker and that they were leaving early ( ask her they are friends) when she got home she
    was admitted to the emergency room hospital to the tune of 13,000 dollars. I feel you were was not given a full report. The breed winner sounded off with very fowl language to the lady that had the special absent all week .. And to my new helper It was her 2second dog show ever. Even after being told that they were going to be absent . I would say someone being THAT upset may have known she had a good chance of winning breed that day. That breed winner has quit a reparation. And I only ask that people reading this if they would approach you or write there encounters you may be better informed as to her other sides. as for your comments about MKC I have NEVER pulled or not shown a dog EVER other then that day. and quite frankly I felt being #1 in the Breed I would sit it out. since there were no points to be had and my dog is still young . I too was exhausted since she has told me how much they love to jump on him in the living room and how good of friends they are . I too was tired, sick and when I returned I had to close my shop for one week due to the flu. I'm 53 years old been showings here and England since I was 5 years old the facts are you may have a problem with one of the entries that wrote an article in show sight But it needs be known no one that day has ever pulled a dog at MKC . We did not sit out side the ring with ours DOGS. There was only one dog and that is the ladies dog who writes for show sight . I feel an apology is in order. There also was a young man 13 years old first time at a dog show in the ring each day who clearly was not a girl . Again please don't listen to one side of a story before you insult a group of People I believe your beef is with the author of Becoming . Not us.. You also wrote she won the breed the first day which is true and she did not receive anything saturday .. she also did not receive anything thursday, friday and saturday And I too once knew the breed winner and had a very upsetting thing happen please keep your ears open and listen to the many other accounts there is a reason she is not welcome in the BTCA. World. Just keep an open mind. Maybe you will hear Of many Other in counters I would be happy to tell you mine.. Thank you ..

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    1. I really hate to say this, but the "Breed Winner" was set up with me and I was there ALL DAY LONG. Not one person ever came to the setup...other than people looking for puppies out of my own breed. Since the setup and reserved grooming was in my name, it isn't likely they would have even known where to find her OR her dog.

      Billy, thank you for putting this out in the open...and kudos to the honest exhibitors in the fancy. You pays your money, you takes your chances...

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    2. Ask you friend ?? look into her eyes ,, and ask " If the owner of the absent special all week and the lady with the 5 pups ,, came to her that morning and told her she was failing in health and was having a hard time breathing and was leaving for home early that day ,, ASK HER.. they were packing up all morning.. ,, also they spent lots of time together the day before grooming the Absent special ,, including the Breed winner..

      maybe this would explain it better..
      there were 5 people involve ,,
      2 showed
      3 were absent
      ************************
      One had the points ,,
      One had a special
      One had a special and one puppy..
      It's like a glass of milk is it 1/2 full or 1/2 empty..

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  20. Thank you Billy for shedding light on this growing trend. This very same thing happened last year in AZ in Pugs -- I think 19 Pugs did not show, broke the major for all those people who traveled, yet the person who pulled them was standing ringside after she had said she had a family "emergency" or illness. She was purposely trying to take breed points away from another dog to help her own special. When confronted about this behavior she threatened legal action! What is going on in our sport??? I've even heard of people loudly threatening judges on the way out of the ring that they would never judge in that state again, yet no bench committee hearing??? Makes a person just want to do performance, conformation is getting strange.

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  21. I have Bedlingtons and I just adore our breed. The honest Bedlington people are cheering you too!!!. Great article by the way. I have been told that all conformation people behave like this. I was told to just get use to it. Our biggest offenders in Bedlingtons or "bullies" as they should be called sit on our parent club board of directors, write lies in Show Sight and become AKC breed judges. Where are the AKC reps!!!!

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  22. Years ago, probably around 2006, Ric Chashoudian wrote a column inCanine Chronicle abt his displeasure at a judge's pick in the Dandie ring. Mr. Chashoudian was a judge. The AKC suspended him. The author of the article in ShowSight is also an AKC judge. For her to disrespect one exhibitor and another judge in print should be actionable also, by the AKC. No matter what the politics if this specific situation was, ehen the columnist made it abt these two specific people she evealed herself to be somebody not very respectable.

    Interesting side note: in 2010 this same blog logged a post abt exhibitors in this same breed stacking the class entry at a show with hampion dogs in order to finish a dog's grand champion title. Funny how some things never change.

    Interesting side note: another time this blog climbed on the soap bos it was 2010 and the topic was abt exhibitors in this same breed

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  23. Wow, I must be a bad sport.... I was at a large show with a dog and bitch, both were class animals.... I showed the class dog, judge did not look at the dogs just the handlers. My class bitch was on the grooming table while I showed the dog... I came out of the ring put my dog up and also put the bitch back in the box... I was ask why and I explained the judging was so bad it was a waste of my time.... Does that make me a bully? I don't think so...
    While you're looking for something to take issue with how about looking at the over all quality of judging... Whatever happened to "Just Judge the damn dogs!"

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