Friday, December 4, 2009

Judging the inbreds.

If the standards can't easily be changed, can the judging be changed? Can there be a rule made like the rule that applies to all breeds: "All male dogs must have 2 testicles, fully descended in the scrotum"?

Can that universal rule be expanded upon to read things like the dog must be healthy, move well, not have saggy skin, -

- not have loose lower lips that cause the saliva to run out of the dogs mouth (yucky for the owners & dry mouth for the dog - AFAIK, only useful for Frankensteins that want to measure saliva production (Pavlov?), and I don't think scientist do that same experiment anymore.

etc.

How about the rule that the dog can't try to bite the judge? Can that be expanded upon to have where the dog must be friendly towards the judge?

Can it also say that all dogs must be friendly towards people at the show, and towards other dogs?

Is that too much to ask of show dogs?

It might be. That is probably one of the things novices first notice at a dog show. They know that their own dogs would be overjoyed to be at a dog show - in the belief that they could play with other dogs.

Pet owners can often picture what their dog would do at a show - jump up and down, wag his tail, grin, make eye contact at the other dogs. Whine at the in season females, or flirt with the boy dogs.

But I have noticed that at the dog shows, so many of the dogs move around like zombies - that is, the dogs don't try to play with each other.

They often act like they are the only dog there. Like the other dogs and other people are not there at all. Like a negative hallucination - like they are not seeing reality, as if they fail to smell that these are other dogs, and that there are other people there.

After a few dead end conversations, someone told me "They aren't trained to do that, they have kennel syndrome."

What? Harking to terriermans post "Do Kennels make dogs stupid?" It has a name "kennel syndrome".

http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/
Dec 3, 2009

Have you noticed how people have gotten that way? We have! People use to say "Good morning", "Good afternoon" or "Good evening" to everybody who walked by the on the sidewalk.

Crocodile Dundee (one of the movies in the series) had a scene where he first goes to New York City (having been raised way out in the boonies of Australia) and he greets each person that walks by him on the side walk with "Good Day!" and tips his hat at the ladies. Because that is what he was taught, and that is what everybody did in his little town - just like people use to do in America.

Now we walk by each other like one show dog does another.

Eeeeks, is this a sign that we have "House syndrome"? Did we fail to notice that we were causing dogs to suffer from this, and in divine retribution, now we suffer from it?

I have said for some time, that dogs so mean and un-sociable that they can't be kept in a pack should be neutered/ spayed. Now, I believe that even more.