Dark Bilious Vapors

I noticed that one of my partners in crime here already mentioned the outcome of last night's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, so I needn't go into excruciating detail.

Very simply, I'm a German Shepherd Dog fancier, and every year I root for the GSD to take it all. And just about every year I get disappointed (no big deal, I'm a liberal; I've gotten used to it). But absent an appearance of the German Shepherd in the Best In Show qualifiers, I tend to pull for "a Real Dog" to win the top honors. "A Real Dog?", I hear you ask.... As a quick rule of thumb, that means "a dog that was bred for a purpose, not as an ornament for the effete upper classes." Which means that the winner of the Toy Group is right out (the Pekingese which won the Toy Group this year wasn't a dog--it was a waddling throw pillow), I have a distinct bias against a lot of the breeds in the Non-Sporting Group, and I tend to look askance at the the smaller terriers as well (so say, I generally pull against a Norfolk or Norwich Terrier...), though not without some cognitive dissonance, because terriers were originally bred for a purpose, though that purpose for some terriers has been obscured a bit by the fact that the smaller ones have tended to devolve into ornaments because they're too damn cute for their own good. So if something other than a GSD had to win, the selection of Carlee, the German Shorthaired Pointer, is certainly acceptable, and I won't sulk this year like I have some years. Like, say, 1988 when the Pomeranian won. A selection which hurt even more because the previous year's winner, Ch. Covy Tucker Hill's Manhattan, is a legendary German Shepherd Dog (and, alas, the last GSD to take the Best In Show at the Westminster).

Wondering about the vagaries of fate, though... I notice at the WKC site that they had a last minute change of judge this year, and the judge who had to bow out, coincidentally, was slated to judge the German Shorthaired Pointers. Given how subjective dog judging was, that turned out (though, of course nobody could predict that Carlee would be the beneficiary) to be a lucky break for the Best In Show winner.

Len on 02.16.05 @ 09:05 AM CST