Several times over the last year I've talked about "campaigning" Lacey and her rankings. How do dogs become the top dogs in their breed, in their Variety Groups, and even the top-winning dog in the nation?
"Campaigning a special" means showing a champion dog to prove that it is one of the best in the country. Having a finished a championship on a dog is a worthwhile accomplishment, but some of those aren't worth the title and many of them are never shown again. Since I married into the family, Sylvia, Uno, Misty, Lazarus and Silver ended their show careers on the day they picked up their 15th championship point. Titan was shown a couple of times as a champion, but he's retired as well. Only the very best dogs are worthy of the time and expense of going to shows every weekend for months at a time. Right now, the only one we'll consider it for in the future is Alan, if we can get him registered.
And the shows aren't just every weekend! 2002's Number 1 dog, the German Shepherd Dog Ch. Kismet's Sight for Sore Eyes, handled by James Moses, had a total of 182 Herding Group placements in 2002. That means Dallas was picking up a group placement on average every other day.
A frequently voiced criticism is that such extensive showing is too hard on the dogs. While I sympathize with this point of view, I think that if it were too hard on the dog, the handler would know about it. Dogs are perfectly capable of letting you know how they feel. An exhausted dog will not show the usual spark and elan in the show ring and will win less often. A good special is a real trouper and their handlers know how to make the show circuit a fun experience that the dog looks forward to.
There's no gainsaying that it can be exhausting for the handlers. My lovely bride went to nearly 100 shows last year and worked at her job during the week. She came rolling in on Sunday evenings, or even very early Monday mornings, after many hours of driving to shows, loading and unloading equipment, grooming and showing at sites that were often substandard and subsisting on drive-through meals. Generally on Monday evenings, she was so tired that she'd eat something when she got home, read her messages on the computer and go to bed. I took over all the responsibility for the every-day care of the dogs at home, as well as ordering dog food, paying bills, and so on. Imagine how she felt after a year virtually without a break!
More than time or energy, making your dog to the top even of your breed takes money, lots of it. There's the cost of entering shows, about $20 per dog per show or $40 for a two-day weekend or $80 for a big cluster weekend. There's gas, motel expenses, food, and so on. Did you get a placement in the group? You'll want to get a picture, which is another $20 or so.
So each weekend may cost, at a minimum, some $150. That's if you're just an owner-handler. The big specials are professionally handled and those handlers command top dollars: at a minimum $75 for breed competition, $100 for group competition, and $150 for Best in Show. Add to that pro-rated travel costs as well as boarding costs.
Then there's advertising. This is just what it means anywhere else. You can place an ad with any one of the major dog publications - Dog News, Canine Chronicle or Show Sight - proudly displaying your dog, almost always with a picture of a prominent win under an eminent judge. Send your picture with basic instructions on how to set it up and they'll do the rest. For a fee. The lowest cost I've seen is an ordinary black-and-white ad on an interior page in Dog News: $210. Color ads are much more expensive, some $400-$600. Covers run some $2500 or more. There's always a long waiting list for these covers. And yes, we've placed (black-and-white) ads for Lacey in Dog News on a number of occasions.
The role of advertising remains quite controversial. Does it really do anything? Some judges don't pay any attention to ads, others with little else to do on assignments read these magazines carefully. If you're a judge and you see an ad where Eminent Judge X has given a group win to a dog handled by Top Handler Y, you might think that dog has something. So if Top Handler Y shows up in your group ring with a dog of that breed, you might make an association. And might give him a bit of an edge.
I said before that Lacey being Number 1 Borzoi barely got her a cheap seat in the coliseum of excellence. She didn't even come close to cracking the top 20 hounds, and only two of those hounds made it to the top 20 dogs in 2002. The cost of getting those 20 dogs there was astronomical. They're backed by very wealthy dog lovers willing to put up the money to hire the best handlers and pay for the expense of showing and advertising.
How much? It is reliably reported that in one year Mrs. Jane Firestone, the owner of the great German Shepherd Dog, Ch. Altana's Mystique, paid some $750,000 to make her the top dog in the country, hiring James Moses on an exclusive basis to handle; that is, Mystique was the only dog Jimmy handled. Today, the owners of the Doberman Pinscher Ch. Marienburg's Repo Man use Moe Miyagawa on an exclusive basis and put a private jet at his disposal to get him to more shows. Repo Man ended the year as the Number 5 dog in the country.
It's always possible to criticize the top specials or to say that the only reason your dog isn't ranked is because you don't have the big bucks or the big-name handler (and most people do), but no handler, no amount of money and no amount of advertising can take a dog to any ranking without its being a dog of the highest caliber. These aren't the usual gray mass of fiddle-fronted, cow-hocked shamblers that make up most of the entry at a show, the ones that cause a judge to look at the line-up and think, "Oh God, what do I do now?" The top dogs even in their breed are the finest representatives the breeds can provide. The differences among them are ones of the tiniest degrees, not orders of magnitude.