Happy New Year?

We have a great piece to share with you from our friend Laurie K. Telfair. I'm not sure I agree with everything in this post, especially the idea that the dog show world is dying, but this is a well-written, serious post and I hope you will enjoy it.

Happy New Year?

Laurie K. Telfair

And so, another year has passed.

I have a few dog shows scheduled in 2012 but not many. The dog show world is changing, dying actually, so it is not likely that I will be able to judge in retirement as much as I had hoped. The dog world is changing also. The culture has changed enormously. People prefer to buy their dogs from rescue or a shelter instead of getting a dog bred for a specific purpose by a breeder. At one time, there were new people flocking to the dog world. Long, long ago, my ex-husband bought me a book for Christmas called The Pleasures of Purebred Dog Ownership. I never suspected then we were living in boom times. I thought it would be that way forever.

The typical progression then was to get a purebred dog, take it to obedience class, decide to show it in obedience, then want to show it in conformation, find out it wasn’t very good for conformation, buy a “good” dog from a breeder, decide you want to breed it, get help and advice from the breeder, breed your first litter of puppies, keep a puppy from that breeding. Forty years later, you’ve bred several litters, produced a few champions and a few beloved pets, dropped a whole bunch of money into the sport, had your heart broken so many times that there is not a centimeter of it that doesn’t have scar tissue on it, traveled a million miles, have a drawer full of ribbons and a box of trophies in the garage and still have a few friends who, like you, have hung on for a lifetime.

We used to call these folks dog nuts, but that was before dogs’ testicles were routinely amputated, thus bringing a whole different meaning to the term. So now we say dog people. The difference between normal dog owners and dog people is this: normal dog owners feel responsible for their dog; dog rescue people (and God bless them; rescue is a difficult calling) feel responsible for dogs in general; dog people feel responsible for the future of dogs, especially for a particular breed. We try to preserve the history that has been passed to us, improve the health, conformation and temperament we have and pass the breed forward to those who come after us. Of course we don’t always achieve our goals. But most of us try.

I worry that many breeds, that have been nurtured through world wars and upheavals, will just die out. That most of the private donations to health research, which is heavily supported by dog people and breed clubs, will dry up. That laws restricting the ability to own dogs will continue to squeeze animals out of our lives. Sort of reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi, with the line, “We cut all the trees and put ‘em in a tree museum”. Things change. I just don’t like it. Bah! Humbug!

Still, I am incredibly fortunate. Remember the song from the musical, A Chorus Line, called “What I Did for Love”? You know the one: the young dancer is injured, his career perhaps over and the casting director asks the remaining auditioning dancers what they would do if they had to stop dancing today. Another dancer answers “Kiss today goodbye and point me toward tomorrow…..for I can’t forget, and I won’t regret, what I did for love.”

I don’t know that I would advise it as a plan for anyone else, but for me, nearly everything I have done in life has been done for love. My family, my dogs, the years in journalism, my friends, mostly done for love. Well, and a little money. That makes me incredibly lucky. I wish for you the same.

Happy holidays and the best of everything in the New Year.