Red Velvet Lady At Tyneaster ShCM

My thanks to the Border Terrier Club for giving me the opportunity to judge the Club Open Show at Jedburgh and the Officers and Committee for their hospitality on the day. Sincere thanks to the exhibitors for an excellent entry of 194 from 158 exhibits. Unfortunately, due to adverse weather conditions which prevailed the previous day north of the border, the number of dogs present was greatly depleted. A special thank you to my tireless ring stewards, Glenise and Maurice Hyslop for the quiet and efficient way they organised my ring.

The NBTC held an open show at Belmont on 10/04/10 which I was very honoured to judge and would like to thank the club for the invitation.I would also like to thank my stewards and the exhibitors for their entries and accepting my decisions.I was very pleased with all my winners and had a very enjoyable day.

I would like to express my thanks to the Officers and Committee of the Club for inviting me to judge their show, my second opportunity at a Breed Open Show. I was struck by the wonderful atmosphere in the hall with every result being greeted with spontaneous, enthusiastic applause. The exhibitors in Scotland certainly are a very sporting lot! I found no bad mouths but front movement in some exhibits left a lot to be desired. However my class winners did not disappoint me

I had been looking forward immensely to judging my first breed club open show in the UK. I sincerely thank the officers and membership for inviting me and most importantly, I would thank those exhibitors who attended and valued my integrity and opinion enough to give me the opportunity of going over their dogs. I was looking for Borders that had all the good breed type points as laid out in our standard, combined with the correct physical construction to be able to cover the rough hilly ground of the region from which the breed originated. I thoroughly went through the entry to find these attributes, and judged with these thoughts in mind right down to my 4th placings. I am pleased to be able to say that I had no dirty oily coats, or smelly dogs and that every dog had clean white teeth. This is all down to good housekeeping (or dog keeping) and I must commend you all on these points. However, I was very disappointed to find that three exhibitors presented me with dogs, which had kinked bumpy tails. I only found one tooth problem and that was a set of badly twisted lower incisors, which were slightly obstructing a scissor bite, but unfortunately, I was further disappointed to find dogs with weak muzzles and no strength to the underjaw. A Border needs to be able to force home an attack on its advesary and to do so must use his//her strong jaws and big teeth. This part of the borders anatomy is of immense importance to its function. I would consider this a fault, which would seriously interfere with a terrier’s ability to work. I found a variety of movement problems. Some had stilted rear movement, with feet in underneath the dog and lacking propulsion. One dog that crabbed. Dogs with fronts toeing in, some more so than others, and some with wide front movement, or flicking one, or other foot. Ultimately, there were some very good examples of our breed, that possessed all, or most, of the qualities I was searching for. Some of these did not get top awards on the day, but nevertheless had enough breed type and quality of movement to forge ahead and have a promising future I am sure.