CH Brumberhill Belle De Jour

I judged the breed just two years ago & I was alarmed at the change for the worse in the type & quality. The number of dogs entered was 115 with few absentees, four more being added to the original entry due to a catalogue error, an entry of which I was pleased with, especially in these financially hard times & terrier day being on a Thursday. I was really surprised to find exhibitors showing dogs with incorrect dentition & I found several of these. I was puzzled as to why upright shoulders & straight hind legs, some with hocks barely defined had become so prevalent. Generally movement was poor, but with construction so poor & with so many dogs with straight hind legs what else would you expect? Several single coats & thin skins. Heads, where have all the beautiful otter heads gone. I found round skulls, some with a distinct brow over the eyes, large round shaped ears & they were not close to the cheek. Several dogs & bitches I was unable to span due to round ribs, with no carryback of rib. There were two dogs with kinks in their tails. More seriously, bad temperaments on a couple of dogs was also depressing, I have never had a Border Terrier snap at me before until this show. In some of the classes, when the dogs came into the ring, overall quality was so poor I nearly lost the will to live. However, I was very pleased with my CC & RCC winners & both my BD & BB puppy winners, & several other class winners, so there are still some breeders out there with the correct interpretation of the Standard. Perhaps it would be a good idea for the less experienced breeders & exhibitors to take note of these experienced breeders? & exhibitors? good dogs & learn from them. I was delighted to see my BOB go G4 in a very strong group & then to see my BP winner go PG3 in an equally strong puppy group.

A big thank you to the National Terrier Club for inviting me to judge this prestigious show and thank you to my stewards especially Fred who as always put everybody and everything in order and kept the judging on the move and flowing. I was looking for a true Border and was pleased with all my placings to-day, all of good quality. What I did notice was a lot of quantity but not a lot of quality. Front and hind movement looks to be getting worse, some exhibits were so lacking in bone that the front legs would make good knitting needles and some were actually doing knit one, pearl one when moving back towards me. I could see front pads on some as they were moving away. Hind movement was either too close or too wide, over-angulation needs to be watched. Top lines on the whole were good but there were some strange under-lines. A lot of exhibits were so short in muzzle that this made for very tight dentition, small feet were few and far between and tails in some were far too long, where have all the “carrots” gone. I only found three incorrect mouths and two abnormal tails. Some exhibits would benefit from more handling/ring-craft experience as their poor performance affected placings. I think the Breed Standard would make good reading for some exhibitors. On a positive note, temperaments overall where very good.