Showing Dogs – Where did it all go wrong ?
There are hundreds of thousands of dogs in Ireland, yet only approx 1500 of these attend at any individual dog show affiliated by the IKC.
In the year 2010/11 there were over 29,000 dogs registered with The Irish Kennel Club which included over 5,000 litters.
Let's guestimate that 1000 of these litters were from show kennels, that's 4000 litters registered by people not involved in the show dog scene.
So the question might be what are show dog people and the governing bodies doing in relation to assisting and educating all the other dog owning / loving people out there ?
Now some show dogs have it and others just don't - It's true that some dogs really come alive when in the show ring, and it looks like this is their true vocation, but time spent in the actual show ring for most dogs accounts for approx 5 minutes out of the whole dog show day. The rest can be spent crated in the back of a van, car or trailer for periods from 10 minutes to 10 hours, not to mention th…
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