ADDRESSING THE ELEPHANT IN THE SHOW RING: HOW TOXICITY, PERCEPTION, AND MISPLACED AUTHORITY ARE QUIETLY UNDERMINING THE FUTURE OF THE DOG SHOW COMMUNITY

BY LEXA RICHMOND

This leads to an uncomfortable question. If this behavior is so visible and so widely experienced, why is it so rarely addressed? Why is something so big and so obvious the very thing we pretend not to see? The elephant is there, and yet we continue to walk around it.

Dog shows are meant to be about preservation—protecting and improving a breed through knowledge, discipline, and long-term commitment. At their best, they bring together people who share a deep respect for the dogs, their history, and their future. There is mentorship, sportsmanship, and a shared understanding that no one succeeds in this alone. Ideally, it should be a place where competitors can stand across from each other in the ring and still respect one another outside of it, where judges are trusted for their integrity, and where handlers, breeders, and exhibitors are united by a common goal: the betterment of the breed.

But there is another side to the sport, and it doesn’t belong to just one group. This isn’t just about exhibitors—it involves handlers, judges, breeders, and everyone who participates. The culture of this sport is something we all create, reinforce, and tolerate.

Spend enough time in it, and the patterns become clear. Success can make you a target. Jealousy simmers beneath the surface. For some, competition doesn’t stay in the ring—it follows people home, onto social media, and into places it was never meant to go. What should be professional becomes personal, and what should be constructive becomes destructive.

I’m not speaking in generalities. I’ve lived it, and in some ways, we all have. Support can turn into betrayal, mentorship can be repaid with accusation, and rumors can be repeated until they sound like fact. When someone can’t challenge your work, they often shift to challenging you instead. At times, this behavior crosses a line, moving beyond pettiness into something far more damaging.

And yet, I’m still here—not because it doesn’t matter, but because I’ve had to decide how much of that noise I am willing to carry. Early on, my mentor told me to “let it roll off like water off a duck’s back.” Over time, I’ve come to understand that this isn’t about ignoring reality; it’s about protecting your focus and your purpose from people who would otherwise consume both.

There’s another idea I return to often: “What people say about you is none of your business.” It’s not easy to live by, especially when perception begins to take on a life of its own. At some point, you have to decide whether you’re going to chase every rumor and respond to every accusation, or recognize that not every voice deserves your attention. I chose the latter.

That choice is also why I rarely engage online. I refuse to become a consummate keyboard warrior, pulled into endless cycles of reaction with people who are more invested in conflict than in truth. Social media makes that easy, creating the illusion that everything requires an immediate response and that silence somehow signals weakness.

I often refer to social media as “the Matrix”—an alternate reality where people see only fragments of the full picture, or carefully curated versions of it. In The Matrix (1999), Morpheus offers a choice between the red pill and the blue pill: truth or illusion. Social media often operates as the blue pill, allowing people to build narratives from incomplete information, assumptions, and emotion. It’s easier to react than to investigate, and once someone commits to that version of reality, it becomes difficult to change their perspective.

There is a difference between casual gossip and something far more destructive. What starts as “vagueposting” can escalate into full-scale character attacks, where insinuation replaces evidence and speculation is treated as fact. People pick sides without context, amplify what they haven’t verified, and follow the loudest voice rather than the most accurate one. Facts become distorted and reshaped into something that resembles entertainment more than truth, and the crowd feeds off the drama.

Once that cycle begins, there is no easy way out. If the person being targeted responds, it often escalates the situation and provides more fuel for the narrative. If they remain silent, the narrative lingers. There is no clean resolution because the situation was never rooted in facts to begin with—only emotion and amplification. Sometimes there may be a kernel of truth, but it becomes so exaggerated that it no longer resembles reality. In that distortion, roles reverse, and the person spreading the narrative is cast as the hero while the person targeted becomes the villain.

Step outside of that environment, and things look very different. In real life, I am focused on my dogs, my program, and the people who show up with integrity and genuine passion. Those are the relationships that matter. The loudest voices are rarely the most important ones. As the saying goes: “The loudest boos come from the cheap seats.” The people doing the real work simply don’t have time for the noise.

If the people who spend so much time criticizing others invested that same energy into their own dogs and breeding programs, they should be unstoppable. Instead, that energy is often spent tearing others down. When the people who are actually doing the work are pushed out or worn down, what’s left is mediocrity—or worse. Eventually, there is no one left to talk about, only a mirror reflecting what remains.

Perhaps that is the hardest truth: Sometimes the need to criticize isn’t really about others at all, but about an unwillingness to confront what’s lacking within oneself. The focus shifts outward, and someone else becomes the target.

In my day-to-day life, I am a teacher. I deal with immaturity every day—students who create drama, push boundaries, and react without thinking. They are still learning how to behave and how to exist in a community. That is expected.

What is harder to reconcile is seeing the same behavior from adults in an environment that should demand more. It raises a simple question: Why would anyone choose to spend their free time in a space where that behavior is repeated?

Dog shows should be better than that. They should be a place where professionalism replaces pettiness, where respect outweighs ego, and where shared purpose keeps people grounded. But too often, they are not.

This culture doesn’t just affect the people currently involved—it shapes the future of the sport. Newcomers enter with excitement and curiosity, only to encounter tension and division. Many of them don’t stay, and that is the real loss. No breed can survive without the next generation willing to carry it forward.

I am not perfect. I have been pulled into the negativity before. But growth is recognizing that pattern and choosing not to participate in it—choosing to step away, to let it go, and to move forward without becoming the very thing I am trying to avoid.

At the end of the day, this sport needs better from all of us— exhibitors, handlers, and judges alike. Every interaction shapes what this community becomes. Hatred, pettiness, and jealousy do not preserve anything; they only destroy. If we truly care about the future of our breeds, then we have to start acting like it—not just in the ring but outside of it, where character is revealed and where the real work begins. And that starts with something simple: being willing to see the elephant instead of continuing to walk around it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

© Andra O’Connell

Breeding Standard Smooth Dachshunds under the Hialeah prefix since 2002, Lexa Richmond has produced more than 50 AKC Champions through a small, carefully managed program. While maintaining a primary career as a school teacher, her breeding program—modest in scale—has achieved remarkable success, with dogs earning top honors in both the show ring and as influential contributors to the breed, including the top-producing Smooth bitch of 2016, Hialeah’s Effie Trinket ROMX. Lexa has been an AKC Judge of Dachshunds since 2017.

A dedicated advocate for purebred dogs and preservation breeding, Lexa is committed to maintaining breed type, soundness, temperament, and purpose while safeguarding the future of dogs through responsible breeding practices. An educator for 28 years, she brings a lifelong passion for education and mentorship to the dog community and believes that the success of purebred dogs depends on collaboration, education, and ethical stewardship. Through her work, she strives to promote excellence in breeding, judging, and the advancement of dogs in both form and function.