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Doug Johnson reflects on integrity in the ring, urging clean hands, independent judging, and merit-based decisions for a breed’s future.
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My recent Sporting Group assignment at Westminster has got me considering the ability and the requirement for judges to be free of influence and free of outside factors other than the knowledge possessed and the experience gained over time. That is really what you owe your exhibitors as a judge; to make decisions based on your experience and your tenure in the sport, and to evaluate each animal against the Breed Standard with the historic knowledge of a breed’s base. Everything you know goes into that decision, especially at a high-profile performance show like Westminster.
To be faced with the challenge of a difficult public assignment and be put out their center stage, you owe it to everyone to be impartial and independent—and also educated and well-versed in what you’re getting ready to do. It is important for judges to rely on instinct and ability, and not be influenced by any chatter or advertising campaign. You must work, knowingly, to fairly and justly evaluate each dog equally against the same parameters of the breeds within your Group. You must identify what puts them over that threshold to be considered in the upper echelon of their breed.
I’m a big Judge Judy fan. She is direct and on point in her quick assessment of the cases put before her. She has the ability to reason and make quick sense of situations that most people are tangled up in. While utilizing her years of experience with the law, she applies her reasoning equally across the board. On many occasions, she talks about both parties requiring “clean hands” so that she can fairly make a ruling. One party cannot have advantages over the other. Both parties must be free of privilege for the ruling to be made accurately. She says you must always come to court with clean hands. I would concur. You, as a judge, must also have clean hands; meaning, you can’t have a bias. You can’t allow outside influences to filter in. When your hands are clean and your brain is free of any confusion, or something clouding your judgement, you will make your best decisions.
Judging is a solo sport. There is only you and your knowledge making the decisions alone. There is no committee, no pairs judging. This is not the Olympics! Judges in our realm work alone and should be free of extemporaneous influence when making their sole opinion known. Your skill and ability are why you’re sought after as a judge and why people come to you for your unique opinion. They are not coming to you for the collective opinion of the panel. Breeders seek out the opinion of the skilled adjudicator. They want the unfiltered, truthful—thoughtful—adjudication. They want a balanced and fair adjudication regardless of the pilot on the animal’s lead. They seek and trust those judgements that are consistent in their solo efforts to work with the Breed Standard and with the knowledge of the breed’s purpose and history.
I have found, over the course of more than twenty-five years of judging, that you have a visceral reaction to dogs of greater quality. You have the ability to identify them because you’re trained and experienced, and that experience comes from knowing that a dog is in condition, with hard muscle, or that a dog is reacting appropriately for its breed or is in tune with the circumstances, and is performing at a level greater than the others in the Group. Touching them reinforces what you see. Judges need to learn to trust and listen to all of the senses of their body when judging—your sense of touch, how things feel, in addition to what you see. BELIEVE what you feel. Know that what you touch is what it is. One cannot allow one sense to lead the others. They work together, and your eyes can be fooled and influenced. You must believe what you feel to be true. It is all there to feel and to see.
Where I always hope to end up on the judging process is with a dog that has so much more value to a breed based on his breed-specific elements—that he can’t be denied. In general, the process is a ranking of quality based on elements of type that are found throughout the Breed Standard. One hopes to find a dog that is unusual in his quality in a particular breed. Further investigation of his quality will make you realize that not only is he unique in his many attributes, he is incredibly good for the state of the breed and deserves recognition in the cut and an advancement to a placement in the final four placings. These decisions are merit-based on a continuum of the breed, the state of the breed and the knowledge of the breed’s needs with regards to strengths and weaknesses.
I sure hope that judges are doing this type of assessment because we do owe that to our breeders around the world. For me, this is how one sorts breeding stock. What I look for are dogs that I think are memorable and will last the test of time. They’re classics and they sort of form a template of the breed in your brain. Judging is about rewarding on a level that you’re always looking for the ideal; the examples that will stand the test of time.
As a judge, and as an educator and a breeder, you are always learning from others. You can learn by watching other judges. It’s how we learn; it’s exposure. We are exposed to all kinds of animals all the time, and to watch other judges evaluate, to find out where they put their hands, what they’re looking for, is an education. And the hope is that people are learning from you as a judge, that people are coming to your ring to see how you sort, to see what your priorities are, and by the end of a large class they have identified the rhythm of your priorities and the rhythm of your ring so that they’re able to predict the outcome. That’s the sign of a consistent, quality judge, someone who looks for specific things in each class and rewards them accordingly. Some of this is missing in today’s more amateurish adjudication process where there is more random winning, more random results, and more following instead of leading.
Your exposure to a breed over time allows you to frame the breed in decades of quality, and you can see improvements and declines. This allows you to realize that a dog is really, really good and is so valuable to the current state of the breed. He has the front, the rear, the topline, the coat, the temperament, the correct dentition, all the traits that add up to one heck of an animal of that breed. As a result of this, you need everyone to see him and realize that this dog has all the elements pulled together, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen this. And as breeds progress, we will start to see more dogs that represent everything good about the breed. These dogs have an overall value and purpose for the breed’s future.
There’s a bit of a sentiment that independent adjudicators, judges who truly value individual breeds over the success of one breed, are themselves a “dying breed.” I’m a breeder, first and foremost, and ninety-nine percent of judges were breeders (though, unfortunately, there are not as many who are still active breeders). At the end of the day, judging is always about the value an animal has for the breed. When you have an animal in your ring that is so valuable, it must be rewarded. Dogs that have value to the state of a breed, in my opinion, garner more weight in terms of purpose and value because they’re so important for the future. They are the link to the next generation because they are so valuable within a breed for longevity and for their physical and mental attributes.
It’s sort of sad that there’s not a lot of judges who think this way, but maybe that’s what makes me unique. I recognize that I, like Judge Judy, have a firm, strong opinion, but I am a breeder who just happens to judge. I think about breeding and the value an animal has in a breeding program. Whether I’m judging Neapolitan Mastiffs or Cesky Terriers, I want to think about how I can use an animal. As judges, we want to be faced with an entry of dogs in a breed where, all of a sudden, one comes in the ring and we think, “Now, wait a minute, this one I can use in a breeding program.” That is the moment we are looking for!
To me, the whole point of a dog show is to show dogs that will contribute to a breed’s future. It’s a showcase of bloodlines. I try to share with exhibitors at photo time the value I see in their animals and how they could be used for the future, how they can be beneficial to the breed. With an unbiased opinion and clean hands, I can offer up opinions on breeding and ways to use dogs in a breeding program. These kinds of comments are beneficial things for judges to share with exhibitors, especially when you’re known as a breeder yourself. Exhibitors are interested in learning and they want to know how their animal can contribute to the betterment of the state of purebred dogs. Judges must never become disinterested in encouraging people to breed. We must continue to encourage and promote all the breeding we can for the viability of our breeds and for the sport at large.
As breeders and judges, it is so important that we maintain our individual perspective in order to keep our hands clean and maintain our integrity. Having a clear mind, a deep knowledge base, and experience with specific breeds enables everyone to have a fair and equal opportunity to succeed. Thoughtful, information-based decisions by judges with clean hands, free of bias, only serve the future of the sport. We can’t come with preconceived notions—the process of fair evaluation starts fresh each day. All that’s required to make great choices are a new set of eyes, a clear mind, and clean hands.
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