15 May 2024

"Best of show" at Westminster


I will defer comments and just offer this description from The New York Times:
"Like all show poodles, Sage appears to be about 75 percent hair, with a sumptuous coiffure that rises to a huge pouf above and around her head, surrounds her body in a kind of puffball, and reappears again as topiary-ed pompoms on the end of her tail and at the bottom of her skinny legs, as if she is wearing après-ski boots. She trots daintily, as if running was slightly beneath her."
Image cropped for size/emphasis from the original.  The dog's full name is GCHG Ch Surrey Sage.  For fox ache.

4 comments:

  1. GCHG Ch Surrey Sage
    But at home her name was Prissy
    She tried to make friends with the cat
    But found him far to hissy

    She loved the ampitheater
    She loved to wow them all
    But the thing she loved the most
    Was a worn-out tennis ball

    GCHG Ch Surrey Sage
    Came home with accolades
    Coifed and crowned she settled down
    A well-earned nap in the shade

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  2. I'll be honest - that "style" of cut on poodles always somehow reminds me of an apprentice that had an accident with a fidgety client while the clippers were on (and then tried to cover it up by "matching" it on the other paws, tail, etc.).

    But then again, humans wore ruffs like lacey millstones for a bit and have had multiple eras where poofed shoulders/sleeves / trouser legs were in style. And some of the modern fashions coming out honestly remind me of design students who left their project until the morning it was due and quite literally threw things together while hung over and panicking about their grades so....

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  3. Despite the scorn towards the show poodle cut, it does have its origin in a functional cut when poodles were used for hunting. The close cut limbs were meant to provide ease of movement, and the poofs of hair meant to keep joints and core body warm.

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  4. It may look like the nicely-tidied contents of a goth hobbyist's knitting bag but underneath it's still a dog. I'm always a bit dubious about the gap between the fantasy that these animals are some kind of living sculptures - something I suspect a lot of the major participants at dog shows buy in to - and the reality that they're, well, dogs. And the 'dog' part - and the dogs' wellbeing - ought to be more important. Achieving 'perfection' according to some multi-hundred page physical specification is overwhelmingly more valued than avoiding inbreeding. That's not right. It's like the highest of haute couture, but with living animals as the subject, and the animals had no say in what happened to them. At least an impractical dress only has to be worn up and down a catwalk a few times, and then the model can go back to jeans and a t-shirt. Not so these critters. They're just embodiments of a bunch of grossly over-specified physical requirements, for their entire lifetimes. Never mind the fates of the hundreds of 'failed' animals who aren't quite 'perfect' enough. If I ever became dictator of the Kennel Club, there would be... upheavals.

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