Thursday, July 30, 2009

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Having worked for a decade with the Department of Justice, we have a long association with law enforcement. One of the things that always amazed us is how five different people can witness the same event and have five different interpretations of it.

Judge Counts the Teeth of
CH Allure Blazing Star Alisaton

We were reminded of that when we posted the above photo of the Doberman Pinscher, CH Allure Blazing Star Alisaton. To us it was an interesting photo of the judge counting CJ's teeth, as required by the Dobie standard. However, at least one reader thought it made CJ appear to be a vicious dog. In retrospect, we should have made it clear in the photo caption (we have learned that many do not read our posts closely) what the photo was intended to convey.

Although we are a niche blog, we do try to serve a wide range of dog fanciers. Our intent is to educate the general population about AKC dog shows, inform regular exhibitors, and generally celebrate the pure bred dog. It is a bit of a balancing act to keep the blog interesting to all levels in the sport. So we will apologize in advance if we are clumsy in that pursuit.

That being said, we do think it is interesting that the Doberman standard requires 42 correctly placed teeth, 22 in the lower, 20 in the upper jaw.

9 comments:

  1. I actually thought CJ was yawning. LOL

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  2. Interesting thoughts about perception and interpretation. I guess not every breed's standard has a big emphasis on dentition, but as the owner of one that does, and of one dog who hated showing her bite, I thought it was impressive that 1) the dog is apparently willingly making it easy to see all the teeth and 2) the judge wanted to see them :)

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  3. Now THAT is a trained dog! :-))

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  4. CJ, Walker toy poodle, conrad puli, black STD poodle,afghan ,springer spAniel, Sadie. CJ wins.

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  5. Whomever thought this could be viewed as showing a vicious dog needs some education! No dog "showing teeth" with aggressive or vicious intent would leave its lips covering the side teeth! All that would get them is bitten lips!

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  6. Wonderful photo!

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  7. That's funny if you say the judge was counting the teeth....then where's the judge in the photo?

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  8. Out of frame, but I assure you there was a judge in the ring. It's in the rules. ;-)

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