 Hi everybody, welcome. This is Vicki Ronchetti and I'm joined by Laura Reeves, my good friend who is the podcaster, retired professional handler, dog breeder, AKC judge, pure dog talk is her baby. And we haven't talked together for a while so I'm super excited about this. Well you're always on the road judging and I'm always you know scurrying around doing something. But what we're going to talk about today, what we're going to talk about today is passing the torch and this all came about because Laura had mentioned in I think a post, maybe a Facebook post about passing the torch and I was like oh my god let's do a talk about that. And so this is going to be available on her website, maybe on your podcast by two, on my podcast. Share it on all the way around. Yeah so one of the reasons why I really wanted to do this with Laura and I thought about well what if we had other people who are going through the same process and I'm like no let's just, I mean it's a lot and it's a lot of different reasons and a lot of different approaches from a lot of different people but basically what we're talking about is when you are a breeder and you're ready to not be that breeder anymore. Usually it's because people start aging out and you know I was just telling Laura before we started recording that I'm very lucky and that I chose a breed that I can have as an old person. You know if I had like like I wouldn't even like to me the breed the breeds that you have are like for big kids like they're so active and they're so busy and it's like yeah I don't even feel like qualified to deal with that. So you are Scotia and that and it's journal wearer pointers and so tell us about tell us about that kennel. Tell us about the evolution of your breeding for you and that. Okay so I got my very very first wearer pointer journal wearer pointer when I was about 15. My parents had had field trail labs very first pure red dogs born in our house were field trail labs and then my father said get rid of these bleeping horses and I'll buy you any pure red dog you want and I wanted an English setter. That didn't last very long because I'm not an English setter. I am on the other hand a wearer pointer. I'm a little too smart for my own good and I might bite you and as I've gotten older I have my own shin whiskers so I mean it's a but I absolutely adored the stand-up nature the the brains the everything about the breed and I was not as enamored of the breeds that my parents had chosen and so wire hairs have been in my life since I was 15 and I will date myself and say that was 40 years ago and so I went away to college and I got a degree and I did my thing and I worked a job and I worked another job and that didn't work out so hot then I was right. So my mom had stayed a little bit involved with the wire hairs and she had acquired this little this little female that came down from the cascade line that was Ray and Lynn Cockens are the the breeders of these dogs they their dogs have been listed in the top 10 of top producing sires in the dog show in confirmation in field trials and in hunt tests since the 80s and I laugh her and so both passed away now and I informed Ray and Lynn after they were gone that I was adopting them as my parents and so my first wire hair back in the 80s was bred to their first wire hair and fast forward many years later this foundation bitch that my mom sent me was down from one of their top dual champions and so I've moved forward with that and I have now I think we're at eight generations of direct bitch lined down from that foundation bitch and we have I haven't counted no while I don't really do a very good job keeping track of this kind of stuff I'm not a really good ribbon counter I'm not very good at it but I know that we have well over a hundred titles on dogs ranging from show champion grand champion grand champion all the who daddies tracking titles we have a mock five we have a dual champion we have champion versatile champion in the north american versatile hunting dog association which is different registry so the the sort of branding if you will of of the scotia kennel on my website on my facebook page is versatility defined and and what is it's versatile it's not just that they're versatile hunting dogs so we talk about the continental versatile hunting dogs which is wirehairs short hares fischlas weimaraners graffins right all this group of the continental hunting dogs that the the people in their countries wanted to do a variety of jobs so the wirehair pointer was designed originally in the late 1800s by the germans who already had all these other hunting dogs they wanted that uber dog right that dog that could literally do everything and so wirehairs were originally designed to hunt fur and feather to dispatch small predators up to and including a fox to retrieve on land and in water to guard hard and to follow blood trails okay so this is a dog that literally was designed to do all the things and if you don't do all the things with them they get really bored and they will come up with all the things to do all by themselves and i promise you i'll not like them and i will i will die with a wirehair at my feet 100 but as i have gotten older my health isn't as great my body isn't as great and my time is more limited i find that i am not able to do all the things with my dogs and this is a breed that serves to do all the things and one of the things that i have felt very very strongly about is breeding a dual purpose dog and so a dog that is not only good looking but also good working and and good working i mean in the field doing its original job hunting birds and i have all the dogs with all the titles to prove it and i am not in a position to do that anymore i cannot personally take my dogs and do the field work with them did you used to do that did you used to hunt with them absolutely i grew up and did you learn to hunt with did you learn to hunt with your father mm-hmm yeah because you know my dad was a hunter too i had to be hunting i shot my first gun when i was like seven like i always went hunting with my dad i went deer hunting so one of my earliest memories is deer hunting with my dad and he shot the deer and i was patting it and i'm like you know five four and my dad's giving me the entire conservation hunting lesson because you know why not because i'm four why wouldn't you right and so no i grew up hunting and when my dad said get rid of all the get rid of the bleeping horses up by you any purebred dog you want he caveated with that with it has to be a hunting dog because what i really actually wanted was an akita and i got one many many many years later um and no had to be hunting and so i am quite possibly within the realm of reason almost assuredly the only confirmation dog show judge you know who has trained sporting dogs to compete in spaniel retriever and pointing breed field events from the time i was a kid and that's how i spent my childhood and my dad didn't want me to work after school and he wanted me to concentrate on my studies and so he would pay me minimum wage to teach the labs the field trial labs blind retrieves and the clumbers had a swim because mostly they sink and the wire hairs had a retrieve to hand because mostly they don't want to retrieve they just want to get it um so that's that is my background and and what matters to me in my breed is that they are not just pretty and they're not just run into here the wind blow through their ears i spent six years in Nebraska riding horseback field trials for pointing breeds and i loved every minute of it but that's not the only thing this breed should be able to do mm-hmm so when we talk about like passing the torch i mean it seems ridiculous some of the questions i have but it's like we need to talk about why this needs to happen obviously you've invested so many years and your heart and soul into this breed that it would be a shame if you just went you know seal it up we're done we're and you've chosen not to do that and you've really consciously chosen not to do that you know i mean i just chose not to do that for for a variety of reasons number one and we were having this conversation a little bit earlier so no woo-woo here but mine is a family that is not extraordinarily long-lived um my health is such that i will not live to be a hundred i i won't live to be 80 i probably won't live to be 70 so i started to face the reality at 55 that you know i've got my last dog or maybe this puppy i've got is my last dog and i probably shouldn't have even gotten her and and if my goal as a preservation breeder is to say that i will always be there for every single puppy that i produce but i'm dead how's that going to work out and and this is a thing that too many people do not take into consideration and i wanted to be proactive i wanted to do this while i still could i had built a very very recognizable and consistent family of dogs that i wanted to see carried forward because carried forward because i believe they offered value to the German wear her pointer breed as a whole and so i started working with a couple different actually three really three different people at this point um with a few others that are kind of out there on the fringes that will contribute going forward um but primarily people who had acquired my dogs or people that i had given my dogs to um my my primary breeding program um has been transferred to a young woman that used to work for me she was an assistant when i was a handler when i lived in Nebraska she now lives in Iowa she has i gave her um a bitch where i purposely gone out and sought a second bitch line to add to my to my breeding program gave her that dog and then i did an inbreeding that combined seven generations of my entire bitch line first time i had ever done a half brother half sister breeding i gave her the pig bitch from them and when i say gave i mean gave there was no money involved i am giving you these dogs with the intentional purpose that you are going to carry this breeding program forward that you and i are going to have conversations about what happens and i'm going to give you the stud dogs that i have in frozen semen and i'm going to give you that semen and i'm going to give you direction about where i think x y and z dogs should be bred and we're going to continue to work together until the day i keel over and die right so so that is that is a gift that i have and that i was given by Riley um i have a couple other people that have my dogs that are breeding down from them i just had two of them work together to do a co-bred litter where it was an uncle niece it was a beautiful line breeding it was 100 something that i would have done i helped them i graded the litter i helped them place the puppies right so i am still very very very actively involved in the day to operation of the skosha kennel and down from it but i am not personally having 14 wire hair pointers running around like crazy people at eight weeks old in my house because i just plain can't do it like physically i can't do it right and i think that um it's pretty amazing that when you take someone in like that they then get to have your other contacts because you're bringing people together to probably work together and people might not have an opportunity to get to use some of those dogs or have access to some dogs when and and i really i have to say this and i'm going to probably say this a bunch more times as we go through i think this is just a huge amount of selflessness and just setting ego aside because it's so hard for some people to not just say we're done look i'm closing everything down and if it was something like all the sudden at this time in your life you discovered this horrible health problem and you had to that's one thing but to be moving forward and being proud of what you produced and where your kennel is and you found the right people i think that's like one of the big things is is having access to people that you know it is but but vicki stop for a minute and understand and and and let me share with you what i have learned because i haven't always been the world's greatest mentor i mean some of the people who bought one of my you know dogs from some of my first litters i don't count as my best friends i don't count as my mentees and they used to you know have raging fits because i wanted them to do something x y z and i i wasn't very good at my mentorship i i failed them as mentors as a mentor i failed them as mentees and i mean we could you know talk about they were assholes or whatever but that's not the point the point is i didn't do a good job and so why what do you think you didn't do good i was too bossy um there was a thing you i think it might have even been you that you posted that said that a mentorship is not a dictatorship was that you that posted yeah yeah absolutely we've been talking a lot about that lately so so funny story one of these young people that i'm just telling you about that that had physically welped this this uncle niece reading sent me that and said thank you for showing me how it should be done now if you go back to 1999 and that person they didn't say thank you they said sign off my freaking dog after i showed it to its best and show and i mean you know there's some bitterness that comes when you fail on both sides trust me um and and failures on both sides um but truly what i have learned is how to be a better mentor but also in like you when you get older you also just learn how to be a better person and i think i'm a better human than i was and it's like everybody changes and i honestly don't think somebody i'm not saying everybody but i'm saying generally you know when we're younger is not is not when we're always the best of who we're going to be right well i certainly was not and i i will not speak for anyone else but i definitely was not i i had a real edge and a real temper and a real mouth and i you know i i fail and that's you learn you you have to fail in order to grow and so all these people that are out here oh my god oh my god i'm like okay dude dude dude dude it'll be okay there'll be a tomorrow right it's do you feel like there's ever a right time like to for i mean i guess everybody's right time is a different time right when it's time to be like a different person to person and i came from like as you mentioned i'm second generation i had a lot of knowledge going into what i was doing and i was willing to listen and learn from a lot of people and i have found that the people who are the most successful are the people who are willing to do that the people who want to do it all their own way and think they know everything at day one are generally the people who are not long-term successful right and i agree flash in the pan success and their first showdog might be a you know big fancy top winning what you call it um but they can't replicate it and so i think that um putting your head down putting your nose to the grindstone doing the work studying the pedigrees talking to people learning about your breed going to every bloody national that you can go to if you have to sleep in a tent doing all of those things putting in the hard work when i talk about eight generations which is this this breeding that's now on the ground both in colorado and iowa they're both eight generations and i say to you that i have personally with my own eyeballs seen every single dog in that pedigree in the show ring in the field and their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and i've paid attention and i have done that since 1996 you can you can say that you're a dog breeder you can say that you're important you can get all kind of fancy ribbons but until you actually do the work you're just lucky right why is it so important that breeders who have the experience and actually the success in all the areas that you have why is it important for those breeders to to be willing to pass the torch i mean it seems obvious but i want to hear you say i want to hear like like this is a big deal this is all of these things and i'm gonna i'm gonna say a couple things number one i can go back to when i was um just getting started in this breeding program and i trained dogs um in the field with someone who's now incredibly famous in a very big mucky muck in the dog world and i'm not going to name names because it would be inappropriate and that person told me at the time that he had given up basically mentoring people because nobody ever listened nobody fucking listens right nobody fucking listens to me right he'd given he was tired of of people not paying attention not listening not doing what he recommended and i found that then and i was very fortunate because this person taught me a lot like a lot a lot um and i was really lucky to have had the time that i had but i only got that time because i was willing to put in the time i got that knowledge because i put in the effort this isn't a one-way street people aren't going to just give you this on a platter right it really requires someone to show that they care that they're committed that they're dedicated and that's going to take a minute that isn't going to happen overnight and and i understand that there's a lot of people that are just bitter and and they've burned and and i get it and they i'm sure they were burned but i'm just know that if you are willing to do the work and when i say burned i mean that on both sides i have been burned by people i was mentoring i mentioned it slightly before badly like horrendously badly um and i have been burned by people that were mentoring me and i'm still here right and so my advocacy is not so much that we suck it up or get a thicker skin or all the things that you hear because nobody really wants to hear that but what i am going to tell you is that dedication and passion are matched and if you are willing to be dedicated and passionate someone will take you and they will raise you up if you want to just be cool and have a fancy show dog and a lot of ribbons you know i that's that's great that's a worthy goal but you're probably not going to get the same level of mentorship that you might otherwise right because that's too hard too hard no you're saying it exactly right because the point is you're not just looking for somebody when you're when you're when you're handing over essentially a chunk of your heart and your life yeah you're not yeah i'm going to look at you my life's work my blood my sweat my tears my money my crawling on the ground sobbing broken if i'm going to give you that that's not coming just because you're cute right and it's not coming just because you want somebody to have a good show dog it's because of the dedication to the breed and you choosing the person who you think is going to do right not only by your kennel and the dogs you produce but by the breed by the sport by the fancy by everybody right like yeah you know and i think that that is it's a hard hard thing and you know we talk all the time about oh why are purebred dogs dying and you know the old guard is mean well no i'm not mean but i do have some requirements i mean listening to me is one of those requirements because i actually know something and i'm willing to listen to you and hear your thoughts but i'm probably going to suggest that the depth and breadth of the experience that i have to bring to a question is worth considering right well and that kind of brings me to my next because that a lot of you know the whole mentorship is not a dictatorship is obviously has a lot to do with my coaching clients and stuff like that and you know the the people that i really feel are worthy and would be good and just haven't fallen in to luck to have someone like you mentoring them where sometimes people do end up with people who really are just about their kennel and this breeding and that and you kind of just set it there because i was going to say well how do you best support and teach someone and mentor them and want them to listen while you also want them to develop and grow right it's like a fine line and i think part of it is just relationships and personality types right like i said i'm a better human than i was 30 years ago i mean i'm not gonna lie to you it's a fact um and there's lots of people that will attest to that um but i i think too that um as we talk to people who are interested in growing our breed or someone who wants to buy our dog or you know whatever hear them hear what they have to say hear what matters to them um i there's someone here that has just popped up um that i think is a really great example although it might not be the same person i don't know um young woman who uh bred to want a stud dog that i bred she didn't buy her foundation bitch for me she has different breeding goals but she had really great questions and i spent hours and hours and hours on her with messenger on the telephone and um i think that listening to what matters to those people helps you understand the people that come to you and ask questions is this someone i want to really kind of get behind or is this someone that i'm just going to kind of help from a distance do you understand what i'm saying and totally and i think part of it is like how someone brings it to you like i certainly you know with like let's say training mentors that i've had you know i come to them that's a little bit different because you know we're not talking about they're not giving me like you know their whole kennel and all this but like you know i think that you consider the quality of the questions and if they make sense to you and if it's like wow that's a really freaking great question you know i'm so glad you asked that let's have a conversation talk about it instead of just being like oh no that's horseshit like no we're not gonna do that or you know but really like even if you do think it's horseshit like even if you did think something was dumb at least being able to talk about that it's absolutely um it is absolutely a process of learning how to be a good mentor i believe it is also a process of learning how to be a good mentee and you said it earlier it's about relationship and a relationship building this is no different than any other relationship um in many cases the people that i'm working with i've spent more time with than i've had any of my four husbands so i'm saying it matters and so putting time into those relationships supporting those relationships being willing to hear being willing to listen you know being fair right it isn't fair to ask someone with um a limited budget to carry all the weight of welping a litter even though they maybe have the time and and and physical ability to do it right so so fairness matters and credit where credit is do matters those are things you know you and i have different ideas about dog training but i always say firm fair and consistent right so i when i say it i mean it if it's it it has to be fair to everybody and it has to be the same thing every time that that counts when we're talking about building relationships with mentees as well oh my god it really does because i do feel like such a big thing that's hard is inconsistency like i can't deal with that per like me i can't deal with it if it's like back and forth or we don't know what's going to happen all day tomorrow i love you that just drives everybody crazy like what's the yeah it's really hard you know what it reminds me of too like i don't know if you saw it but i interviewed um sandra pertari hixon the other day and we talked about her long relationship with betty and yeah and i mean it's like i mean i wanted to talk about that more like god that's so amazing that you've maintained that relationship for so long um i mean i just think i think it's really lucky when you can find what you found but i think that there is that possibility out there for other people they just have to be willing to you know be open and everything there is a match for for for most everybody out there and you know i have two or three people everybody can have two or three people right like it's a thing but it is it is a process and you have to on both sides put some work in so mckinsey pergason here i i thought had a really really interesting question um great yeah that that really is um worth discussing so generational differences and how it affects um what putting in the work looks like and so mckinsey i i'm going to be straight up honest with you i don't believe there is a whole lot of difference between putting in the work 50 years ago and putting in the work today putting in the work is still putting in the work you might do it in a different way so for example um in 1996 when i was first getting started with this particular line of dogs i called people on the telephone i visited their home i wrote letters back and forth i have files and files and files of photos and letters from old-time breeders i went to their homes and i sat and i drank coffee with them at their tables or drinks with them at their tables or what have you i went to the national field trial and i sat on a horse and i rode with them and talked to them about what we were seeing i went to the dog show and i talked with them ringside about what they were seeing you can do those same things today in a virtual way if you need to but you still need to do the work and i understand everybody everybody is quite sure that their situation is worse than somebody else's situation but i promise you um i didn't have any more money than you all have i figured it out i figured out a way to do it and and that is we all make priorities in life and and choosing the priorities that we make i make no judgment zero judgment about where your priorities are what you can and can't do my um gal that has taken on my breeding program is a special education teacher and the wirehair pointer national is always in october channels can never go because she just started her school year and she can't be away for a week during the first month of school and i feel terrible because this year is the only year for the next three years then it's going to be anywhere near her and i'm judging it and so she can't show any of the dogs and i just feel terrible about that but um putting in the work means putting in the work and and it can be i guess the in specific answer to your question how the generational difference has affected is that you have different ways of communication and different ways of onboarding that information you know pure dog talk podcasts weren't a thing right um things like shut up prep school or leading edge dog show academy all of these things were not a thing um when i was coming up i had to do it if you will old school i had to read all the books all these books on my bookshelf now that's not to say y'all can't read a book but i'm saying that there are ways that are more 21st century um for people for whom that's an issue and i don't i don't begrudge people that at all all i'm saying is passion matters and dedication matters and that doesn't change with the format in which you provide it does that make sense it does but i have it i do have a question about this or like sort of an add-on but because like i got my first doxen that i was going to show in 1995 and i got in you know with a group of people and it was like sort of you know just the people that were always at the dog shows right my mentors my group and it was like i mean we went to doxen field trials and there were puppies there there were always puppies there there was no like well how about if they get parvo it's like no you take your puppies to the field trial we all put our hands on them mentors would pick you up out of your chair and drag you over and say no this is where you put your thumb to look at the shoulder and then your finger i mean it was like literally like you're gonna do that and i actually loved that i mean i love that so much and when i went to um the lauchin national a few years ago i was like can we all just go to someone's rv and like get all our dogs together and everybody go over and talk about them like i think that is so cool and i just i don't know i don't see that as much maybe it's going on and i don't see it but i'm not saying like letters of puppies and x pens like you would see it you know what i mean so here's my and and i'm gonna be i'm gonna be very um specific about some of my word choices here okay because this is a thing um 21st century people who own dogs in more cases than it was when i was coming back up in the 80s and or even when you were coming out probably in the 90s right dogs have become an extension of one's ego and it's it is more difficult for fanciers who are new to the sport to hear critiques or criticism positive or negative of their dog because that dog is an extension of their own ego and i do not believe that this is an exclusive i do not believe that this is every single person i am not banging on kids or whatever generation that's not the point it it it is the same from from 20 to 60 it is an era in which our self-worth is wrapped up rather than being able to more objectively analyze the dogs in front of us our self-worth has become more wrapped up in that right and and that is where i see so much of the sturm undrung yes the sturm and drying right the the big drama around dog shows is that someone um of an older era will make an offhand remark not meaning it in a negative way that is heard and processed by someone whose entire self-worth and value is wrapped up in this dog in a very very negative way and this person over here that said it is like yeah and this person over here is like and and i think both of them are maybe a little on the edges right like be a little more aware of how you say what you say that's not that hard right and maybe be a little more aware of how you hear what you hear and there's there's a meeting in the middle there that doesn't require anyone to be vilified right that makes sense to me does that make sense yeah totally but i do think like um when i was talking about early mentors for me i mean there were some for sure that were like kind of harsh and hardcore but really like my first mentor that comes to mind was a doxin breeder and Sharon Carr and she and i was just talking to somebody about this the other day when we were talking about mentors and and she i would say well what do you think if i bred her him and she might say something like well it's not probably what i would do but i'm in a different place in my breeding program than you're in with your but it always felt like okay she's not telling me i can't do it she's not saying she won't love me if i do do it i did it and she was right you know what i mean like right you know what i mean like but she let me do that and she let me learn you know be able to make their own decisions and their own choices and mckenzie um came back with a really interesting clarification and and talking about um learning styles and communication and information accessing and and you are so on point with this mckenzie like a hundred percent on point with it because i am that old school person and i just had somebody today they wanted to call me up and talk on the telephone that is a hundred percent how we like to communicate we are happiest those of us old fogies in that world and i had to check myself with the um gal who was both of the gals that are doing these two letters that we just had because i want to call them on the telephone and they're irritated i'm doing things and so i text me just text me right i'm like no this is not a text conversation much more depth and and continuity and clarity that i can do on text you know and so yes mckenzie you are all hundred percent on point and even with my kids that call me mom they're irritated with me because i want to call them and talk to them on telephone and so it is a hundred percent a thing and i think it goes back to and i'm going to make this argument and y'all can laugh at me all you want but my basic argument is always going to be mutual respect like if i try to have some respect and say hey i know you don't really want to talk to me on the phone is there a time that would be okay to talk right and text that to them then people will answer me and if they have some respect for my desire to like spend an hour hashing through a particular topic they will gracefully give me an hour when they don't probably have it right and and so that's that's called mutual respect i know is swirable fashion and out of date not very au courant these days um but it's a thing and it goes i'm gonna ask you this question because it just popped back into my head and it fell out a while ago when when i talk about when i was having these first show dogs and sometimes i was just going to shows i even went to a national like way before i got a show of doxon um i mean a lot of the people and i i don't want to say this in a way to offend anybody i certainly don't want to say it in a way that it offends you but it was like they didn't care about anything but breed right like they didn't care sometimes they were like oh i don't even worry about the group i mean they were like hardcore i'm a breeder and i feel like i think that's kind of a doxon thing though i'm gonna say to you that is oh i know the doxon thing and that that is in my experience specific to certain breeds right like i i grew up and glumbers we went to the group damn it no matter what even if you went with your class dog because you wanted people to see your dogs so there are three cultures that are specific so continue on but i will say i do think that is more of a a specific thing to doxon people but imagine how that affects not anymore so much me but like in the beginning that wasn't something i was taught for that to be important right so it's like do you feel that part of this like intense wanting to win an intent like like you were saying the dog being so much like almost a part of a person that's how they value themselves that's how they value their ego do you think that how competitive it's gotten in terms of like bigger you know bigger bigger bigger you know what i mean because i mean there's an entire vicki there's an entire conversation to be had and and i think you've had it in parts i've had it in parts there's a whole entire conversation to be had about too many dog shows too much watering down of the dog show environment too much emphasis on group and best in show placements um i know personally know people who will tell you that the ranking systems that came into place in the 60s were the ruination of dog shows right i mean i i i don't i have been known to become caught up in in the the sort of you know it was always better in the old days there are things that are better now um and there are things that are not better um what i what i can do what i believe you and i can do is to help people acquire a deeper less surface more nuanced understanding of what confirmation animal husbandry um dog breeding dog information presentation all the things what those mean in the long run and and our society today isn't like it was 30 years ago or 40 years ago there's lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of things to do with your day then spend the day at a dog show and so the people who are doing this now are real super focused on that and and that's great my goal is to encourage them to dig deeper into that focus and to acquire a level of knowledge and a level of appreciation and understanding and caring and passion and all those things to go beyond the pretty suit running in left-handed circles getting a pretty ribbon and you know one thing that i'm always trying to remind people and tell people and sort of like instill in people that is like you know this is like the life you know what i mean like it statistically if you are a normal person showing dogs you're gonna lose more than you win and so you have to just love going and doing the thing and be in there with your friends and this is what i do with my dog you know like i have millions of friends who do lots of dog sports i mean dog sports that you don't have to beat other dogs you are competing against yourself and so if the dog just does it right for sure he's you know and i'm still here but i mean confirmation because i think that's a really really really important point that is frequently glossed over so in the day right back in the day 80s 70s 80s sort of the the if they if you know the heyday of pure red dogs in this modern era confirmation regular obedience and field trials not hunt test field trials that's what you had those were what you had it was all competition period there was nothing that was not competitive and over the course of the last 30 and 40 years we have seen a booming growth of non-competitive sports and i think those are amazing and i want the people who are participating in them to love them and then if they find they have a slightly competitive edge to come join us in the competitive sports right that's all i do not i do not choose to glorify one over the other i understand that in a in a world in which the dog is part of my ego competition is hard right and non-competitive events where you can do the thing and have fun and do the stuff and you have a whole community of that that's amazing i want all those people to do all those things because they love pure red dogs and that is what matters and a few of them a percentage of them can we peel them off and do competitive things great cool i mean how many confirmation big time longtime breeders do you know that every single one of them started with a pure red dog that they took to obedience class correct i have 600 episodes a third of which are interviews with the most famous handlers and judges in the world and 75 percent of those started just that way and so i i love the gateway drugs 100 love them and i think in today's society where where time is precious people think about things differently it's great it's fabulous i am so happy for every single person that puts a trick title or a cgc or a rally novice whatever do something have a pure red dog and want to do something with it absolutely let's um i want to tip on a couple of these questions real quick so um barbara said i am new six years and very much have the impression that it is inappropriate to comment on critique or question anyone else's dogs yet it sounds like a lot more back and forth along those lines used to happen more yes part of it is because we asked and part of it is because we were told part of it and again i i really hate when we get into these things you know millennials versus generation acts or whatever the hell like it's not a thing but realistically back then if someone if you brought a dog into the ring and said it wasn't show quality you would not be offended and post that all over facebook today or you didn't and there wasn't facebook right so i've raised social media for 90% of it maybe 95 um of the problems in the world baby no no not not not joking i i that's a fact um i believe that um social media has has done a lot of positive things but that i sincerely believe that the negative outweighs the positive particularly in the world of dog book um it gives too many people the opportunity to um jack their jaws and talk about things they don't actually know anything about and complain about things that they don't understand and and generally be made to feel really popular by being sad about a situation that's not an okay thing to do y'all um i'm just saying if you have a real and actual and serious situation with a judge or a person or whatever i promise you on a stack of you name it's encyclopedias to bibles whatever makes you happy i promise you if you handle it privately it's going to go a lot better that's some advice from an old lady so take it and do with it as you please um macy said uh i'm just gonna kind of she yep no problem i know we're running towards hand um she does all kinds of stuff with her papillon stock diving agility barn hunt fast cat she entered her first two confirmation shows with two girls at a small local show where we have lots of connections um what advice do you have for someone just getting started looking to owner handle when they do not have the big connection in the confirmation world how big of a role does politics connections and the name play in placements and overall this is like a whole this is actually another topic on this one macy so props for you for bringing it up but here's what i'm gonna say and again this may not be this may be what is called on um social media an unpopular opinion but i'm gonna share it with you anyway i am a judge i judge dogs i know other dog judges who judge dogs and i know other dog judges who don't i would say that of the people who don't it's perhaps less than five percent everyone i know in the judging community is trying their best some of them um perhaps are not as gifted as others some of them haven't had as much experience some of them are tired you pick a thing but 95 percent of the people i know in the ranks of the judging corner it may be more than that are trying their very best and politics particularly in classes or the winners dog winners bitch level outside of national specialties it's not a thing what is a thing is skill presentation quality of the animal quality of the grooming and the presentation and i will promise you that if i have spent 25 years of my life showing 10 to 20 dogs a day four to five days a week in anywhere from five to 10 different breeds if i'm not able to more successfully present my exhibit then you are at your very first dog show then i should be fired i was a professional handler for 25 years i worked very hard at my craft and the people who do it for a living also work very hard at their craft you'll also be competing against our handlers who have been doing it for anywhere from 25 to 50 years it's okay it is it can feel very daunting it can feel overwhelming but if you go into it with an attitude of wanting to learn wanting to succeed and wanting to get more from what you put in each day you'll be fine will you win the first day maybe maybe not will you be able to win down the road 100 and politics quote unquote is nothing it really is not a thing skill is a thing i want to say too because you know i coach a lot of people and a lot of times you know it comes up a lot well you know that i think that they're just looking for handlers or no and it's like what i have to remind people of is that handlers usually present dogs you know what i mean like it's not necessarily like and it's on to a dog show and seen a dog with an owner handler and i should right you don't go to a brain surgeon to fix your carburetor right right and it's like a brain surgeon for a tumor in your head but i think it's like people also and this probably come you know rolls off the worst thing is that it's like sometimes there's like this obsession for trying to figure out why you know why didn't my dog win and a lot of times the answer is yeah the other the judge like the other dog but it also could be presentation and it also could be like you need to keep doing it if you're going to get better at it like i've seen dogs shown by a handler the day after they were shown by an owner and not know it was the same dog be like oh i didn't see that one here yesterday who's that and it's like oh it was here yesterday it doesn't look like the same animal and and so i mean vicki this is another one of those areas where you and i come at it from a different perspective i did this for a living and and there's a lot of people who do it for a living and i was very careful i refused to take i didn't take gas money dogs i didn't have ugly you know like if i brought a dog it was a quality animal yeah and i believed in it and it may not be to a judge's type or it may be whatever or maybe my grooming wasn't 100 to par you know whatever it was on the day right but if you come with a quality dog that is properly trained and properly conditioned and it's the best dog on the day 95 percent of the judges are going to find it but that you have to bring it properly trained properly conditioned which means grooming muscle tone muscle tone you cannot drag a dog off the couch that has never done anything other than lie on the couch and watch netflix eat popcorn with you and expect that you're going to beat a dog that's been on the treadmill for half an hour to 45 minutes every single day its entire adult life like you're not going to win right there are some real serious facts here and so you can choose to be mad or you can choose to do better and win right those are well i just don't i mean my point is i just i don't think it's political most of the time i think that it's yeah especially at the class level of the time it is not political um two more points i want to make the first one is i have interviewed more than one people who own or handle and have won best in shows not on our hand they're best in shows regular best in shows so those people many times are just as much a force to be reckoned with um you know and and and yeah a million of those people and and and and you know and part of it truly is that it's like you know do the judge and judges know them yeah because they always bring them dogs that they like i mean you and you see the person and they have a type and they like that type into what the judge likes and you know what the judge likes and you have the dog to bring that judge right that's part of the knowledge is knowing and watching and if i've shown a chihuahua anakita an irish wolf hound a wire hairpointer an a laushan to the same judge over the course of a three-day weekend i'm gonna have a pretty good sense of what they like because i'm not focused on did i win or lose i'm focused on what did the judge want what did they put up what are the commonalities is are they a headhunter they are they a tooth fairy are they a movement freak are they all about top lines are they all about silhouette yeah you can learn that if you watch and watch without angst you watch with the intent to learn you watch it you could make a cool thing at my final thing i want to say is that for anybody who has an issue or feels like oh judges are just blah blah blah i mean listen to some of pure dog talks judges interviews michael cannelly is my favorite one literally like goose bumps the whole time it and and there's a lot of them but i do think that listening to the entire album it's called the interviews go go dance like a buck 99 go download the album and listen to every one of the interviews do not read Doug show judges report card it's garbage and sour grapes and dump listen to the judges talk their own words from their own mouth and that will teach you more than you will ever get anywhere else well and i just think it really gives you a like i i can't remember the judge's name i feel so bad it was something reynolds jim reynolds but yeah and i remember him saying you know when i'm in the ring with that dog like that's my dog for those two minutes and two minutes that is my dog that is my favorite interview and that's how i really oh my god but it was just so point it got tears to my eyes he was saying i freaking love dogs and it's really i'm gonna tell you when i'm in the ring for that two minutes that's my dog yeah it's the thing i'm so glad it's like one of your favorite interviews because that was one of my favorite to do it jim is one of my very very favorite people in the world 100 well it was just so cool to hear him be like to hear someone that you might think is like hoity toity and out of reach because he's a big fancy judge but here he is going i can't believe i get to like do dogs every day you know what i mean and so i just think it can give people a real insight into you know what they're looking for and why they you know where they came from too you know listening to them yeah judges were not hatched from eggs y'all i promise they started the same place you are today Veronica has a really good question i wanted to answer it super fast um don't we learn more about dogs across the country that we used to not be able to see or consider using that is one of the ways and i said very clearly social media has its benefits um that is one of the things although i will tell you once upon a time at a national long ago and far away um we were talking about the difference that social media had made on nationals and we made the comment there's a group of us together talking old-time wire hair pointer people and that nationals just weren't as exciting anymore because now you've seen all the dogs on facebook there's no surprises there's no oh my god what's that that makes your blood tangle because everything's been promote all over howling creation on social media and so the pros and cons so yes for anka hundred percent um um and around the world i think social media has brought the dog breed made the dog breeding world into one small place and i think that is to the to the benefit of many breeds but i admit to being old school enough that i just love to have a surprise at the national i'm going to tell you something that uh recently someone contacted me to breed to my stud dog and um this is someone who's been in the breed for a long time i know and i was like yeah sure you know so we started talking she someone else had to message me to give me her phone number and say can you call her and i was like of course so i phone her up and you know she says how much is this stuffy and i tell her and i say but i'm also like totally open to a puppy she was like oh my god i'm so happy you are i love that and it's like yeah i mean i it's almost like taboo to mention anymore but i love that like now i'm working with this person she doesn't do tech she doesn't do email you talk to her on the phone or you drive into the mountains to her kennel where she has a boarding kennel and that's where i go to pick up a bitch or to go look at the litter of puppies but it was just like it's really refreshing and cool because it's like that's what i was looking for i was looking for somebody who like like i went up there and me and a handler friend marge to kind of put us together again we all went out to lunch and it's just like talking about dogs like that's where really where it's at you know i think that's so cool so it is hard for me because i'm like oh i don't like to do the phone but i have to do that because that's how she deals and it's actually been really fun for me because i'm not texting her all the time because i call her when we have something important to discuss you know so right um okay we should probably wrap it up we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours i think this is one of those topics we could go on forever but i know people have lives to get to so um congratulations on finding people that you feel you can trust and that are people that you are willing to invest in and that this gets to keep going on that you're what you build you know i'm incredibly blessed and i know i am and that they do they are two laura they are two and i'm sure they know it i think they know it so um any final thoughts um it's not all about you it really is about the breed i guess that i mean i don't really have a better you know i'm not i i do better when i'm writing and crafting but but i really think that that is you know akc has this new preservation semen bank right where people can donate present semen from their dogs for use for future drinks um that's cool and it's for all breeds it was started the the theory was started by the otterhound club and is now an akc initiative for all parent clubs to take on and i hear all the time oh i would never do that because so and so would get some of it and they'd breed it wrong that's not the point right you're right right preservation breeding is preserving genetics and sometimes people are going to do things that you would never in a million years dream of doing and and you know maybe they work out maybe it's a flop but that's that person's to take on and if you're not going to use the semen donating it to the preservation semen bank is another one of the things that we can do as longtime sort of heritage preservation conservation whatever term you want to put on it breeders who want to support the future it's another way that we can think about doing that very cool you guys please uh check out pure dog talk i know everybody does already anyways everybody knows about pure dog talk we all listen to it we all love it um and uh lora thank you so much this was such a good talk i hope you write more about it i hope you talk more about it um you know it's really it's important and it's so good and i'm so happy for these women that you're working with it's just it's all it's the best of what all this can be it really is it really is and as i said i just i consider myself incredibly less so you are and but like i said so are they you guys everybody thank you for watching we really appreciate it and you will be able to find this yep it'll live on um this facebook page it'll go on both of our youtube channels and it'll go on both of our podcasts i think too so thank you everybody for watching and have a great rest of your night