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After reading Thomas C. Conway’s "It Hurts Me!" in a recent issue of DOG NEWS, I just had to sit down and write this response. (Actually, this article has been mentally composing itself since my husband and I started out in boxers about twenty-two years ago.)

In "It Hurts Me!" Mr. Conway bemoans the fact that so many mediocre dogs are campaigned successfully to so many top wins every year, and rhetorically asks why an owner would bother to show such an animal, and why a knowledgeable handler would agree to take it in the ring.

The obvious answer to that was that the owner has the money and the desire to show, and the mediocre dog -- like the mountain -- is there. Add that to the fact that the handler has the desire to earn a living and hasn’t been offered any breed immortals to show lately, and Voila! -- a star is born.

That’s all very understandable. What is less understandable is why judges -- even breeder-judges who should know better -- keep putting up mediocre (or worse) dogs, even when given a choice of much better dogs.

This is where the more cynical among us shout, "Politics!" And mutual back-scratching certainly does go on in any human endeavor. But I believe the truth lies closer to what I have come to think of as the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome (ENCS). In ENCS, far too many people end up licensed to judge far too many breeds with which they are not intimately familiar, and in which they are not really all that interested. (The breeder-judges have no excuse.) To many judges, any breed beyond the one they started out with seems to be viewed as merely a stepping stone to the acquisition of a group. These judges don’t know, don’t know they don’t know, and therefore are easily convinced by persistent advertising, influential owners, and salesmanlike handlers that they are seeing virtues that just aren’t there -- the emperor’s new clothes!

For example, in my breed -- the boxer -- character and temperament, according to the breed standard, are of "paramount importance." The standard describes the boxer as a "hearing" guard dog, who should exhibit "fearless courage if threatened." Yet, too many times to count over the last twenty-two years, I have seen dogs advertised as "tremendous showmen" go up in huge entries of truly competitive dogs, despite that they went around the ring with their tails tucked firmly between their legs (or as far as the tail of a docked breed can be tucked), cringed away from the judge’s examination, and when gaiting back to the judge, got behind their handler as soon as they came to a halt. I realize that some handlers are very skillful at inspiring their charges with false confidence and masking temperament problems, but I’m talking about boxers that were overtly shy! What on earth do the judges who put up such animals think they are seeing? Would they excuse and reward that kind of behavior in their "own" breed?

And then there’s head type, described and proscribed in over a quarter of our standard’s total length. Wait, I know -- you’re going to tell me that "they don’t walk on their heads"! Well I know that, and so do my fellow breeders, many of whom are making earnest efforts to breed a typey boxer that is also sound. We travel to our national specialty to assess the movement and temperament of dogs we’re thinking of breeding to, and at considerable expense, we OFA our breeding stock and guarantee our puppies against hip dysplasia. And that’s why we get so frustrated when a judge rationalizes putting up a mediocre, untypical dog over better ones by saying, "He was the best moving thing in the ring." Especially when you had just observed for yourself that the dog was pigeon-toed and paddling in front and moved noticeably wide in rear. What does that judge think he/she is seeing, that you and I can’t see just by looking? And what kind of movement fault would it take to convince that judge that he wasn’t seeing "the best moving thing in the ring" -- a bad limp? Sometimes I think that when all-round judges see a long-bodied, snipey-faced boxer, they automatically expect to see good movement!

Is there a cure for the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome? Probably not. After all, there are plenty of people with no talent or "eye" for what they are doing, people who are incapable of making up their own minds, in all walks of life (it just seems as though there are more of them judging dogs!). And considering the AKC’s emphasis on their judges’ acquiring additional breeds, and the average judge’s desire to do so A.S.A.P., we might just as well hope to see a small boy wander over to ringside, and at the moment the judge points to a mediocre dog for BOB (BW, Group I, BIS, etc.), loudly exclaim, "But Mother -- the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!"