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Chapter VIII - Faults, Failings and Virtues in the Ring Now we come to the question of fault-judging. This is generally considered to be somewhat of a dirty word. A bad judge fault-judges and is spoken with great contempt, being considered not knowledgeable enough to be able to judge in any other way. There is a lot of truth in this and I am one who hates going under a judge who fault-judges. But one thing to remember when fault judging is that there are faults and there are failings and they are no the same thing. Basically faults are constructional, failings are cosmetic. A short heavy loaded upright shoulder is a bad fault because it puts terrible strain on the dog's legs, feet and spine and jars him in any stride. Weak hindquarters are the same, a fault, and these I am quite sure should be heavily penalised in the ring, without the stigma of fault-judging. They are basic and extremely bad faults. But a largish ear is a failing. It is not really going to harm the dog in any way, even in the long run. Too light an eye is a failing as is too dark an eye and while I like neither I do feel a really good dog should not be condemned in the showring for either. Drop it down by all means, but one cannot damn a really good dog for something so harmless. But unsound limbs and huge splay feet etc. I reckon as faults and should be penalise in the ring. In other words if the dog is good enough and I emphasise this, surely a failing can be forgiven with the thought 'What bad luck on Mrs. So-and-So to breed one like this, and have this failing crop up on it.' But meet a real bad fault that could harm or hamper the dog and I myself think 'How can Mrs. So-and-So breed to such an awful thing on her dog, and why, oh why does she show it?' I have noticed over many years of judging that while you find the odd failing on a top breeder's exhibit, you seldom find one of the major faults. These have been ruthlessly culled out and the top exhibitor's dog is properly 'finished', with many a bonus virtue added such as a crested neck, a beautifully worked muzzle, a gorgeous tail or a head attractively set on the neck. If the general plateau of the top breeder is so high that they can afford to add these bonuses of virtue and loveliness surely they will get their rewards. But so often these things are not even considered or noticed by the average judge, even at Championship show level. These are the attributes that go to make a really great breeder and without recognising them you remain just average. So while I dislike to the so called 'fault-judger' who counts failings as faults and penalises heavily things that really do not matter, I do feel that the real faults should be heavily penalised. It is the difference between the constructional or congenital fault and the purely cosmetic or conventional failing. To me the first matters, the second merely divides when you have two equal dogs in an otherwise difficult bit of judging. But now it comes to fault-judging in one's own kennel and here I think you must be very much more severe. A show exhibit may be a great dog with a failing or two and you recognize it to be the best in spite of these. But in your own kennel these failings will crop up time and again and drive you to desperation. A bad fault must be penalised in the ring or at home, because however good the dog that carries it, when used at public stud, with most of his visiting bitches pretty average, the resulting puppies will nearly always be slightly less good than the dog and will not, like him, be able to carry this bad fault. In your kennel you can breed out a failing very easily, darkening or lightening your eye-colour, or getting smaller ears, but the very real fault will set you back for years. So at home you must always fault-judge and must also recognise the failings and get them out. However good your stock and however true your carefully established strain may breed to type, the failings will crop up and need dealing with but you simply must not forgive the real faults because you will pass them on to other people through your stud-dogs and through your puppies. So one of the things I find when judging, as I have said, is that while the good breeders will show a faulty dog under you that is good in other ways, the top breeder's dog will not have basic faults, although it would be a saint indeed if it didn't have the odd failing. And added to the high standards of the top breeder's dog it will also have the balance, beauty, quality, soundness and 'finish' that are the hallmarks of a top breeder. The Labrador Retriever as we know it a Canadian dog, whatever its origins before it settled in Newfoundland. It was medium-sized, short coated, active and hardy, being used for a lot of water-work. The coat was dense, the whole dog sturdy and extremely difficult to wound, tear or freeze to death. It was a most adaptable character and was very quickly taken up by the English and Scottish sportsmen as soon as it came by the Cod-boats to Poole Harbour. In many ways it has changed very little over the hundred thirty or so years since it was adopted as a great shooting dog, and is still the most popular breed there is for the sportsman. Indeed we have found very little reasons to alter it, up to the present time. But nowadays a big number of people who own Labradors do not want them for shooting. Leaving aside the Field Trial people who have bloodlines of their own, the top breeders and indeed nearly all the breeders at whatever level are breeding for show, although there is always a wedge of people who try to breed a good looker that can work and who therefore pay a lot of attention to working qualities when breeding. But these people are few and getting fewer. It depresses me to think that the vast majority of Labradors are bred to produce show dogs, who are bred to produce show dogs and so on ad infinitum without any further aim in mind. More and more Show Champions appear as less and less people care about the working qualities even though they will happily sell their surplus puppies to people who may want to shoot over them. This vicious circle of breeding show dogs to breed show dogs worries me very much because we are eroding away the qualities required in a Labrador. Fewer and fewer people really know or even care about the actual requirements of a real working dog and the basics are often ignored, the show-points taking preference. An example of this lies in the coat. The double coat is one of the salient points of a Labrador and is specifically described in the standard. A true double coat however is not a smart coat and does not give the smooth, tight, clean line of a single coat. Therefore the single coat often wins against the true coat. Another heresy that is creeping in, simply because of the showring, is in tail-carriage. In my young days in Labradors it was considered that the tail was carried level with the back. This was so that the tail could be used to balance the dog when swimming. There was however a clause in the Standard that the 'tail may be carried gaily'. Thus the implication was and is that there is a question attached to high carriage and that the Standard settles the argument. However things have now changed so that it is taken that the tail should be carried at least at the level of the back, but preferably slightly higher, so the dog with a perfectly good tail-set who carries or even stands in the ring with his tail lower than the back-level is considered to be incorrect. The old breeders used to say that when photographing a Labrador, so long as the tail-tip showed between the thighs, that was perfectly in order and by looking at the old photos one can see that was the norm. Nowadays the photo is always taken with the tail outstretched and anything else is considered slightly to spoil the photo. So times change and show-fashion dictates instead of workmanlike qualities, usually because the workmanlike dog is not smart. Luckily for the breed, though, we still have at the top judges who know what a Labrador should be and although they get fewer and fewer as we get further and further away from the working side they are still there to keep things right or nearly right. I dread the day when complete ignorance of the working side prevails and I am afraid that this sad time is getting nearer. There is a vast reservoir of ignorance and like any other disease it is catching. Instead of thinking for themselves and finding out what really goes to make a good Labrador, to many people succumb to fashion instead of reading and re-reading the Standard and going out of the way to see dogs working and to find out what really is wanted and necessary. As soon as a breeder or judge start thinking and looking for himself then he is on Path Three because the essence of Path Two is that one leaves it to another breeder and other judges to choose one's stud-dog and one's breeding plan, using only the top dogs to one's bitch whether it is the most suitable or not. So start to think for yourself and you are getting there, provided your own eye and flair are good enough to take you further forward. Ignorance has no part in this, and real knowledge hard acquired must take its place. Read and look and listen, but above all think for yourselves. It is necessary to have sort of jigsaw in your mind with one Labrador-shaped piece missing. This shape and type must be your ideal, your aim and your goal and you must stick to it through thick and thin, whatever the other breeders say and judges say and do. To stick to this ideal you must be able to analyse it and realise clearly just why you want this particular shape and type. You will never of course, be able to achieve it exactly so you have to be able to weigh up the shortcomings and the virtues so as to be able to retain the good points while altering the not so good. The virtues will differ from one person to another but absolute essentials are good conformation, good type, quality yet with substance, both kinds of balance, soundness and finish. Without these your dog will not reach the very top. Added to these are beauty of line, expression, coat, otter tail, symmetry, good eye-colour, shape of ears, spring of ribs and other virtues which differ from strain to strain. It is much more difficult to learn positive virtues and bonus points than it is to learn faults, if only because people will from the beginning hear faults discussed and analysed, especially in the ringside, whereas few people mention their extra good points. I always remember the late Bridget Docking (Ballyduff) and myself remarking on the fact that a certain bitch had very well let-down-hocks, and how heads turned all round to look at us, not at the bitch. Afterwards a lot of people came up and asked what we meant. This as a positive virtue was new to them and they literally did not know the meaning of the words. They had just taken it that hock-placing was as it happened to come and had never thought of judging this as a fault or virtue. The vast majority of middle-range breeders do not know or understand shoulders. Some never learn the difference between the various kinds of bad shoulders. But perhaps the very last thing they learn is a good or bad hock. Indeed they seldom know the meaning of the word, as is evinced in the numerous critiques by Championship judges which speak of a 'short-hock', meaning that the hock is well let-down. It seems to be a popular misconception that the hock is the leg from the joint downwards to the foot. This is of course not the case, the hock being the actual joint itself, not including the tibia and fibula. Short-coupled is taken to mean that the dog is short bodied, an entirely different thing. While a Labrador should be short-coupled, i.e. short on the loin, a short back is not necessarily a good thing, especially in a bitch, leading to lack of scope in stride, crabbing and in a bitch lack of room for puppies. However, such ignorance persists and is passed from mouth to mouth, these errors being just a few that one constantly hears and reads. They and others like them are a big stumbling block in breeding good Labradors. One often reads the word 'cobby' used as a compliment in show critiques. But do we really want a Labrador to be cobby? A Cob is a short, stuffily-built smallish horse used to carry the sportsman at a trot to the meet of the hounds. Once there the rider change onto a Hunter, a bigger horse with scope to enable it to gallop and jump. When it came to real work the Cob was not suitable and was 'put up' at the local holstery until the hunt was finished when it was used to hack home. When I read the Standard and really think about it, it seems to me that a good Hunter type is described, as one would expect for the work required of a Labrador, which work is galloping, jumping and swimming. Scope is required and the word 'cobby' does not fill the bill. I hate to hear it. The classes are so huge in the Championship shows and the emphasis on showmanship so great that a degree of what I myself call inanity is an asset in the ring. What used to be called a 'showring fool' is now considered highly desirable and the over happy dog that grins from ear to ear, bounces up and down on its feet and gazes fixedly at your hand or the pocket that contains your tidbit actually scores over the quieter dog. And I'm not surprised at this, because the 'showing-fool' will go on showing for, if necessary, half an hour or more, this being really necessary for some of the big classes through which they have to stand. Anything from 15 to 30 to 40 dogs may appear in one class and as a quick judge takes one and a half minutes per dog, and many of our Championship judges are by no means quick, so a show-dog has to be on its toes for a very long time. And a dog will be openly bumped and the fact mentioned in the critique if it flags towards the end and another dog doesn't. It is for the reason, I am pretty sure, that I get in my role of Universal Aunt so many letters and telephone calls from the general public complaining that their pet Labrador is so boisterous and rowdy as to have become untrainable to a shooting man and unbearable as a pet, and I can assure you that I get several pleas like this in a week, so the problem is with us in some depth. Happy Labradors yes, I love to see a class of good, steadily showing handsome dogs with good temperaments all behaving together and looking up lovingly if greedily at their owners with their tails outstretched without help and wagging gently, but not for me those wildly lashing, grinning, bouncing maniacs and they are becoming all too common. They may make great showmen and continue to show when the quieter dog has packed up, but where their owners to try and train them. Then they might realise how impossible the task. A steady level temperament makes for a good shooting dog and pleasant pet, not the brainless grinning idiot. Another requirement where the show people are in very grave danger of losing a most important feature of the Labrador is in coat. When judging a huge entry at a Championship show I am always horrified that a big proportion of the exhibits of the middle-rangers and often among the Champions too, are not carrying the proper Labrador coat as called for in the Standard. Now a good double coat is not a fancy point, it is in many districts especially in high moorland ground a must. No true Labrador should be without a good top-coat of the required texture, neither too hard nor too soft but exactly as stated in the Standard, giving 'A fairly hard feeling to the hand'. And under this top-coat should lie the undercoat to make the dog virtually waterproof. But how many of these Labrador coats do you see in the ring? Instead you find the best in its class and a long neck is just a personal foible even though I know it is a great advantage when picking-up. I must recognise a good Labrador even though it is slightly more up on the leg than I like, or perhaps shorter in the ribcage or longer in loin than my ideal. If it is a good one, an advanced judge must recognize and give it its due even though he may actually dislike it personally. You must judge to type, yes but personal preferences and prejudices must not come into it. That is so long as you remember that it must be a Labrador first and foremost and it must be able to work from the conformation point of view, with nothing you can spot in the ring to hamper it. My personal list of Faults and Failings When judging I find myself sorting the various faults and failings into three categories, although I must again stress that these are entirely my own personal requirements, other judges having different viewpoints. APPALLING FAULTS, which I penalize to the utmost. Bad temper of any sort either to dog or to man; Entropion or bad Ectropion; Undershot mouth; Short thick neck; Heavy upright shoulders; Straight shoulders; Straight elbows, tied-in elbows; Thin weak pasterns; Thin flat feet; Weak thin hindquarters; Single coat; Half-coat, i.e. a strip of harsh coat down the center of the back, with fluff and nothing else on the sides, flanks, etc.; Coat not covering entire dog, i.e. the inside of the flanks and under the belly not being covered with true double coat; The hind legs standing too far back when in natural stance, as in a Setter; The cannonbone from hock to ground not being perpendicular to the ground when in natural stance; and True shyness. SLIGHT FAULTS to be penalized. Snipey pointed muzzle; Overshot mouth; Black eyes; Very short muzzle; Scowl; Hard expression; Narrow skull; Very coarse overdone head with cheeks; Elbows out; Chest very narrow or wide; Loaded shoulders; Narrow ribcage; Lack of bone; Pin toes; Large round coarse feet; Hare feet; Long thin tail; Very short back to the neckline with long throatline; Badly dipped back; Back too short; Rump too short; Tail carried in slight curl over back; Sickle-hocks; Cow-hocks; and Coat very hard or very soft. FAILINGS to be taken into consideration. Lack of work in muscle; Flattish skull; Plain head; Lack of stop or too much stop; Slight dish-face; Muzzle too deep or too shallow; Eyes slightly too dark or yellow; Big heavy ears, overlong ears, thin wash-leather ears; Ears not carried quite correctly. Thin neck or heavy flabby throat and flews; Slightly saggy back which I differentiate from a true dipped back; Front a little wide or a little narrow, ditto movement; Slightly up on the leg or a little too short in leg. Size a little small or a little big so long as it is a good Labrador; Slight lack of depth of brisket; Slightly cut up in loin; Tail a little long or short but otherwise well-shaped; Curve in tail; Out of coat on the day though showing evidence of the true coat; Coat a little too long or a little too short provided it is of correct texture and double coated; Slope of rump over tail, or tail set too low (not the same thing); Raked backline; Over-angulated behind; Tail carried rather too high; Very slight diffidence or lack of showmanship, though no real shyness. Again I must emphasize that these list of hates, dislikes and disapproval are only my own. Other breeders and judges will have their own lists often depending on the traits that have been a bugbear in their own kennels. If you have had a spell of breeding nervous or ring-shy dogs, for a long time afterwards you will be, when judging, extra hard on the dog that shies away from your hand, to give you just one example. Many people will reverse my idea on eye-colour, putting the over-dark eye into the list of failings and light eye into that of faults. When judging, however, provided one sticks to the Standard one's judgement should rest on one's experience. I am certain that a judge must be rather more lenient towards a dog's failings and slight faults than when considering for his own breeding. It should always be remembered that if a dog is 'too big for me' as often appears in show critiques, provided he is somewhere within reason of the Standard he may not be too big for his exhibitor's job, which may be goose-shooting in a tide-rip. Or if you consider him smaller than you yourself like in your own kennel again you must remember that he may belong to someone whose shooting demands a smaller dog, and if he is within reason then do not let your own foibles penalise him for what is in effect within bounds. Nowhere in the Standard does the word 'must' appear, the ultimate decision resting with the owner of the dog, who knows what he requires. The judge's job is to point out what the Standard lays down as desirable. So when judging in the Ring give the benefit of the doubt if you can, but when judging your own dogs, then be as hard as you were able. |
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