When we showed our am cocker, we did it for fun but she did fairly well in open and champ shows and then qualified for crufts, we were new to this and did everything we thought was correct i.e. ringcraft advice from breeder had a couple of other well known breeders look at her who said she was nice and to enter her for crufts at the time our daughter was showing interest in grooming and handling she had a Saturday job at a grooming parlour and wanted to handle her at crufts, she won two firsts in her breed class on the day and was pipped for BOB by the male and rightly so, whilst our daughter was in the ring a small group behind us (nobody I'd met at other shows but obviously showed there am, cockers and didn't get placed) one was commenting so loud and rude saying what a rubbish handler and a rubbish dog
our daughter was fifteen and thankfully never heard them ( I hope) she was nervous enough as it was crufts...
Fourteen years on and the other day I was talking to a friend from those show days who mentioned about our Roxie r.i.p.
to someone who knew of one those sour grape woman she said to her "what that rubbish dog how it managed to win anything is beyond me" this woman had never been anywhere close to my dog only read judges comments which were always good and saw her in the ring, Roxie had excellent movement and presence it was so obviously jealousy ....but the fact she still remembered our darling Roxie must of had an impact
... I think it can take a while for some to accept a newcomer especially if you have a good dog that beats theirs....
Having said we met some lovely people and had lots of fun when we were showing but like everything else there are always some rude people out there, we just let them go over our heads and enjoyed what we were doing ... i must admit after crufts our daughter did not want to show again and went off the idea of grooming ( boyfriends became more interesting )
... so as usual mum took over....
JLO have fun at family shows to start with it will help to boost your daughters confidence and then perhaps open shows, then go from there that's what we did also advice from his breeder is a good thing but bear in mind there are always highs and lows .... and just enjoy
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