Inside the Mind of a JudgeBy Jonathan Jeffrey Kimes, Pluperfect Cardigans,
USA Chances are you have been at ringside watching a
class being judged and you sorted out the class in your mind. You may have agreed with the judge and felt you
did a good job, or you may have disagreed with the judge and felt you were more qualified
to be on the woolsack than the person in the middle of the ring.Either way, I suspect all
of us make a determination to try judging from a similar experience. Once you find yourself in the middle of the ring,
believe me your world will turn upside down.You will first of all realize that you
probably never really judged a class of dogs before – even from outside the ring.What
you probably did was sit ringside where you didn’t have a complete perspective of the
dogs and rooted for your favorite exhibit – finding good reason why no one else
should win.You probably didn’t even really watch all the exhibits in the class.What
you will encounter in judging is that you must pay attention to every exhibit equally. When the dogs enter the ring, you must give every
exhibit its just due. I feel like a
patron of the dogs who come into my ring, I want them to give the best performance they
can. The classes which are easy to sort out,
like the kind you probably watched from ringside when you decided you’d make a great
judge, are not a challenge for anyone. In
fact, I’ve had classes I could sort out practically as the dogs entered the ring. That, my friends, takes very little talent –
that’s nothing more than easily discernable levels of quality in the exhibits. The real challenge will be when you must sort out
a class of exhibits all with good and bad points. The
exhibits will have degrees of type features, various structural strengths, perhaps not
extreme variances in movement and similar showmanship. Each animal will create a
complex list of strengths, weaknesses and many areas of an average rating – not
faults and not outstanding qualities. Now you
will be earning your $3-per-dog judge’s fee! I have heard Ann Rogers Clark comment in the press
that the process of judging is taking all the bits and pieces of information about each
dog and putting them into your „little computer“ and out must come an answer. I have found many times this is exactly the
process. You must reward the whole dog, not
give out a blue for head and a white for rear movement.
I feel it is this ability to synthesize information which really separates the men
and women from the boys and girls in judging. Most
people, I find, can stand and give a fairly accurate accounting of any single animal. The rather extraordinary happening is when you
take all this information and come up with a specific order of the animals. In a class with outstanding exhibits and generous
variability across exhibits, you can rely on your computer to simply provide the answers. However, when judging very tight classes, either
very good or rather mediocre, you will need to help yourself out with „self
talk“. What I mean is that while you are
judging, you are actually talking to yourself about the exhibits (not out loud, of
course!) You will find this must be a conscious effort, because if you do not, you may
find yourself on the last exhibit without any real information on which to base your
decisions. You will ask your computer to
render a ruling, and the computer will not answer! You might feel if this is the case, then one way
of ordering the dogs is just about as valid as another.
As long as the really good dogs are recognized then you may feel this is
satisfactory. Perhaps there are people who
feel this way. I do not. I enter the ring imaging some all knowing being
hovering over the ring who knows exactly how the dogs should be ordered. Let’s call him „Alva“. I feel my job is to match as closely as possible
what this fictitious being’s decision would be.
I do not pretend to always meet this goal, but I can tell you when I finish
a class in which I am unsure whether I did the right thing, I play it over in my mind many
times until I either decide I did the right thing or I seek to learn more. In judging large entries, I find I must adjust my
thinking process for each class. I may have a
class of a level of mediocrity that structure is my main criterion. With exhibits who are not outstanding in virtue, I
find it an appropriate decision criterion. On
to the next class, full of quality, and I must use much more breed specific criteria. I can begin nitpicking on type features. I think I had to learn this, as I found myself
very perplexed when judging first a class of competitive exhibits in which I was splitting
hairs on type and movement and the next one in which looking at the trees only confused me
when I stood back and saw the forests! One of the biggest shocks you will find when
judging is your susceptibility to politics. I
will define „politics“ to be anything that enters your mind while judging that
isn’t directly associated to the dogs. It
may be a recognized handler, it may be a friend showing the dog, it may be a nice little
old lady who has shown you three exhibits already and you’ve had to put her down each
time. It might be someone giving you an
intense stare, or someone who is clearly clueless, or the driver of the car that cut you
off in traffic on the way to the show. You
will ask yourself questions like, „OK, I like this second dog a little better but the
first one is being shown by a handler – what if that second dog came from a pet store
or some tacky breeder?“ In every
instance, you must realize within yourself your reactions to these matters are wholly and
completely inappropriate in your assessment of the exhibit. A trick I learned fairly early on was to avoid
looking at the handler as much as possible. I
suppose I might come across unfriendly when I do this (although I try to affect a smile as
I greet each exhibit in order to relax the exhibitor) but it certainly works for me. If you find that you end up putting up pet
store bred animals on a regular basis, you can then retire to another interest. But give yourself and the exhibit the benefit of
the doubt. I think to really be a good judge of a breed you must truly know that breed. In this country, at any rate, we seem to have the opinion if we can memorize the standard and we know how to examine the breed, we are pretty much ready to judge. I feel the standard is a valuable reference piece of information, but your challenges in judging will likely not be in the standard. The standard may say, "coat is medium length.“ In the ring you have 6 exhibits with somewhat identical coats and one with a coat which is longer but which one could call medium. Is it a fault? Because it’s different is it a concern? How big of a fault? Give that amount of variation to every describable part of a dog and you have a fairly good understanding of the kinds of challenges you’ll face in the ring. The computer generated images I’ve seen of identical dogs with one faulty feature are probably good teaching techniques but they do not represent real life. You will have a ring of nine dogs with six head types, seven different proportions, three coat types, four sizes, five different ways of moving, and all the variations in between. Unless you have exposed yourself to all the, at minimum, common variations in a breed and know from knowledge which are OK and which are going the wrong way, I can’t imagine how your opinion is going to be of much value to the assembled collection of breeders who brought you their exhibits. I have always been amused that as a judge you
arrive on a red carpet and you feel like you must seek an escape out the bathroom window
when you’re done! The only exceptions I
believe, are those judges who are judging again the next day. (As a specialist judge, I rarely judge the
next day.) If you are attracted to judging
from an ego-satisfying perspective, I recommend other pursuits. Like working out in a gym and going to the beach. Or giving large sums of money to non-controversial
organizations. Judging, like breeding, is an
art and a talent. I tend to think it has
rather fewer tangible rewards. But if you are
the type who has demonstrated an ability for picking stock, you are probably a good
candidate for the vocation. If you have
concerns because you feel it is a big responsibility, then you are probably a very good
candidate. There is no breed which has
too many top flight judges amongst its ranks. |