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I was just curious about when you guys think is the best time to stop showing your dogs. How do you determine when your dog has reached the peak of his/her show career?

I just was just curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Thanks.
-Serenity

Lately I have been showing the females just to their ch (I have a breeding problem). If she is really spectacular I will go for her GCH. The boys get their ch then I give them 3-5 shows (or more if I forget) and if they don't get enough GCH points, they go to the stud run or they get FH'd. That being said, I usually keep a very young kennel with dogs rarely reaching 60 days old.

I haven't had any outstanding show prospects lately. If I do get one that just does amazing, I will campaign it to 120 days. Unless it goes a week or two without picking up a single point. And it really depends on the breed. My Zois and Danes get pulled more quickly than my Yorkies or Beagles as those shows need the extra entries.

It depends on the dog and the breed.

Typically once a dog has finished their championship I review their show record and the current competition to see if I'm going to go for Grand Champion.

While that's going on I will keep an eye on how easily they are winning the GCH points. If I have a dog that is consistently placing BOB or BOS in a breed with nice entry numbers, then I will continue showing toward Bronze GCH level. If the dog excels at this level then I'll keep going for Silver. (those are few and far between.)
These are the dogs that might get shown through 120 days.

An 'average' dog that earns their championship with WD/WB, but no or few BOB/BOS - I keep them separated out for specialties and stacking; but they aren't actively campaigned/shown.

In some of my rarer breeds - its hard enough getting entries for CH that very few get campaigned for GCH.

If I'm doing good with my entries I will try and have some of my better dogs campaigning for the Group board also.


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Last edited by rhondacline on 10/27/2015 11:59:18 AM

I try and campaign all my dogs to CH, the ones that obviously aren't going to make the grade are FH'd as soon as the penny drops that they won't finish.

I then see which dogs are likely to gain GCH without too much trouble and campaign them.

If a particular dog is a 'flyer' then I'll push hard to gain a GCH medal.

I may session for obedience too and if I've started training a dog that makes CH/GCH but isn't 'medal' material I'll retire that dog and train/show up through the obedience titles.

This is for my competitive kennels, other kennels with some/no breed rankings or competition are different;

Bitches, I show until they finish and as soon as they finish I usually breed them unless I had shows lined up and they had handlers on them, sometimes Ill see if they get GCH points. If they get a good amount I may just go ahead and finish their GCH. Rarely do I campaign a bitch for group rankings

Males, I almost never keep a dog that isn't shown. Depending on how fast they finish and how nice they are, is whether or not I show them to a grand. If they arent fantastic I'll use them for stud, sell them or forever home them after championship. For really nice dogs, I go as long as they win. I just got done showing a dog literally till he was no longer able to show at 120 days (winning BIS's at such an old age). But often times I don't get a nice enough dog since breeds are always climbing in SOP

For me there are a lot of things that I take into account to determine how long I show my dogs for:

- Bitch vs Dog
- Show results
- Breed ranking
- All-Breed ranking
- Time
- Balance

Bitch vs Dog:
If I get show-quality pups born I always frown slightly if they are born as girls lol. I prefer my bitches to focus solely on breeding so I’m quite reluctant to show females. And I think it’s because of that reason that I seem to be ‘blessed/cursed’ with getting HEAPS of top SOP pups born as females in all of my kennels lol. So I usually session them and show them until they attain their CH title, then I move them on to breeding as soon as that title is in front of their names. The only time I will show to GCH with a bitch is if they are consistently taking BOB or BOS in every show. Then I will let them get their GCH title and move them on to breeding.

It is a VERY rare occurrence for me to Campaign a bitch – not to say that I haven’t done it before lol. The most disappointing thing about Campaigning a bitch is that if you show her every single day from 30 days – 120 days of age it means that by the time you breed her and she drops her first litter at 126 days of age her breeding potential and ‘wow’ is pretty much over. The reason for this is that the breeds SOP has quite often improved a lot in that 90 days and therefore her pups look ‘mediocre’. Whereas if you had bred her straight after winning her CH or GCH title her pups would look stunning compared to the current dogs of the time.

With males – I try to show every show quality male if I have the sessions available since their show career doesn’t impact on their breeding life. Once they get their CH title I look at their results and if they don’t impress me they get withdrawn from shows and moved to the ‘Studs’ run. If I like their results – they get to go for GCH. Most of the time I can tell who I’m going to Campaign within their first 10 days of showing.

Show results:
When it comes to choosing who to allow to obtain their GCH title I always look at their show results to see if they are regularly placing in Group. If they do place in Group on a regular basis then it’s so much easier and quicker to get their GCH titles.

Campaign worthy dogs for me should be taking an ‘in Show’ placement at least once a fortnight, and ‘in Group’ placements several times a week for me to consider them for Campaigning. Taking BOB isn’t enough for me to campaign them.

Breed ranking:
I constantly assess the top dogs of each of my breed every few days to see just how my dogs are placing compared to the other kennels in the breed. I will continue to show a dog who is in the top 5 of the breed until he drops below 5.

All-Breed Ranking:
Up until recently I haven’t had many dogs who really ‘smashed it’ at the all-breed level. Until I got a stunning Azawakh boy who was in the top 5 All Breed dogs for an entire month – and it definitely felt like a massive achievement to have bred such a stunning dog. I continued to show him until he was 120 days old.

All Time Breed Ranking:
The ‘All Time Top Breed’ list is really important to me – I love seeing my best dogs being able to shine for eternity on that list – immortalised forever! If I notice that one of my current dogs has weasled its way onto the bottom of the list I will generally keep showing til they reach 120 days old to see how high I can get them on that list.

Time:
Sadly as the weather warms up here in Australia it means that I have less time to spend on SD – as honestly I’d much rather be outside enjoying the gorgeous weather than sitting inside on a laptop lol. (In Winter I spend a lot more time on SD!). Plus working in a vet clinic means that the hotter months are our busiest times of the year as more people are out and about with their dogs and more dangers are lurking which means more pets get sick or injured in Spring and Summer – which leads to working super long hours resulting in less time for SD. It’s only just starting to heat up here and I’ve literally hardly had any time for SD – so I have cut down heaps on how much I’ve been showing lately.

Balance:
My bank balance is probably the criteria that I think about the least as these days 4/5 of my accounts are above $10K. But still if I don’t think it’s worth it to show a dog – I will remove them from shows to save money.

My worst ‘hate’ is when you have a dog that just seems destined to ‘never finish’. I hate the fact that you’ve spent money on food and sessions and countless show entry fees for them to just flunk in the ring. For these dogs I used to just bulk out entries and give them un-earned points in order for them to ‘win’ their CH titles. But now I just FH them.