My young girl (11 1/2 months old) has been doing pretty well in the ring for me. 11 BP awards, 2 Puppy Gundog wins, BPIS and had a couple of firsts at champ show. However, there is one person with a pup 1 week older who has only been in the ring with my girl once. If she is entered at the show I am at she brings the dog beautifully trimmed and presented but decides to withdraw her before we go in. Now ok I do know my girl is the better dog but we don't know what the judge is going to think when we get in the ring and I have now been denied 6 JW points by not having enough in the class. This is a person that has only been showing for approx 18 months and in my opinion does not know the meaning of good sportmanship.

Strange person - unless she has other dogs entered as well it must be costing her a packet............entry fee, travel etc .......all just to be ill mannered and sour grapesish.

How annoying! I often go to shows with a friend, my dog is a better dog than hers and 9 times out of 10 she will beat my friend's boy, but every so often he does beat my girl, so it's silly of this woman not to take her dog in the ring after going to the trouble of entering and preparing her.

If she is relatively new to showing does she realise entries make Junior warrant points valid ? Many people don't.Why don't you talk to her ? Explain that judges have different views and that one day her dog might move better , or there might be a reason why the dogs are placed differently . I have had this for years when I first took a dog out and sometimes one won , and sometimes the other did .

Over the years I've heard of this many times, such a shame.

Oh no, she is quite aware of what JW points are and how they are gained. She told me at the weekend that she isn't going to show her anymore because of her faults so I made a point of saying oh well I won't see her again then will I. Just wanted to make a point because I just feel so cheated. Lets face it we have all been beaten. I used to be delighted when I beat a dog that was regularly beating mine.

Someone will probably correct me on this but I thought under KC rules that if you take a dog to a show, "present" it in this manner, I.e. Have it ready to go in ringside then do not take it in without a valid reason (lameness or the like) is against the rules.  They have to firstly inform the ring steward why they are withdrawing officially.  And not wanting to compete against a certain exhibit is not a valid excuse!

Not having checked the rules, I've often been in the situation that a dog I have brought is not taken in the ring -usually it has been because it is a younger, shyer dog and I spot the judge being too harsh in handling, and then I will not risk it. Each time we've just told the steward the dog is not coming in, nothing else.

On the flip side, I am pretty certain that way back when I won my very first BOB, the one dog that could have beaten mine (and back then probably would, as mine was inexperienced as was the handler) was not taken into the ring because her owner WANTED me to win to encourage me to keep showing!

It is true that if there you should enter but there are a 101 reasons you may wish to withdraw particularly with a pup, it could even be because you felt unwell and the pup would not be shown by another handler.

Write to the KC awards department and tell them about the systematic withdrawal of this dog. Back it up with witnesses and catalogue data.

The rule was brought in to ensure that cheap JW weren't made but in the same token Im sure manipulation of awards is also frowned upon.
I would also write to the committees of the shows, especially if they are members.

Bad show I feel - even worse than the dirty practice of entereing 3 of your dogs in every class with handlers instructed to make sure a certain one wins.
People must be really desperate to stoop that low...but then again I believe people buy CCs, BIS etc rosettes on Ebay..sad :-(

On a similar note I sold a bitch many years ago to someone who bred from it and competed with me with her pick of litter. Mine beat hers often so she started to misspell my bitches name...my affix of the mother of her puppy.
It seemed a coincidence at first but it happened everytime and with many different spellings...the KC acted and told her she could be disqualified...it stopped!

This does seem an odd thing to do. Why does it matter if your dog beats hers or the other way round - they are just puppies - anything could happen!
I've only withdrawn once from a class when we had attended the show and it was just a few weeks ago. We got to the show took her in to settle her before her class and realised that she was in season when she was followed to the door by a German Shepherd with its nose stuck to her bum! We told the steward we were there but we weren't going in as she was in season and we hadn't realised and that was it really. The steward did ask if we were sure we wanted to withdraw but I really don't think it's fair to show when they are in season, either to the bitch who may not be at her best or to other dogs in the same class or following classes ( we showed boys before and it was so annoying when they went round with their nose stuck to the ground because someone had shown and in season bitch before us!!)

I know of someone that when she has a youngster out she drags and I do mean drags her old dogs out and has a couple of people handling them to ensure 3 in a class. One of her oldies had had an operation for cancer and still had his stitches in!!!

One of her oldies had had an operation for cancer and still had his stitches in!!!

That's outrageous. How could she dare do that to that poor boy!

At open shows only seen plenty of people take a number of exhibits into a class, others handling and they have been instructed not to move them well or a lame exhibit has been taken in.. What did make me laugh once was an exhibitor, entered a number of classes with their dogs in order to get JW points and it turned out other exhibitors and dogs on the day won the classes!

What is the obsession with a JW anyway? Some dogs to few shows and get it easily, it's the ones being dragged to 2 shows every weekend up and down the country for points, these are young dogs and need to be allowed to enjoy it all.. I've seen a heck of a lot of dogs with JW who do dilch once they hit PG, very few make up to CH's.. Crufts for life eh?
This isn't aimed at you, just my personal thoughts :-)

Such a shame Alison, unfortunately it takes all sorts of people to make the world go round and it's not pleasant that there's such a difficult exhibitor who feels you are too much competition for her.  Be the bigger person and rise above it.  If her bitch has such obvious faults, why has she bothered to get her ready for the show, enter her, travel to the venue and then withdraw - hasn't she anything better to do with her time?

Your girl is beautiful, she has done really well so far and I'm sure she'll continue to do so for you.

I am very much a novice in the show scene and mainly stick to Open Shows but very much enjoy my days out, if we come home with a rossette it is such a bonus.  I am determined not to allow myself to get too serious/stressed out about showing as it is so much about peoples opinions especially the judge of the day.  It should be an enjoyable day out for both us and the dogs.

Saw a woman take three dogs into the ring one dog still in its crackers, did laugh, the judge gave the class to the dog with the crackers the owner stomped out of the ring with her three dogs and two handlers and would not enter the other classes she had entered.

On a serious note it does seem to be an award of little value which is a shame for those who win on merit. If you have enough dogs and the money to drive around the country you can all but buy your JW.

> On a serious note it does seem to be an award of little value which is a shame for those who win on merit.

And such a shame that some have dragged this potentially prestigeous award in the mud.

My little bitch has 50 JW points at 13 months.....the required 25 at a few days short of 9 months and ALL but the required 3 at open shows gained in classes of 20+ at Championship shows.
A Junior Champion for sure, but now looked upon - because of these dirty players - as worthless by many.

Sad really :-(

> What is the obsession with a JW anyway?

It's nice to get, as in my breed we get fewer JW than champions.  It is almost impossible to get the 3 in a class at Open level, and most of the points that the two I have with the title were gained in Post Graduate as we rarely have enough youngsters on the ground with under 50 pups registered annually in two out of the last three years.

When we had to win 10 open show points we didn't have any JW winners for several years.

Most of the top winning youngsters in our breed do not get the title.

A Junior Champion for sure, but now looked upon - because of these dirty players - as worthless by many.


Was certainly not tarring all with the same brush and indeed know there is many a J.W. awarded to deserving dogs - in my own breed (and Brainless) they are indeed deserved and we have few classes for junior dogs where they will be 3 present at open show hardly ever and not that often at Championship shows either.

That's on heck of an achievement tooolz! :)

In my breed, getting a JW is harder (MUCH harder) than getting a Champion, and in fact since the four varieties of BSD were split into four as opposed to count as one single breed, there has never been a Malinois JW. Not one.

In many ways I think it will be as hard for a popular breed and a rare breed though, as the popular breed has to win in huge classes and the rarer breed will have to win when there is competition, which there never may be. But the rarer breed can then cheat. HOWEVER, not having ever bothered to really read up on Junior Warrants (due to it being so hard in my breed) I now checked the KC rules. I was VERY surprised to realise you can get points in any class. I had always assumed it was just in puppy and junior classes. If they made this a rule, then it would instantly stop people from bringing out fully adult dogs of poor quality just to make the numbers up. Personally though, I will never again show a Malinois as a pup as it seems to just ruin them forever and it's not worth having great puppy wins and then for the next 10 years or so have a dog you can't show again -such a difficult breed. From now on I will wait until at least 18 months to 2 years before entering the first ever show. Been burnt too many times! Papillons on the other hand, no problem.

> because her owner WANTED me to win to encourage me to keep showing!

Ahh yes, you mean a TRUE dog person.  :-)

I won my first JW with my boy at 9 1/2 months, he finished at 18 months with 54 points. Luckily, when he came out at 6 months, there were alot of shows together that we did, and being in a numerically large breed he did win well. Although at the open shows, we did have one person who used to not put her dog in if we were there, she also rang me a couple of times to see if I had entered a certain champ show and which class I had entered! The last straw was when she filed a complaint to a show secretary that my dog was over 12 months old on the day we were showing (he was actually a day under on the first day of the show!) when he won his last puppy class. Some people........ now it just makes me laugh.

As was said above, it is nice to have the 'JW' title, my youngest has just won hers at 13 months, but for me, this means we can not worry about qualifying for Crufts, and also as she is now a bit rangy, I leave her for as long as it takes before I bring her back out

I still regret not knowing about it with Henry, I showed him very little as a puppy not being addicted quite yet, and when he won the 2 Champ classes and CC at 14 months, someone said 'that's 6 more JW points' and I had to ask what one was. Sadly he only got 22 points, 21 of which were between 12 and 18 months, so if only I'd entered a few more puppy classes I know he would have done it. I still get tempted to put in a claim including all his BOB where there were 3 or more in the challenge, I feel that this should count as if it were another class, I know it doesn't but it should! If I could count that he would have had about 30 points. Of course none of it matters now it was so many years ago and I have lost him and would give any number of JWs and CCs to have him back, but it would have been nice at the time!