Yasashiikuma Blog

Last weekend was the Ottawa Kennel Club show and Show of Shows, an invitational show open only to Best in Show winners. Dolly qualified by virtue of her BIS win in Sudbury in August.

At the all-breed show Dragoon was Best of Winners all three days, and is now CHAMPION YASASHIIKUMA LEST WE FORGET. This is an awesome picture, thank goodness for a good photographer to capture this moment.

Dolly set another Canadian record. The Show of Shows is a formal event and each group is judged by three judges who score the dogs. Their scores are tallied and the four group placements announced at the end group by group, from group one through to group 7.

Since I had woken up at 1:30 a.m. with a nightmare, and been up at 6 for the show, it was a VERY long days since the show didn’t even start till 7:30 p.m. First the dignitaries were piped in and introduced, and then the junior handling finals were done before the judging began.

For the herding group we drew Leslie Rogers from BC, and Shari Robinson and Joseph Lobb from Ontario. Since no Cardigan who has won a BIS including Maggie, Admiral and Zack has ever placed at the Show of Shows, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope.

By the time the group placements were being announced it was about 10:40 p.m. and I was starting to doze. I never expected to get called back in. They then announced “For the herding group - we need in no particular order - the Bearded Collie, the Cardigan…..

THE CARDIGAN??? I was awake!!

They announced from 4th place up. I would have been happy with the 4th, but it went to the Shetland Sheepdog - #10 Herding dog in the country. Group 3rd went to the Briard. I was so excited I couldn’t sit still - Dolly was either #2 or #1!!! As it turns out she was #2, losing only to the Bearded Collie - #10 dog all breeds in the country and #2 herding dog.

The formal photo should be in the mail to me tomorrow - and will hopefully hit the blog on the weekend. It was quite the performance getting all the judges, the trophies, the handler and dog all together and looking good. Dolly kept looking back at the line of judges going “Why are you all here??”. But Dean did manage to pull off a nice shot of her…I’ve actually seen it, but it couldn’t be printed in time for me to bring it home.

In the meantime here are a couple of candids that I shot of Dolly and Colin.

This girl has truly had a record breaking year:
April - Best of Winners - CWCCA National specialty
April - Winners Bitch - 1st AOM - Three Trails Regional specialty
All breed record to date:
1 Best in Show - 3 Group 1’s, 6 Group 2’s, 4 Group 3’s, 7 Group 4’s
#26 Herding dog in Canada

She is the first Canadian bred Cardigan to win a BIS in 21 years, and the very first bitch and she is the first Canadian Bred bitch to win a BIS.

And now she is it he ONLY Cardigan to actually take a group placing at the Show of Shows.

Keep climbing Dolly!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Dolly, Dragoon, Show News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.