Santa Barbara Kennel Club 1932 and “Southwest Circuit”

Accompanying this article is the Santa Barbara Kennel Club report from the August 1932 issue of Kennel Review. According to the article, the show was held for the eighth time, which means that the club had held its first show in 1925. There is indeed a catalog from that year, which announces on the cover that it's the first show held by the club — but there is also another catalog from 1919 that proclaims that to be the first show of an identically named club. The probable explanation (we'll never know for certain) is that this was actually a different club that only survived a couple of years, and that those involved in the second club were not aware that there had been another club seven years before. No officers of the first club are listed in the second “first” catalog. (The BIS winners of 1919 and 1920 are among those listed in the present catalog, more than a hundred years later.)

The article laments that such a “splendid effort” on the part of the organizers should have been met with “so lame support from the Fancy,” as reflected in the entry figures. We don't know how many dogs there were that year, but in 1919 and 1925 there had been a few hundred, considerably fewer than in later years. The ultimate winner was the Old English Sheepdog Ch. Kinnelon's Scally Wag (or Scallywag), who won BIS at this show three times: in 1927, 1931 and 1932. He must have been at least six years old when he won in 1932 and probably was a lot older. Note that the OES then competed in the Working Group — there was no Herding Group until several decades later.

On a few occasions the first three placements in the groups are listed, on others all four; sometimes either the breed name or the dog's name is omitted. The winner of the Hound Group, Donald Hostetter, was president of the American Whippet Club much later. The writer signed himself (or herself) only as “Roamer”; we don't know the real name, but the sometimes critical comments are typical of the period.

At the very top of this article is a photo of Mrs. Herbert E. Bennett of Hollywood, California, with her two Old English Sheepdogs, Scallywag and Ch. Piccadilly. Those are pretty distinctive markings Scally Wag (or Scallywag) has on his back, so below is a second photo that's probably of him, although there's no name with the photo and it's used in a “dog paraphernalia” ad — from the West Coast, where Mrs. Bennett lived.

The rest of the page with the Santa Barbara show report is occupied by a “Southwest Circuit” — although if it's what we mean by a circuit these days is questionable, since there are no dates of the shows…