Editorial: September 29, 2023

The dog show has been cancelled for the weekend, owing to foul weather. Psyched by things doggy, you decide it’s been a few years since you’ve gone through the catalogs that take up so much room on your bookshelves and have been collecting dust. Discarding old dog-show catalogs seems the best way to make room, as they take up valuable real estate on your bookshelves. You tell yourself that with Facebook, Twitter and other new means of gathering information, it’s time. So you make yourself comfortable and start going through those old and dusty catalogs. You remember when you got to the dog show at dawn, checking the catalog to see who and what your competition would be. No matter how many shows were held on the weekend, each club had to print its own catalog. So you start to reread notes in those catalogs made years ago, before the advent of cluster shows, after which the American Kennel Club changed the rules and allowed clubs to print catalogs with all the shows given on one weekend. But with so many catalogs, your bookshelves sort of sag from all their weight. So the process starts with taking the first few off the shelves in what you think will be a cleansing long in the making. Those catalogs are dog eared, with copious notes and opinions about each entry written on the margins of the pages. So you start to reread notes in those catalogs made years ago: #5 bad head. #7 bad behind. #9 very nice dog, hate the owner. #11 would like to breed to him. # 15 what judge gave him a major? Overall opinion of the entry: “I’ve given away better than what I saw in the ring today.” You chuckle at the notes for your brilliance or arrogance or just plain stupidity. There was a secondary reason to hold onto these catalogs: They acted as address and telephone books, because there was no Facebook to find the person you wanted to contact. Then you peruse the catalogs from the shows where you won your first points, majors, breeds, group placements, groups firsts and that most memorable first Best in Show. Now is the 10-minute break; you wash your dust-ridden hands as you relive your past glories and retrieve a cardboard box to put your soon-to-be-discarded catalogs in the trash. Returning to the scene of the crime, having relived all those good times, next come the catalogs from the dog shows you attended in foreign countries. That’s a no-brainer — after all, who can read Mandarin or Russian? They get the pitch into the cardboard box. You spent the day going down memory lane and then the realization comes to you: This is my life — how can I part with any of these things? So you look into the cardboard carton that now contains four dog-show catalogs that are getting the pitch. They all have one thing in common: someone else’s last name. But don't worry: The statute of limitations is up.