‍It usually doesn’t take more than a minute or two to realize who in your ring is a veteran at showing dogs and who the beginner is, but often we who judge are dumbfounded to realize someone you were sure was just a beginner has been showing dogs for years!

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‍The rank novice is terrified, of course, and while trying to pose his dog continually replaces the dog’s feet (even when they don’t need it). When it comes to moving the dog, the beginner looks straight ahead (never to where the judge is standing or down to see what the dog is doing).

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‍This is all fully understandable in the first-timer, but we can only wonder how this could have been going on for years and years without a handler realizing that something was wrong - that the dog was losing more often than not, and not because the dog lacked quality. In a good many cases, it is because we who are on the other side of the dog never once get to see what the dog really looks like.

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‍If an aspiring handler never ever learns anything else about handling, he must understand that the picture the handler sees looking down at his dog and the picture the judge sees standing across the ring have absolutely nothing to do with each other!

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‍The handler sees the top of the dog; the judge sees the entire picture, the all-important silhouette - one of the five critical aspects of breed type. In case you’ve forgotten, the five critical elements of breed type are: Breed Character, Silhouette, Head, Movement and Coat.

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‍What the handler of the dog must learn to do is pose the dog so that it comes as close to the ideal picture as possible for the person standing in the middle of the ring. This is what the judge is initially looking for - the dog that comes closest in outline to what the standard asks for.

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‍The handler cannot learn to do this by looking down at the dog (if it’s a small one), or in front or behind the dog (if it’s a big one). The exhibitor must learn what to do in order to get your dog to look like what he wants the judge to see.

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‍What is it that creates the perfect silhouette for a given breed?..