Good luck to all of you travelling to LKA on Sunday 10th December. I had hoped to attend as the official photographer for the judge, Jenny Macro, but will not now be attending. Michael has had to have heart surgery so I will be staying home helping him recuperate. He is doing fine and is at home recuperating. We are taking things slowly, one day at a time. I can see improvement on a daily basis. Joan Cowie has posted that she has retired from her day job after 42 years, which she was looking forward to, no doubt, but unfortunately Jimmy is not well and is in the hospital in Aberdeen. We wish them the best. At the recent Kennel Club of Guernsey Winter show, Ulmarra Bollinger PdH went Best of Breed and 1st in the Hound Group under judge Mrs D Holman. Later he was chosen Reserve Best in Show under judge Jenny Miller. He is owned by Wendy Marshall of Guernsey and Stuart Mottershaw of Jersey. At the upcoming Swansea & DCC Open Show there will be Saluki Classes. Luke Johnston (Danluke) will be judging the breed with Hound AV and Group judge, Jocelyn Duddell (Canerikie). Stake and Best in Show judge is Raye Parry (Gwynsias). Date of show is Saturday 10th February 2018. Schedules can be downloaded at ‘onlineshowentry’ or email the Hon Sec at paisey1@hotmail.com or telephone 01792 310622. Postal entries close 22nd January, online entries close on the 29th January. John Hudson has kindly sent me ‘ his annual’ Year in review: “ I’ve had a look at the numbers of Salukis entered at the 23 shows where we had CC’s last year. It turns out that the average number of dogs entered over the year is 52.3 . This compares with 53.1 in 2014, 49.7 in 2015 and 53.6 in 2016. So it looks as if we have reached a plateau of an average entry of around 50 Salukis. Previous to 2014 the numbers varied between 60 and 75 for several years. This year, among the 24 judges (one for each show except the SGHC Championship Show where we had two) we had only 10 Breed Specialist (BS) judges, including 1 from overseas, and 14 All Rounders (AR), including another 4 from overseas. Taking the Breed Specialists first, the average number of Salukis entered per show was 62.3. However, this included Crufts and the two Club Championship Shows which generally attract untypically large entries. Removing these three shows from the calculation gives an average of 50.2. On the other hand, the average entry for the All Rounders was 41.5. For the five overseas judges the figure was 55.6. The lowest entry of the year was 26 at the Hound Association of Scotland, followed by 27 at Bournemouth and the City of Birmingham and 28 at South Wales. All these were judged by All Rounders from the UK. Crufts topped the entry list with 124, followed of course by the two Breed Championship Shows. Next came an entry of 75 at LKA followed by 69 at Southern Counties and 62 at Birmingham National. The judges for these were, respectively, BS, AR from overseas and another AR. From all this one might tentatively conclude that Saluki exhibitors prefer to enter under overseas judges, even though most of them are All Rounders, but they are not very keen on All Rounders from the UK. However, other factors are involved of course, like the state of British roads, the price of petrol and the weather. Next year, when we have only 23 judges as the SGHC will have just one judge at its Championship Show, we have more Breed Specialists (13 including one from overseas) and fewer All Rounders (10 including two from overseas). One of the overseas judges is KJ Jarvinen who, according to the FCI web-site, is an All Rounder who started with Beagles, and later, Scottish Terriers and West Highland Whites but whose main breed is Boxers. He is now qualified to judge all breeds. He judged Salukis at Bath a few years ago without CCs. The other two judges are Cathy Smith at the NSC Championship Show and Age Gjetnes at WKC, both of whom we have met before.” Any news would be most appreciated as I try to keep these notes vibrant.
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