Norwegian Buhund

Breed Notes 16th November 2018 Margaret Deuchar

NORWEGIAN BUHUNDS

The club held its’ first Breed Appreciation Day (called BAD for short) on November 10th in Coventry. Most of you know I am sure that the KC has revamped their judging system. It will not take over from the present system till 2022, until then it will run alongside the present system. The new system is called The Judges Competence Framework; it is applauded by some and hated by others. The idea is to  educate and approve every level of judging from those  who just aspire to judge, right through to open show judges and those who want to go onto gives CCs, judge Groups and BIS. One of the main differences is that in the past it was a numbers game, judges had to judge a certain number of dogs before going up the judges listing and these numbers depended what clubs decided. Some setting the numbers very high, although the numbers did have to be approved by the KC, and with numerically small breeds such as ours, as I have said before not easy to obtain the number of dogs, even though we have not set the number that high. In the future it will be down to the clubs to educate the judges, hence the BAD. Every club has to appoint an Education Co-ordinator who has to organise and run BADs, ours is Lorraine Bolton it is a very onerous task and a number of clubs have found it difficult to find someone to take on the role. The day started with a welcome from our chairman Anne Smith followed by a talk on the breed standard given by Lorraine. It was decided not to use a power point presentation but to use dogs to demonstrate the breed points, shown in the hand outs given to everyone. Millie Lambert brought along her Sturtmoor Eezee Luvva(wheaten) and her Ch Svartkonge av Sturtmoor (Imp Nor JW Sh CM(Black), who Lorraine said she thought were excellent examples of the breed. Lorraine also brought along her own Molly and Odin to show some variations on the standard. Everyone was encouraged to ask questions as the talk went on. Most candidates seemed to approve of this method, saying on the feedback forms that using actual dogs rather than just pictures gave them a better understanding of the breed. An exam followed the talk, it was a multi choice paper based on the breed standard, all the questions had to be submitted to and passed by the KC before the day. I well remember many years ago when I took the breed exam learning the standard by heart, which has always stayed with me, of course no dogs fits the standard completely, then you have to decide which in your opinion is the nearest. I came to dogs from horses so my thing is defiantly construction that allows good movement and certainly in the Buhund if it cannot move freely, it is not capable of arduous work, but as Lorraine stressed one must think of the whole picture not just one thing. After the exam it was time for lunch, the hall we were using was attached to a pub and restaurant so were able to pre-book lunch. While we were having lunch the hall was set up with a show ring, by Jenny Shorer –Wheeler our acting secretary who helped greatly behind the scenes. Then there was a class of 10 Buhunds who were judged by two judges who were having assessments by two CC judges, again to work up the judging ladder. The new system also asks for breed mentors to mentor mentees on three occasions. On this occasion Millie & I were the two mentors and had two mentees each. The mentees must have passed the exam and other KC judging requirements. Millie and I were able to discuss the 10 Buhunds in the ring with the mentees and then they could ask to go over any of the dogs. Heartfelt thanks go to all those club members who provided dogs to be assessed, we could not have done it without you, particularly Millie who has been treated for breast cancer this year, so it was lovely to see her now her treatment has been completed.

The day was deemed to be a success, although as it was out first BAD obviously there will be things we will probably do slightly differently next time.

We were all very pleased to hear that Brenda and Tony Bethell have now moved into their forever home in Eire and wish them every happiness and look forward to hearing about their continued show successes.

Margaret Deuchar   margaretdeuchar@gmail.com

The views expressed in Margaret’s Breed Notes are hers and hers alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Norwegian Buhund Club of the UK