KENNEL NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 23774, 23 March 1939, Page 13

KENNEL NOTES

By

FANCIER.

The Southland Kennel Club will hold its annual meeting next Saturday evening at Everybody’s Hall. All fanciers and their friends are invited to be present and will be entertained, after the meeting, at a social evening. The interesting experiment of providing a class for handlers under 16 years of age was introduced by the Southland Gun Dog Club at its trial on Saturday last. This event was the feature of the afternoon and the judge, Mr A. Fraser, must have had considerable difficulty in sorting out the winning dogs, as there were a New Zealand champion, a South Island champion, and other noted field-trial performers competing and being expertly handled by the juveniles. Master John Lindsay secured a popular win with his father’s wellknown Labrador bitch Lock. The future of the club is assured by fostering the younger element who in years to come will be sure to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. The recent big Auckland Kennel Club show was remarkable for some of the decisions of the six judges in the variety classes. Breeds not hitherto prominently placed at championship shows won well at Auckland, although there have been rumours of dissatisfaction with the placings in some of the allbreed classes. Nevertheless the owners of the winning dogs will be well satisfied and the breeds themselves will receive greater impetus in their bid for popularity. For instance, in the Puppy Stakes of 23 entries, Mrs E. W. James’s Sealyham (a breed which has been singularly disregarded by judges) beat the English setter Weeley Florrie and the Old English sheep dog Shepherd of Wardale. In the novice stakes of 17 entries, Mr W. H. Mears’s whippet Orini Queen was successful, and carried on in the open stakes of 23 entries to beat such well-known show winners as Mr P. W. Willson’s smooth coated fox terrier Riversdale Ruler, Mrs A. Clynes’s Peke ch. Poo-chee of Sedgemoor and Mrs V. Evans’s latest imported Scottish terrier Crich Cavalcade. Best of all breeds in show, however, was Mrs G. Hunt’s Pomeranian Alston Blaze, a win which the perky breed has not achieved for many years. An interesting exhibit at the show which won the trophy for best of any other breed was Mr G. W. Reid’s Afghan hound Firdausi of Kahandapar. At the Rai Valley Show, only about 40 dogs were benched, a factor which will, no doubt, be subject to discussion by the New Zealand Kennel Club, and it would appear likely that this show will lose its championship status. Bulldogs provided the best entry, the show being supported by the South Island Bulldog Club. Best in show was Mr F. A. Elliott’s springer spaniel Brackenfield Sherry, which defeated the cocker, Desma of Ware (imp.) and the Peke ch. Toydom Pung-kee. A feature of the show was the appearance of four Dachshunds, Mrs D. Hopkins winning best of breed with her Kells Brack.

CRUFTS SHOW OF 1939 A glowing tribute to the memory of Mr Charles Crufts was the magnificent entry of 8839 for last month’s Crufts Show. Approximately half the breeds showed an increase, the most notable improvement being in Labradors, which had 724 entries, 90 more than at the last show.

It would appear on the figures of this great show that the breeds at Home, with a few exceptions, enjoy much the same popularity, in comparison, as they do in this country. This cannot be said however, of the terrier section, where at Crufts, Cairns made the biggest entry with 244, followed by bull-terriers 194, Scottish 190, wires 186, and smooths 166. In New Zealand the reverse in order of popularity is usually the case. Toy dogs found Pekes foremost with 321 and a big drop down to Pomeranians with 97 and Griffons 72; there are no Griffons in the the Dominion. Of the sporting varieties, cockers were first with 731 entries, just beating the Labradors with ”24.

The three varieties of Dachshunds totalled 373, but these dogs are not considered to be “sporting” in the same way as spaniels, retrievers, and so on. Golden retrievers had a splendid entry of 238, Irish setters 181, English springers 180, English setters 141, Borzois 70, pointers 68, greyhounds 51, and curlycoated retrievers 31.

Alsatians were easily the most popular of the non-sporting breeds with an entry of 212, followed by Chow-Chows 190, bulldogs 181, Dalmatians 150, Great Danes 145, Welsh corgis 143 (unknown in New Zealand) and Samoyedes 122.

The entries at Crufts show the most popular breeds as being cocker spaniels, Labradors, Pekingese, Cairns, golden retrievers and Alsatians in that order.

Although no figures are available from the New Zealand Kennel Club, it seems fairly certain that the popularity of the various breeds as shown by the entries at shows are cockers, smoothcoated fox terriers, Labradors, bulldogs, collies, wire fox terriers, Scottish terriers, Pekingese and Irish setters.