A Dog's Life

Lacey Does It Again

Two weekends ago, Lacey got a Group 4 from Donald Sturz at the Kokomo KC. Last weekend she got a Group 3 from Gary Doerge at the Saturday Oak Ridge KC show, then a Group 2 at the Sunday show under June Penta.

Yesterday at the Rolla Missouri KC show, Lacey got a Group 1 under Polly Smith. Talking to my lovely bride as she was driving back to the holy city of Corydon, Indiana for this weekend's Southern Indiana KC shows, I joked about this nice progression of wins and said that Lacey ought therefore to win Best in Show today.

She did.

The breed and the Hound Group were judged by Susan St. John Brown and the Best in Show competition was judged by William Bailey. Our winsome girl bested all the other dogs competing today to take the big red, white and blue ribbon. That's the fourth Best in Show she's won in her illustrious career, bringing her some 600 dogs closer to becoming the top winning Borzoi bitch in history. We're very proud of her.

Pointless Belle

As I proudly showed you earlier, Belle won her first point at the Lexington KC show a few weeks ago. Today we received in the mail a nice letter from Joyce Adderton, Event Operations Supervisor for the AKC:

Upon cheecking the records of the above event, your dog has been found ineligible to compete in the class indicated, and all awards have been disallowed based upon AKC's Rules Applying to Dog Shows:

Chapter 3, Section 7: Dog not individually registered with The American Kennel Club as of the date of the closing of entries for this show.

We sent in the papers for her at the beginning of the month, but we still haven't received the blue slip with her registration information. Poor Belle loses the point she won, which now goes to the Reserve Winners Bitch. It would seem as well that she can't be shown either at the Echo Hills KC shows - which closed yesterday - in a couple of weeks. Poor pretty girl!

Turning Back the Clock

John Kerry, trying to justify his breathtakingly dopey idea of deferring accepting his party’s nomination, calls the Republicans historically ignorant:

"Once again, the Republicans don't know history, and they don't know facts," he said. "The truth is that it used to be that the convention, after nomination, traveled to the home or the state of the nominee to inform them they've been nominated. Woodrow Wilson was at his house in Princeton, N.J.; Harry Truman was in Independence," Mo., he said. "They're trying to make an issue out of something that they're surprised by, because . . . they're very upset someone might have a way of neutralizing their advantage."

It’s Senator Kerry who doesn’t know his history in one aspect: Truman accepted the Democratic nomination in a speech to the Philadelphia convention. That fact took me only one minute to confirm.

However, it’s true that up until, I think, the 1932 Democratic convention nominees did not actually appear at the convention to accept the nomination. A delegation traveled to the nominee to inform him of the party’s decision. From somewhere in the recesses of my memory comes a cartoon of such a delegation winking and nudging each other as though they were going to surprise the lucky candidate with the Publishers Clearinghouse Grand Prize.

If Senator Kerry would really like to hearken back to the traditions of the old days, perhaps he shouldn’t personally campaign at all. Up until William Jennings Bryan’s energetic campaign in 1896, I seem to recall that nominees didn’t go out on the hustings themselves. For example, Lincoln depended on Republican “Wide Awake” clubs to drum up the vote.

Hell, considering Senator Kerry’s not-very-winning personality, maybe he’d do better to run a “front-porch” campaign, sitting in a rocking chair in front of his Beacon Hill townhouse. Or the Fox Chapel farm. Or the Ketchum, Idaho ski chalet. Or the Nantucket estate. Or the 23-room Georgetown townhouse…

A Movie Not Made

Let's imagine it's November, 1944. Allied troops are bogged down in Northern Europe and Italy. A film maker, disgusted by the progress of the war in Europe, American war strategy ("Europe first") and American culture in general decides to make a movie to "speak truth to power" and counteract the propaganda coming from Hollywood.

Let's call his movie Celsius 127, a scathing documentary suggesting that President Roosevelt lied about keeping America out of the European conflict and withheld vital intelligence from commanders in Hawaii in order that the Japanese attack would be all the more devastating. With that, he could do what he always wanted to do: commit American troops and America's fortune against Germany.

Celsius 127 would relentlessly focus on every shortcoming of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Corps. It would show that American troops were ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-supplied, slaughtered in pointless attacks, guilty of atrocities against unarmed enemy troops that surrendered.

Perhaps Celsius 127 could begin with Roosevelt's speech to the 1940 Democratic convention, pledging that the U.S. would not participate in foreign wars and would not send the army or navy to fight in foreign lands. This could, of course, be followed by a shot of Secret Service men breaking a photographer's camera because he took a picture of the President in a wheelchair.

And, oh, what a cavalcade of images could follow!

· Bodies of American troops blown to pieces on the beaches of Normandy or in the Hurtgen Forest.

· Burned out Sherman tanks, unable to repel or withstand the German Tigers.

· The corpses of Italian prisoners of war, stacked like cordwood, massacred by troops of the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division in Biscari, Sicily. The officers of the 45th had heard a speech by Patton telling them to kill the enemy and that the only good German was a dead one.

· Soldiers in Luxembourg disabled by trench foot from inadequate boots.

· Race riots in Detroit in June, 1943. 34 people were killed. In the tense time before violence broke out, one white man said, "I'd rather see Hitler and Hirohito win the war than work beside a nigger on the assembly line."

· Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, speaking on throwing the blacks out of Washington D.C., "I'm getting him used to moving so that after the war he will be ready to move to West Africa."

· A grieving father reading a letter he wrote to General George Marshall, "Your card of sympathy, received yesterday, to the widow was about the last straw. In exactly six months from the date of his enlistment, he was landed in France, ill prepared and was immediately sent across France to Belgium and I presume with Hodges' First Army and was mowed down like rats. My family feels that he was actually murdered for lack of sufficient training."

· And this from a bereaved wife, "I received word today that my husband was killed in action. I hope that those who are responsible for his return to active duty are satisfied that four small children are left without their good father and I without my husband. God's curses on all of them."

What would you say about a society with these pathologies? No better than the Nazi Germany it was seeking to overthrow, right? I mean, a movie like this would give us another point of view, one carefully avoided by the War Information Board and censored out of letters from the front. What awards would it win? What plaudits from the culture editor of the New York Times?

Of course, Roosevelt did not maneuver the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. Everything else is true.

News From the Show Scene

My lovely bride and Miss Lacey traveled this weekend to the holy city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the Oak Ridge KC shows. Lacey was Best of Breed both days. On Saturday, Gary Doerge gave her a Group 3 and today June Penta gave her a Group 2. She's now about 900 all-breed points away from being the top-winning Borzoi bitch in history.

We now have learned that as I indicated earlier, Blackjack, Lacey's current rival in all-breed competition, is no longer competing. It seems he came back from a show, pissed on a sofa, then snapped at another dog and put a hole in her. Off to the vet's for some alterations.

As of the last AKC results update, Lacey is at 795 (and about 1100 to date; it's been a good May) with her next closest rival being campaigned, Thor (Ch. Rising Star Wing of the Storm), almost 450 behind at 354. It's a long year, though, and anything can happen.

This Is Scary

Here's a picture of the archetypical German Shepherd Dog, from the 1949 edition of the AKC Complete Dog Book:

And here's a picture of the current Number 1 German Shepherd Dog, Ch. Kaleef's Genuine Risk:

Here's the 1943 breed standard on the hindquarters of a GSD:

The angulation of the hindquarter also consists ideally of a series of sharp angles as far as the relation of the bones to each other is concerned, and the thighbone should parallel the shoulder blade while the stiflebone parallels the upper arm. The whole assembly of the thigh, viewed from the side, should be broad, with both the thigh and stifle well muscled and of proportionate length, forming nearly as possible a right angle. The metacarpus (the unit between the hock joint and the foot commonly and erroneously called the hock) is strong, clean and short, the hock joint clean-cut and sharply defined.

And here's the current breed standard on the hindquarters of a GSD:

The whole assembly of the thigh, viewed from the side, is broad, with both upper and lower thigh well muscled, forming as nearly as possible a right angle. The upper thigh bone parallels the shoulder blade while the lower thigh bone parallels the upper arm. The metatarsus (the unit between the hock joint and the foot) is short, strong and tightly articulated. The dewclaws, if any, should be removed from the hind legs. Feet as in front.

Not much difference, is there? Yet we have two very different dogs. O tempora! O mores!

Statistics for April

The latest statistics are now available at Canine Chronicle. In all-breed competition, Lacey is currently second with 738 points, just behind Blackjack (Ch. Po Dusham Blackjack) with 762. In breed competition, Lacey is currently sixth.

She is very unlikely to be Number 1 in breed competition this year, but may back into Number 1 in all-breed. We have heard that Blackjack might not be shown any longer, in which case there's a long drop to Number 3. Lacey's totals are well behind last year's, but so far she's only been in 22 shows in 2004 versus 39 at this time in 2003. Extrapolating her current performance to 39 shows, she's doing about the same in 2004 as in 2003 in both breed and all-breed.

An Odd Coincidence

The link in a previous post on the Halifax harbor disaster mentions that one of the ships damaged in the explosion was the cruiser HMS Highflyer.

In another harbor disaster thirty years later, the SS Grand Camp exploded at dockside in Texas City, Texas after a fire ignited its cargo of ammonium nitrate. The blast and subsequent tidal wave killed nearly 600 people. A ship in a nearby dock, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, was set ablaze and hours later blew up with even greater force. The name of the ship? The SS High Flyer.

It's Class Intent That's Important

Headline: "German film's political message sets Cannes abuzz"

A German film about a group of young people who dream of changing the world has won a 10-minute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival, making it a frontrunner for the Palme d'Or best film award.

Director Hans Weingartner's film, The Edukators, adds to the strong political current running through this year's festival, from US director Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 to striking workers in the streets.

The 28-year-old director and cast pulled up in the beat-up blue van that features in the film, before dancing their way up the red carpet. Inside, a rapturous reception awaited them.

"It's incredible," gasped actor Daniel Bruehl of Good Bye, Lenin! fame, as he lapped up the applause.

The first German film to compete in Cannes in 11 years, it tells the story of three idealistic youths who break into rich people's villas and move their furniture around, leaving behind notes with messages such as: "You have too much money."

Their aim is not to steal from the rich to give to the poor but to make their targets question their privileges.

Afterwards, the audience drove off in their chauffeured limousines to dinner in fashionable restaurants where, strictly enforced by clipboard Nazis, non-A-list people were kept behind velvet ropes.

It's Only a Little Bastard

Now that a sarin shell has gone off in Iraq (story in the New York Times, so you know it's true), expect to hear the following explanations from the pro-Saddam Bund:

- There wasn't enough of it to justify overthrowing Saddam.
- It was a CIA plant.
- The story was intended to divert attention from the Abu Gharib massacre.
- This is George Bush's "May Surprise."
- But Hans Blix inspected that one personally!
- It was a Halliburton sarin shell.

Curioser and Curiouser

Seismological data indicate that the force of the train station explosion in North Korea was considerably greater than originally thought:

Japan's Kyodo News, citing numerous diplomatic sources in Vienna, reported Saturday that the force of April 22's train explosion at the North's Ryonchon Station was about that of an earthquake measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, which would have required about 800 tons of TNT -- about eight times that officially announced by North Korea.

The sources referred to earthquake figures gotten by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency had previously reported that the destructive power of the blast was that of 100 tons of dynamite, and explained that the accident was caused by "the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and tank wagons".

The CTBTO feels that the cause of the explosion may differ from the North's explanation, and noted the explosion might have been caused by highly-explosive materials like military-use fuel going off. Officials at the CTBTO plan to look into the causes of the accident.

The CTBTO said the explosion at Ryongchon was observed using seismological observation stations in Korea, Japan, the United States and Russia. The stations were built to detect nuclear tests.

The NK story was too preposterous to be believed anyway. Sure, a train filled with ammonium nitrate just happened to run into a train filled with fuel oil and a spark just happened to set it off.

The magnitude of the blast has precedent, however. On December 6, 1917 the freighter Mont Blanc - carrying 2,300 tons of picric acid (2,4,6-trinitrophenol), 200 tons of TNT and high-octane fuel - detonated in Halifax harbor after a collision with another ship. 1,500 people were killed in the explosion, the largest before Hiroshima.

Guys I Could Like

I have never seen "South Park" and have no intention of doing so. However, its creators and I seem to have something in common:

Though "South Park" has lambasted everyone from Ben Affleck to Steven Spielberg, there's only one celebrity who should take it personally: "Barbra Streisand we pretty much hate," Stone says.

He explains the disliking for Babs goes back to 1993, when the singer said she would never perform in Colorado - where she has a mansion - if a controversial ban on gay rights was passed by that state's legislature.

"We're both from Colorado and it was like, '[Bleep] you, lady! Who the hell do you think you are that you're gracing us with your presence?' She is the worst example of a celebrity who should just keep her mouth shut. She sounds like an idiot."

They haven't done any Streisand-bashing on "South Park" in a few years but, says Stone, "Maybe we should come back to it. People do want it."

"People do want it." Barbra Streisand: a uniter, not a divider.

A Big Mistake

The great and good Chuck Simmins informs me that he now has comments available on his fine blog. I wrote back telling him he was making a big mistake.

Apart from my one moment of weakness, this poor little blog has not had and will not have comments available. How shall I put it? It's like inviting a bunch of strangers into your house and having them raid your refrigerator. Is my bandwidth to be consumed by every passing stranger who has diarrhea of the keyboard (to use my lovely bride's felicitous phrase)? Just look at some of the nut-cases and obsessive commenters on other blogs and you may understand, while still not approve, my stance.

Besides, almost all the posts would read "Comments (0)." Too humiliating for words.

News From the Show Scene

Lacey, Belle and my lovely bride traveled to Kokomo, Indiana this weekend for three days of shows. Lacey was Best of Breed all three days; she got a Group 2 on Friday (Northeast Indiana KC) under Ralph Lemcke and a Group 4 today (Kokomo KC) under Dr. Donald Sturz.

Belle wasn't entered in any shows; her trip was mostly for socialization. She was entered in a match on Friday night and came away as Best Adult in Match. A nice award to a very nice girl.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee next weekend, then shuttling between St. Louis and Corydon, Indiana on Memorial Day weekend. Hey, wasn't Lacey supposed to be semi-retired?

Congratulations

... To Smarty Jones, who won the Preakness just now. If he can win the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, he'll be the first Triple Crown winner in 26 years. What makes it interesting is that the Triple Crown consists of three very different races, from the short (1 3/16 mile) Preakness to the long (1 1/2 mile) Belmont.

By the way, there's also Triple Crowns for trotters - the Hambletonian, Yonkers Trot and the Kentucky Futurity - as well as for pacers - the Cane Pace, the Little Brown Jug and the Messenger Stakes. And if you think it's been a long time between drinks for the thoroughbred Triple Crown, trotting hasn't had one since 1972!

Gratuitous Dog Picture

The lovely, if slightly muddy, Belle (Soyara's Southern Belle) taking her first point at the Lexington KC show. The judge is Mr. Michael Canalizo.

A Hoax Exposed

The American Assembler thought it would be funny to post “a bit of amusing banter” on a correlation of IQ and presidential voting in 2000. Much excitement on the left side of the blogosphere, from Preparation H alumnus Matthew Yglesias (proving that a $30,000 a year education doesn’t impart wisdom) to one Jan Herman, a microcephalic version of Frank Rich but with worse hydrophobia.

Steve Sailer has blown this “study” into tiny pieces. So destroyed, when will it show up in Doonesbury?

The Jungle Conquered

The lawn has been subdued. Between a bent axle on my riding mower, the bloody National and a solid week of rain, I was unable to mow for the first time this year the grass on our three and a half acres. It grows quite symmetically, so I was horrified a couple of weeks ago to see that the Borzoi in the exercise paddock were in deep clover up to their elbows.

Axle repaired (with great difficulty) and belts, air filter and spark plug replaced, it took a solid week of mowing at the slowest possible speed just to shorten the grass crudely. Had I waited another few days, there would have been no way at all to get through it. Once finished, it had to be mowed a second time just to make things look presentable.

It’s done now, praise God. My lovely bride was industriously working outside around the house as well, so Stately Hlatky Manor no longer looks like Hillbilly Hollow.

No, no shows this weekend. It was the Cincinnati KC shows close by and a good panel. We were so wrapped up in the bloody National we forgot to make our entries. Right now we're so wrapped up in trying to recover our poor neglected house that spare time for posting is non-existent. Please be patient.

Worst Economy Since Hoover

The growth in jobs continued in April with 288,000 added onto the revised figure of 337,000 in March. The unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent, exactly the same rate it was in April 1996 during the “Clinton prosperity.”

Hmmm, incumbent president running against a lugubrious senator during a period of sustained growth. How’d that turn out the last time?

Nameless No More

Yesterday, we sent the AKC the registration papers on Possum’s last litter, a mere two and a half years after they were born. A dispute with the co-breeder was the reason for the delay but there was an amicable resolution in March. They’ll now be shown under the following names (Esar is the name the co-breeder uses):

Alan: Soyara Singer of Songs Esar
Belle: Soyara Southern Belle Esar
Honey: Soyara Magnolia Honey Esar
Faith: Soyara Faith Tis Herself Esar

We look forward to successful show careers for all of them.

Passing The Poseur Test

James Lileks asks, “Want to stump a classical music poseur? Ask them how many symphonies Bruckner wrote.”

The answer, of course, is 11. Nine – in C minor, C minor, D minor, E-flat (“Romantic”), B-flat, A, E, C minor, and D minor - are numbered. The ninth is unfinished. Bruckner worked on it until, literally, the last day of his life. Knowing it would never be complete, as a desperate expedient he suggested that his Te Deum be used as the fourth movement, but the incompatibility of keys (D minor and C) make this impossible. While Bruckner couldn’t imagine a symphony ending any other way except with a statement of power, the end of the third movement is almost the perfect “farewell to life,” wistfully quoting from the Seventh and Eighth.

It was once thought that the sketches for the last movement were too fragmentary for any elaboration like that Deryck Cooke did for Mahler’s 10th, but this isn’t the case. Indeed, the finale is almost complete up to the coda and it may well be that the remaining sketches are missing rather than non-existent. There are recordings with realizations of the fourth movement realized by William Carragan and by a collaboration among Nicola Samale, John Phillips, and Giuseppe Mazzuca.

Bruckner also composed two early symphonies. One in F minor, known as the “Student” or “No. 00” Symphony, was the product of his studies with Otto Kitzler in orchestration. Bruckner never regarded it as more than an exercise, but even though it doesn’t begin to compare to the later symphonies it deserves a hearing. There’s a fine recording by Georg Tintner.

Between his First and Second Symphonies, Bruckner wrote a symphony in D minor. He showed it to a conductor, who caustically asked, “Where’s the first theme?” Bruckner took criticism badly: Hermann Levi’s rejection of the Eighth caused a nervous breakdown and years of pointless revisions. He crossed out the “Symphony No. 2” on the first page and wrote “Totally Invalid.” The work survived and is known as the “No. 0” or “Die Nullte.” Again, Tintner has recorded it coupled with the 1887 version of the Eighth.

Lilek's poser is the inverse of Lawrence Gilman on the Tchaikovsky symphonies: "Tchaikovsky wrote three symphonies, which he inexplicably called Numbers 4, 5 and 6."

Fat Lying Liar Lies Again

Porcine (though that insults the pig) filmmaker Michael Moore accused Disney of censorship in refusing to distribute his latest pack of lies Fahrenheit 911.

Yesterday [emphasis added] I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. The story is on page one of the Times and you can read it here

But the fat faux prole is lying: he knew a year ago that Disney wouldn't distribute his film:

Almost a year ago [emphasis mine] after we'd started making the film, the chairman of Disney, Michael Eisner, told my agent that he was upset that Miramax had made the film -- Disney owns Miramax -- and he will not distribute this film.

Miramax said don't worry about that, keep making the film, we'll keep funding it. The Disney money kept flowing to us for the last year. We finished the film last week, and we take it to the Cannes film festival next week.

Moore has now been accused by that member of the VRWC - The Independent - of creating a controversy to publicize the film before Cannes. Moore is the cinematic equivalent of the collegiate jerks who fake hate crimes. Fat bastard.

It's All Right To Have an Opinion

David Hurwitz, writing in Classics Today, suggests that we’ve been bludgeoned into believing that all classical music consists of masterpieces. To challenge the greatness of any of the works of Mozart, Beethoven or Bach is to commit heresy. Says Hurwitz:

I propose a radical new idea: Tell the truth! Stop insisting that the classics consist of an unbroken chain of perfect masterpieces of equal worth, and let people compare, judge, and even (gasp!) dislike some of them. After all, huge crowds go to the movies every week and nine times out of ten hate what they see. But they still go back, time after time. This must be, at least in part, because they feel comfortable about that fact that they are free to like or dislike the film, as they chose. The lesson here is clear: the exercise of choice enhances, rather than diminishes, the general attraction of the medium.

There’s some merit to this. For example, even though it opened my eyes to the power and beauty of classical music, I no longer “get” the last movement to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which sounds more like disjointed chunks instead of a whole. Even the greats didn’t compose at a consistently high level; after all, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Wellington’s Victory have adjoining opus numbers.

For me, I can’t stand Debussy and Stravinsky, don’t care for a lot of Mahler, think Mendelssohn and Ives are overrated while Weber and Barber are underrated, prefer Webern to Schoenberg (the pieces end quicker) and curse Ravel daily for composing Bolero. Only now, after over 30 years, am I warming to Brahms.

Hurwitz puts forth classical music’s ten dirty secrets. My read on them:

1. Only superficially true. But are you willing to make the long-term investment to disprove it?

2. True.

3. Those days are dead and gone.

4. True. The last two movements are so shocking - even today – that the first three sound sort of pale by comparison.

5. True.

6. True.

7. True, actually. My ardent Brucknophilia aside, his allegros are really speeded up adagios.

8. True, except for the late piano works. But I divide music into “good” and “boring.” Lizst is never boring.

9. The jury’s still out.

10. I don’t think we can have too much Bach.

(Tip o' the hat to Aaron Haspel)

The Evolution of a Theme

The Democrats’ view on the economy:

January, 2003: Worst economy since Hoover
January, 2004: OK, we’re recovering, but there are no new jobs.
May, 2004: OK, jobs are being created, but they’re not good jobs.
January, 2005: There’s no good job for John Kerry.

"It's All About Me!” by Me!

The perfect headline: “Clinton Writing Book Around the Clock - Vanity Fair” Yes, “Vanity Fair” would be the perfect title too.

Still Recovering

After the tremendous expenditure of energy we made during the National, my lovely bride and I are still only slowly recovering. We have no reserves at all. I get up, do the morning chores and feel exhausted afterwards. In the evening, we neither one of us feel like doing much beyond the absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, between my absence and the bent axle on the riding mower, the lawn has grown to a jungle-like depth. The Borzoi in the exercise paddock are up to their elbows in grass. I've hacked some of it back, but we've also enjoyed three straight days of rain, which doesn't make the job any easier. No rest for the wicked.

News From the Show Scene

Shows in Kentucky this weekend with something of a split decision. On Saturday, Lacey got Best of Breed and later a Group 3 at the Mid-Kentucky KC show, both under Dr. Alvin Krause.

Yesterday, we went down to Lexington for the spring Lexington KC show. It was cold and rainy all day and because it was an outdoor show the show site was a sea of mud. Lacey got Best of Breed again and made the cut in the group. Perhaps on another day she would have gotten a placement, but she's so prissy she hates showing in any inclement weather.

We had Lacey's half-sister Belle (Soyara's Southern Belle Esar) entered as well and considering her lack of experience of anything, she did well, going Best of Winners for her first point.

We had these two entered at the National last week. Belle made the cut in a very large (46) Bred-by-Exhibitor bitch class. She certainly made an impression on the audience: we had an immediate offer to buy her.

Lacey showed heroically but came away only with an Award of Merit. I knew at the second cut that we weren't going to get Best of Breed (not that Lacey wouldn't have been worthy of it), but she really should have gotten Best of Opposite Sex. The judge is known for running endurance contests: the joke is that the last dog left standing wins the breed. The bitch that went BOS actually broke down during the later stages of the competition, refusing to go around. Something of a shocked hush fell over the audience when her handler tried to get her to move and she balked.

The bitch was bred and owned by a very well-known Borzoi breeder. A friend cynically remarked afterwards, "If they're going to hand out lifetime achievement awards, they should do it at the awards banquet, not in the ring."

So Lacey will likely never get the brass ring of Best of Breed at the BCOA National Specialty. This was her sixth try and on the whole she'd done quite well:

1999: Best in Puppy Sweepstakes
2000: Winners Bitch (to finish) and Award of Merit
2003: Award of Merit
2004: Award of Merit.