08/25/2026
I couldn't agree more! It's all about the relationship with your dog!
Repost it.
**HEARTFELT WORDS ABOUT OUR DOG SPORT**
🐾❤️🐾❤️🐾❤️🐾❤️🐾❤️🐾
By Tracy Doty
There is a point where we need to stop defending the indefensible and start taking a hard look at ourselves....and that point is NOW.
I love this sport. I have spent decades in it. I believe deeply in responsible breeding, showing, preservation, sportsmanship, and the incredible bond between people and dogs.
But I also believe we are watching our sport slowly undermine itself.
And the problem isn't always outsiders attacking us.
Sometimes we are doing it to ourselves.
We tear each other apart over judges, wins, losses, breeding decisions, handlers, clubs, politics, and personalities. We look for opportunities to publicly embarrass one another. We demand accountability when someone else screws up, but suddenly discover nuance, excuses, and explanations when it is someone we know.
That needs to stop.
And while we're busy attacking each other, we're also sometimes doing careless, stupid, and completely avoidable things that give the people who already don't understand our world exactly the am******on they need.
Every dog show incident that makes the public ask, "What the hell are these people doing to those dogs?" hurts all of us.
Every preventable injury.
Every irresponsible decision.
Every filthy setup.
Every dog left where it shouldn't be.
Every situation where common sense should have prevailed but didn't.
It matters.
Because the public doesn't care how many championships someone has won. They don't care how long you've been breeding. They don't care who your parents are, what club you belong to, what board you sit on, or how many Bests in Show are on your résumé.
They see the dog.
And they judge the entire sport by what they see us doing to it.
So maybe it's time we stop saying "we need to do better" every time something awful happens and actually do better.
Hold people accountable.
Hold ourselves accountable.
And hold the people we love accountable.
Accountability shouldn't depend on who you are friends with.
It shouldn't depend on your name.
It shouldn't depend on your connections.
It shouldn't disappear because someone is successful, influential, popular, or "one of ours."
Accountability is accountability.
If we genuinely care about these dogs and genuinely want this sport to survive, then protecting the sport cannot mean protecting people from the consequences of their actions.
Sometimes protecting the sport means calling out the behavior that threatens it.
We don't have to agree on everything.
We don't have to like everyone.
We don't even have to get along.
But for God's sake, we should be able to agree on this:
The dogs come first.
Stop tearing each other down.
Stop making excuses.
Stop protecting people because they're connected.
Stop pretending that preventable stupidity is just "one of those things."
And stop assuming the sport we love is too important to fail.
It isn't.
If we want dog shows to have a future, we need to start acting like the future of this sport depends on what we do next.
Because it does.
Do better. Be accountable. Protect the dogs. Protect the sport.💔😥💔
