Perhaps you think it is easy to pilot even the best of dogs through the gruelling ordeals that go to make up those fifteen points. Well, it is not.
Many breeders take their dogs on the various show-circuits, keeping them on the bench for three days at a time; and then, week after week, shipping them in stuffy crates from town to town, from show to show. In this way, the championship points sometimes pile up with reasonable speed;—and sometimes never at all. (Sometimes, too, the luckless dog is found dead in his crate, on arriving at the show-hall. Oftener he catches distemper and dies in more painful and leisurely fashion.)
I am too foolishly mush-hearted to inflict such torture on any of our Sunnybank collies. I never take my dogs to a show that cannot be reached by comfortable motor ride within two or three hours at most; nor to any show whence they cannot return home at the end of a single day. Thus, championship points mount up more slowly at Sunnybank than at some other kennels. But thus, too, our dogs, for the most part, stay alive and in splendid health. I sleep the sounder at night, for knowing my collie chums are not in misery in some distemper-tainted dogshow-building.
In like manner, it is a fixed rule with us never to ship a Sunnybank puppy anywhere by express to a purchaser People must come here in person and take home the pups they buy from me. Buyers have motored to Sunnybank for pups from Maine and Ohio and even from California.
These scruples of mine have earned me the good-natured guying of more sensible collie breeders.
Well, Treve had picked up fourteen of the fifteen points needed to complete his championship. The last worthwhile show of the spring season—within motor distance—was at Noble, Pa., on June 10, 1922. Incidentally, June 10, 1922, was Treve’s third birthday. His wonderful coat was at the climax of its shining fulness. By autumn he would be “out of coat”; and an out-of-coat collie stands small chance of winning.
So Robert and I drove over to Noble with him.
The day was stewingly hot; the drive was long. Show-goers crowded around the splendid dog before the judging began. Bit by bit, Treve’s nerves began to fray. We kept him off his bench and in the shade, and we did what we could to steer admirers away from him. But it was no use. By the time the collie division was called into the tented ring, Treve was profoundly unhappy and cranky.
He slouched in, with no more “form” to him than a plough horse. With the rest of his class (“Open, sable-and-white”), he went through the parade. Judge Cooper called the contestants one by one up to the block; Treve last of all. My best efforts could not rouse the dog from his sullen apathy.
It was then that Robert Friend played his trump card. Standing just outside the ring, among the jam of spectators, he called excitedly: