FIVE: “Youth Will Be Served!”
FIVE: “Youth Will be Served!”
Bruce was a collie—physically and in many other ways a super-collie. Twenty-six inches at the shoulder, seventy-five pounds in weight, his great frame had no more hint of coarseness than had his classic head and foreface.
His mighty coat was black-stippled at its edges, like Seedley Stirling’s, giving the dog almost the look of a “tricolour” rather than of a “dark-sable-and-white.” There was an air of majesty, of perfect breeding, about Bruce—an intangible something that lent him the bearing of a monarch. He was, in brief, such a dog as one sees perhaps thrice in a generation.
At the Place, after old Lad’s death, Bruce ruled as king. He was no mere kennel dog—reared and cared for like some prize ox—but was part and parcel of the household, a member of the family, as befitted a dog of his beauty and brain and soul.
It was when Bruce was less than a year old that he was taken to his first A.K.C. bench show. The Master was eager that the dog-show world should acclaim his grand young dog, and that the puppy—like the youthful knights of old—should have fair chance to prove his mettle against the paladins of his kind. For it is in these shows that a dog’s rating is determined; that he is pitted against the best in dogdom, before judges who are almost always competent and still oftener honest in their decisions.
The goal of the show dog is the championship, whose fifteen points must be annexed under no less than three judges, at three different times; in ratings that range from one point to five points, according to the number of dogs exhibited. To only the show’s best dog of his or her special breed and sex are points awarded.