Judging: Art or Science?

Exhibitors’ expectations of a judge are often different from one person to the next. I believe everyone has the reasonable desire to show their dog to someone who has a good knowledge of the breed and is able to translate that knowledge into their selection process.

There are many other aspects of judging which are sometimes put into the category of expectations. Judges are expected to be honest and impartial — absolutely. They are expected to be considerate, patient and polite — absolutely. However, expectations of their actual selections can get into some fairly deep water at times.

The Science part of the judging process can be easily described as the comparison of the entries to that breed’s standard and rewarding the dogs that most closely resemble the ideal. Here is where a judge’s personal evaluation and opinion may differ from that of the exhibitor. There is a myriad of factors that cause this “disagreement.”

You have factors that are simply symptomatic of subjective decisions. Those individuals in the ring or at ringside form an opinion of the merits (or lack thereof) of the other dogs in the ring. Some of these people may be willing to admit that there might be other deserving dogs in the ring other than their own. Sometimes this thought process is not in vogue.

On the other side of the coin are situations where the judge selects more generic dogs rather than those that truly symbolize some of the more desired traits in that breed. Fault judging has been (and will continue to be) a popular way of ringside evaluations of both dogs and judges. We have all done it. If a dog that is selected first in a class has a noticeable fault that the second-place dog does not have, the often-heard admonishment is something along the lines of “How could he/she put up that dog? It has too much this or not enough of that.” Unfortunately, too often those remarks come from individuals whose dog that placed second also has noticeable faults that they either do not acknowledge or consider of much less importance than the problems with the first-place dog.

The Art aspect of judging is how the total package is actually put together. There are times where two dogs possess very similar attributes but do not possess the same general appearance “The whole is sometimes greater than or less than the sum of the parts.” General appearance is a commanding factor in the judging of dogs. One’s first impression is often the final impression. Sometimes problems are found that escape the judge when they first see the dog (e.g., mouth issues, movement issues, etc.). In these cases, the first impression is not indicative of the final impression.

Then there is the mortality of a judge. Regardless of how much knowledge a judge possesses, he/she will usually place more importance on a couple of factors than the next judge might. The judge may follow that same gradation of faults in other breeds as well. Then there are those times when decision-making is not as obvious. A class of four dogs comes into the ring, and the judge determines that the class has pretty much identical overall quality. Believe me, we have all made decisions that were difficult, and if we saw the same four dogs six months later, the placements might be different. I don’t think any judge has not gone back to his or her hotel and given thought to a particular class that day and was still agonizing over a placement in that class. Being self-assured is fine, but the realities are that judges are often presented with a class where final decisions can be difficult.

Also there is the factor of ringside judging versus in-the-ring judging. You often get a different perspective of a dog when you can put your hands on it. Different dogs win on different days, and that is the beauty of dog shows. What nobody wants is for a legitimately nice dog to be defeated by one that is far from that category.

None of this article is probably news to anyone, but it is often a good thing to step back and take a look at why judging is often considered an inexact science.