How a bulldog is judged

A boy two chairs down from me at a spring specialty asked his father, in the carrying whisper children use when they know they are supposed to be quiet, why the same dogs keep coming back. They had just watched a class of six, placements given, ribbons handed out, and now the ring steward was calling more bulldogs in while the winners from earlier waited at the gate with their armbands still on. They line up twice, the boy said. Why do they line up twice? His father shrugged. It is a fair shrug. The order of a dog show morning is a machine with all its parts exposed, and nobody hands you the diagram at the rope.

What is the judge actually doing?

Start with the single dog. When a bulldog comes into the ring, the judge is not comparing him to the other dogs yet. The judge is comparing him to a dog who is not there, the ideal described in the breed standard, and the AKC's own beginner's guide to dog shows says it plainly: judges give awards according to how closely each dog compares to the judge's mental image of the perfect dog described in the standard. The hands go over the head and jaw and bone, the eyes take the dog in profile for balance, and then the dog moves, down and back and around, because the standard asks for a particular gait and a still photograph cannot show it. Conformation exists, the same guide says, to evaluate breeding stock. The ring is a breeding argument made visible.

How does the morning sort itself?

The first sort is by sex, dogs and bitches judged separately. Inside each sex the entries are divided into classes, and the classes are printed in the judging program in the order they will be called. The usual ladder runs Puppy, divided into six-to-nine and nine-to-twelve months, then Twelve-to-Eighteen Months, then the non-regular and adult classes: Novice, Amateur-Owner-Handler, Bred-By-Exhibitor, American-Bred, and finally Open, the class with the fewest restrictions and usually the deepest bench. Champions may not enter these classes; they wait for later. In each class the judge places first through fourth, blue, red, yellow, white, and every dog that does not take a ribbon leaves the ring for good. Only the firsts stay in the day.

What happens after the classes?

When the last class ends, the steward calls the class winners back, and this is the second lineup the boy noticed. From all the first-place dogs the judge picks one: Winners Dog. Then the dogs who finished second to that winner are called back for Reserve Winners Dog, the understudy who inherits the points if the winner is later found ineligible. The whole sequence repeats for the bitches, class by class, then Winners Bitch and Reserve. These two winners are the only non-champions who earn championship points that day, up to five depending on how many dogs they defeated, and fifteen points under at least three different judges, with two of the wins at majors, makes a champion. The points schedule is published by the AKC and scaled by region, because a winner in a deep entry has beaten more dogs than a winner in a thin one.

Who comes back at the end?

Then the gate opens for the champions, the dogs and bitches already titled, entered as specials for Best of Breed competition. Winners Dog and Winners Bitch join them, and usually a veteran or two, and this is the fullest ring of the morning, the one people drive in for. Out of it the judge selects Best of Breed, the dog who advances to the group ring in the afternoon. Best of Opposite Sex goes to the best of the other sex. Best of Winners settles, between the two class winners, which of them had the better day, and it matters for points: if one winner defeated more dogs than the other, Best of Winners can move the higher count to the one who needs it. Select Dog and Select Bitch recognize the next best champions. Each step has its ribbon, purple for Winners, purple and white for Reserve, blue and white for Best of Winners, purple and gold for Best of Breed, red and white for Best of Opposite, light blue and white for Select, and the catalog page records them all by armband number.

Where does the ribbon lead?

Best of Breed is not the end of the road; it is a ticket to the afternoon. The bulldog shows in the Non-Sporting Group, the catch-all group of the seven, alongside the Boston terriers and Dalmatians and poodles and the rest of the breeds that fit nowhere tidier. The group judge places four, and the first goes to Best in Show at the end of the day. For the breed's own people, though, the breed ring is the part that counts, and the specialty shows exist to enlarge exactly that part: a whole day in which nothing but bulldogs is judged, rings run in parallel, and the entry is deep enough that the points and the bragging rights both mean more.

Off the page

The judges book is the official copy, marked in ink, and it is the most precise account of the morning that exists. It records who placed where, and it cannot record anything about why. It does not note that the third dog in Open moved better than the winner and showed worse, that a bitch blew her coat the week before, that a young handler stacked his dog crooked and the judge waited politely while he fixed it. It does not record the feel of the dogs, the heavy bone of one, the softness of another, which is information the judge's hands took and no ledger keeps. The placements are public. The comparisons that produced them stay in the judge's head, which is either the sport's integrity or its frustration, depending on which chair you were sitting in.

A way to watch tomorrow

The whole machine is legible if you arrive with the judging program, the thin schedule that lists rings, breeds, and entry counts, free at the superintendent's table or posted online before the show. Find the bulldog ring number, get there for the start of the classes rather than the specials, and watch the sexes sort themselves. By the time Best of Breed comes around you will know which class produced which winner, and the dog who took the purple ribbon at nine will be standing next to champions at eleven. The boy was right that they line up twice. He just had not been told yet that the second lineup is the point.