Florence Amherst's champion show saluki, Ch. Sultan. Also a pretty "homely dog."
Jess’s tazi bitch gives her a lesson in functional conformation:
She isn’t pretty by some standards, she doesn’t have a stylish gait, or a pretty face, but what she does have is miles more important and much harder to breed, because you can’t find it just by trotting the dog around in a circle and looking at it stand four square. Nazgul reminded me why I was thrilled to get her in the first place, why her breeder imported her parents from far away, why my friend spent an inordinate amount of money to import her sister to his country. She reminded me of why I’m breeding these crosses in the first place, and it isn’t to make a bunch of pretty dogs that conform to an abstract idea of what is functional. Nazgul is a beautiful dog and I’m proud to be able include her in my breeding program.
Kind of looks like a Long haired Weimaraner.
Interesting.
Good eye Jess.
You link to some weird ass articles.
Probably at least 3/4 of the people involved with show dogs, really have no visual sense at all. They fall for “pretty” over beautiful, they go for exaggeration rather than what is appropriate, and have little or no understanding of what “function” really is. That’s likely a primary reason for the problems that are so often held up in condemnation of purebred dogs. (they forget that non-purebreds can be equally unfortunate, or even worse).
While every useful breed standard allows for a range of variation, one comment I remember from a very successful breeder/judge, was that the “ideal” of the breed was to found very much “at the center of the standard” — that is, that any sort of exaggeration or excess was a danger to the breed and should not be rewarded.
Another problem with such silly crap is how narrow the idea of “beauty” and what’s “proper” in a Standard becomes–everyone involved begins to parrot one another–in other words, they learn what is “acceptable beauty” within that clique, and never really think for themselves, just accept the status quo. Anyone expressing an opinion different from what has become “acceptable beauty” is ostracized as being unknowledgable of the standard and basically ignorant, when, in fact, they may be seeing something that the blind conformation people REFUSE to see. This dog, to me, is a fine-looking, functional-looking animal–whether or not it would win points in a conformation dog show makes not the slightest difference to me, and that is based on knowledge of dog shows, not ignorance……
To give the devil his due, as I tried to say on 11/18, there are many people who simply CAN’T recognize the balance, the harmony of structure, the “rightness” of all parts that makes a creature truly one of beauty. They really can’t see proportion or comparatives. It’s a brain thing — just as there are people with little grasp of the mathematical, others that are tone-deaf, and so on. Unfortunately, those that are in dogs almost always are not aware of this lack.
These are the folks that think a steroid-pumped body-builder is more ‘beautiful’ than an Olympic decathalon champion…or Elvis-on-black-velvet over a Renaissance masterpiece.
But, what about big-eyed puppies, children and clowns on black velvet? Now that’s art.
Some people have an eye.
What’s beautiful about tazis, and salukis in general, is to see them doing what they were bred for and love most to do. A tazi running flat-out (it looks more more like flying, with their paired racing gait) is a thing of enormous beauty and will take your breath away. That’s not something that you can ever find in a show environment! Couple the conformation that allows them to do that with loyalty, sense of humor, keen intelligence, and curiosity, and the tazi overall is a thing of great beauty (“…and a joy forever,” to finish the quote!).