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Six shows in six hours? Or did they go by even faster? When we arrived we saw four rings set up and once the official salutes were done, the race began! We started in ring two, but shortly were running to ring four for the next show, then ring three, then back to two--and at one point we even had ISSR Shiloh Shepherds showing in two separate rings! How so? Easy, as soon as the pups were done in one, they were sent off to another ring for another show! It's a good thing we didn't get too many entries! As it turned out, due to the political war the slivers started, many dogs were pulled because their owners just didn't want to deal with the insanity! Of course, a lot of people wondered about the rationality behind having two classes for different type dogs that use the same "breed" name! A "breed" is supposed to represent a specific type, but the non-ISSR dogs that were being shown resembled the "King" type more so than the ISSR Shilohs did! Just look up to compare the three dogs in the banner! Nevertheless, I'm thankful for the young ISSR dogs that were entered. At least they managed to give the judges a glimpse of what a REAL Shiloh Shepherd should act, look and move like!
As you can see in the banner pictures, on the left you have the NON-shiloh Grand Champion, on the right side you have the King Shepherd - a derivative from the Shiloh and the GSD. Please read this historical site for full details! Then in the middle you have an 11 month old ISSR Shiloh Shepherd that beat them both! What a victory! The ISSR Shiloh folks were thrilled! Despite many of our great dogs like Danny, Panzer, Acer, Liam, Smokey, Mira, etc. scratching at the last minute - we still had a great turn out with dogs like Blaze from Wisconsin, Storm and Sadie from Ohio, Kuma from Virginia, Kurgan from Massachusetts, Misty from Maryland, Shadow from Michigan, Loki, Nero and Kola from Canada attending the show, just to support the ISSR! I would like to thank all of our members for taking the time out of their busy schedules to attend this show! We all enjoyed each others company and look forward to many more club events that we all plan to attend this year! Our chapters have been busily planning exciting days for all of our members and we always encourage newbies to drop in and visit with us! We love to show off our ISSR Shiloh Shepherds.
Things were moving along so fast that we may have missed getting pictures of some of you, so please forgive us! I'm sure someone took a few extras and will be willing to share them on our forum! I tried to get around as fast as I could, but with 6 judges going full speed ahead, it was turning into semi chaos! Besides, I had a lot of folks asking me questions, and that had to be my first priority: helping my Shiloh family! After all, how many "show" pictures can a person share before it all starts to become a bit redundant? LOL
However, here are few
more of our wonderful ISSR Shiloh Shepherds doing their thing at the
Empire Classic!
Of course, we weren't
alone. The King Shepherd folks were there too. The first one I saw
was a very nice, heavy boned pup, but then I saw the adults. I was
informed by Debbie, the handler ("experienced but not professional"),
that they were not "mature" adults because they weren't 3 years old
yet. Now, back to MPO, since I haven't seen any King Shepherds for some time now, I would like to state that I felt that they seem to be getting smaller--although I do like the rich reddish brown markings and super heavy bone that they seem to possess. IMHO they are starting to look a lot like some European Alt Deutcher Schaeferhunde that I have seen pictured on web sites such as: although the Kings do seem to possess even "shorter" legs like some of the extremely low stationed English LHGSD's! Nevertheless, I will let you judge for yourself. I didn't have time to take a lot of pictures of the King entries, but these should suffice.
Of course, the sliver Shilohs were there too - and stepped forth, as expected with their ARBA champion.
However, he did not end
up in group competition. Since they only had three dogs that
competed for group, we must assume that the judges are being more careful
in their BOB selections, or the slivers just didn't enter any of their
other happy hookers because they knew I would be there TAKING PICTURES! Please compare the real ISSR Shilohs that went into the final group competition against them: Shadow - our 11 month old puppy (5 times) and Kurgan our smooth coated white, once!
The pictures tell the story, even with a novice handler, Jan and Shadow managed to beat both the sliver "shiloh" and the King Shepherd! If you look at our banner picture, I'm sure you can easily see why! Of course, right after the show a major brouhaha was started by both groups! Why some of the King people felt compelled to take sides with the slivers is still a mystery to me, but the discussions on both forums seem to be running hot and heavy! LOL. While the ISSR Shiloh Shepherd fanciers are sharing their views regarding our future relationship with ARBA via our Shiloh Shepherd Forums. Don't worry, the ISSR Folks, as always, have continued to be extremely civil, stating facts and sharing their feelings with Robert. I am confident that this problem (of two types of "shilohs" being represented in the herding group, along with the Kings that were Shilohs not that long ago) will be resolved very quickly! I
expect to share a full update regarding the final results to this dilemma
before this month ends!
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