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On the 15th and 16th of September 2007, the French Clubmatch was held in the town of St Amand Magnazeix about 45 mins outside of Limoges in France.
There were 243 entries from 132 exhibitors from 20 different countries.
Judges included Mr Raymond Triquet, Mr Jean-Jacques Dupas, Mr Jacues Milleman, Mr Jean-Louis Grunheid, Mr Christian Jouanchicot.
I decided to brave over 25 hours of travelling and attend the show, and I am so glad I did. I had the most wonderful time viewing all those dogues in one place and meeting breeders/friends from UK, Europe and USA.
I took notice of many attributes in the dogues on show such as head type, size, bone, depth, width, topline, angulation and movement. While no one dog had absolutely everything I need (I don’t think the perfect dogue has been bred yet), I was impressed by what I saw.
I was extremely happy with siblings of my boy Roman (Renais and Reno) and other Apollo sons (Tito and Enferno), plus other offspring of Emberez Apollo, Enferno van de Paterhoek, Rhodonite Reno Emberez and Rhodonite Rhonda. It gave me confirmation of where I want to head in the breed and gave me great hope for Roman’s future in breeding.
Saturday started with watching some of the dogs arrive for the first day. Not all the dogs were present on Saturday because there were only some of the young classes being judged plus the movement and TAN tests.
To see Enferno for the first time was breathtaking. His head type being the strong intense expression that I very much like. He has fantastic depth and width of chest (without being too short in the leg), heavy bone and great topline. He is an imposing dogue that really fills the eye. I very much enjoyed watching Enferno pass his movement test, he received a cheering top score of 5 out of 5 from all the judges. And again he passed the TAN test with flying colours.
Tito, Renais and Eleanor were almost as equally impressive, I only say “almost” because I had to have a favourite and it was Enferno. I was pleasantly surprised by Eleanor as she is so much more impressive and beautiful in the flesh than any photo I have seen of her.
After the show on Saturday, I joined many of the exhibitors including Becky and Nik of Emberez, Stephen and Claire of Tyrannus, Bart of Van de Paterhoek, Gerard and Sheryl from Maison de Hollande, and others, at the motel for a night of dinner and drinkies. We had a lovely time and were atleast in bed by a civilised time shortly before midnight.
It was an early start at about 5:30am so that we could get away to the show before 7am.
Sunday was the big day, all the dogues were in attendance for the main judging. There were about 4 rings all going at the same time, with Open Female having the largest entry of 40 dogues, next being Open male with 26 dogues, the Junior and Intermediate classes of both sexes each had around 20 entries. So it was almost impossible to get to see everything.
All the dogs in the class enter the ring as a group and the judge has a basic look, then they all leave the ring and each dog enters the ring individually to be critiqued by the judge. After each dog has been judged, the whole class returns to the ring again and the judge starts to split the class. The Excellent dogs remain in the ring while the judge excuses the Very Goods, then out of the Excellents the judge chose up to 6-8 of the best “Excellent” dogues and these are the ones that progess onto the main ring nearer the end of the day for final judging of places 1 to 4.
So as you can imagine, watching the main ring later that day, was the highlight. Seeing the best of each class, both males and females in the ring at the same time.
For me it was a highlight to see a female puppy (Melania) from Rhodonite Reno Emberez gain Best Baby in Show and for Tito to win Best Junior in Show. |
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I have listed the results below and added photos. I hope this has been an interesting read.
Regards Leanne
BABY MALE |
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French Clubmatch 2007 |
