I addressed this on our facebook page, but I’m going to address it a little further here. I promise I don't like drama, but I do believe in being transparent. I recently was the victim of being bullied by a supposed elder in the conformation world of our breed. I won’t name her, but anyone is welcome to speak with me privately.
I joined a MAS “Breeder education” group despite knowing the person who ran it has history of hateful and spiteful comments towards the MAS sports community including telling us we need to leave the club. I went against my better judgement.
The admin of this group was posting “conformation exercises” which involved taking pics of dogs, creating a silhouette of them (blacking out the form) and then asking members to rank them and give reasons. Now I STUPIDLY assumed she was only using volunteered pictures since I saw many people offering pictures. Until *my dog*, Sonic, showed up. She has a tail and distinctive conformation and when I saw the silhouette, I knew immediately it was her and what photo it was taken from. It was a photo of her winning Best of Breed as a gangling, leggy 6 month old puppy at the height of her puppy uglies.
Now firstly, using anyone’s pictures in a critique group with out permission is all kinds of just wrong. Normally, I’m a thick-skinned person but I’ve been going through some things lately and I really was not in the mood to hear a bunch of people from the conformation world drag my puppy through the dirt. (Although I’ll say I was pleasantly surprised at how many people simply stated that she appeared to be a sport type and left it at that, which I’m fine with). I approached the admin of this group and asked if the picture was of my puppy because the silhouette was identical to a photo I had. I was told that the picture was taken from a Russian Facebook MAS group and that she had NO IDEA whose dog it was. She then went on to state that she hoped it wasn’t a dog owned by a USA dog breeder because it looked like a “poorly bred border collie... with poor structure”. Now mind you, I’ve just told her this silhouette is identical to my dog. At this point, dragging the dog through the mud had nothing to do with the question of whether my pic was used without permission and even if the pic was a different dog, at this point she’s insulting MY dog who I just said looks identical.
I showed her the original pic of my dog and expressed concern that my dog’s photo may have been stolen if indeed she saw it on a Russian facebook group.
Now if this person were innocent, you would assume they would either say “Yes that’s the photo I used, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it was stolen” or “Nope, not the photo I used.” This person simply didn’t respond at all despite having seen the message and I eventually blocked them after waiting some time for a response. I don’t need that kind of drama in my life and I’m convinced certain people feed on it. If the person was innocent and didn’t know this was my dog (or if it was a different dog), it doesn’t negate the fact that she’s using photos without permission. If she DID know it was my dog, that makes her a special kind of unethical because it means she lied to me.
It also doesn’t justify the cruel and heartless comments about my puppy who is now 15 months old and has more titles than several of her highfalutin show dogs combined! Said puppy is closing in on her own conformation championship and is qualified for Rally Nationals already. This person will hide behind education as an excuse. This is not education. Telling someone their dog looks like a poorly bred border collie isn’t a constructive critique. Offering an unsolicited critique is inappropriate to begin with but it’s especially audacious when it’s just hurling insults. “I don’t care for her length of neck and wish she had more angulation”’ is a constructive critique. “She looks like a poorly bred border collie” is hurling insults. Unfortunately, we have people in the AKC MAS world who think they’re Regina George from Mean Girls and just can’t feel good about themselves without destroying others. I hope she’s proud of hurting the feelings of a newbie breeder. Furthermore, I hope she does some education of her own since my poorly bred border collie is obviously much more versatile than her own breeding girls (who I looked up to see just how many AKC titles they actually have). Her dogs seem to be very good at trotting in circles and looking pretty. Mine do that and a whole lot more. I looked up several of her breeding dogs and most have only 2 conformation titles and sometimes a Rally Novice title in AKC. I would be embarrassed to breed a dog with only 2-3 AKC titles just because it’s pretty. Guess we all have different opinions on what makes a good MAS. Some of us care about trainability and athleticism.
For those who think I’m crazy about her stealing my pictures, here is her picture and my picture. I turned mine into a silhouette using Canva. I don’t know which program she uses but it looks like the lines have been cleaned up a bit more in the one pic but they are otherwise IDENTICAL. If this isn’t my dog, I want to know who owns it because our dogs are definitely related.
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