And it's not just dogs! Horse shows, as you saw. Every corner as @Rits said. With the bite sports I've literally seen an eye-roll when I said I had a Dobe.
In horse racing even the struggling little county fair tracks rolled their eyes a the racing Arabians, and these were at all-breed tracks racing TB's, QH's, Paints and Appaloosas. We filled our races but couldn't get stalls at the race track, had use the haul-in barn. That's probably greek to you all, but I'm saying we made the tracks money in betting $, but it still took years before they finally gave us stalls at the track. LOL, we were all in the last barn, furthest from the track. I trained Arabs and TB's both, and I know very much how it is to not fit in and do it anyway.
The horse shows were much worse. I had to do an internship for graduation at a tech school in horse management & training and I choose an Arabian Show farm that bred, trained and showed. Went to a regionals show with them and I don't think I've ever been so let down by standards in my life. I won't go into details, but I literally made up my mind then and there, that I would not go into the show world. At All. Sports all the way. There may be under-the-table stuff there too, whatever, but if you had the best horse, you had a chance to win. Not so in halter or round-the-ring. @GB1 Hunter-jumpers are judged by opinion, Jumpers just have to go clean and fast, doesn't matter if you put your jacket on inside out, nobody can take it away from you if you get the job done.
So yeah, I complain, but I love my dog, I love what I've done with her and how much we've both grown & learned from all the things we've done. Stepping out of your comfort zone is what it takes to grow, and accepting and helping others grow is what I expect from a club to be about, whether it's a little local dog club or a national breed club. So every now and then I have to vent that I have set my expectations of DPCA too high and that they just are what they are.
