Bryant dog wins title

A Bryant woman and one of her four-legged pals brought home a sizable trophy last month.

Janet Davidson-Butcher’s coon dog, Preacher, won the United Kennel Club’s Coonhound World Championship for American Leopard Hound in September in Elberton, Georgia.

It was the eighth world championship for Davidson-Butcher, who said preparing Preacher for the Georgia show was tedious.

“I’ve been working with this dog for three years now,” Davidson-Butcher said. “Preparing for this show, I spent about an hour a day, not including grooming and other things, with Preacher doing basic training to get him ready for the bench. We train the dogs to get them ‘broke’ and ready for the judges.”

Davidson-Butcher, who has been showing dogs for 20 years, said training them to “be on point” is crucial to winning a title as a lot goes into each show.

The competitions aren’t always like what some see on TV, Davidson-Butcher said.

“It’s a lot of conditioning and training long before you ever get to the show ring,” she said. “It’s about proper nutrition, proper exercise and training. It’s more than just people running around a ring with a dog on the end of a leash. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes.”

When entering the show ring, the dog must first perform a pattern on the ground. During this time judges look for movement and comprehension, determining if everything flows together naturally. They look for “how the dog is able to cover ground with the least amount of effort,” Davidson-Butcher said.

Then comes the bench, or as Davidson-Butcher refers to it, the more challenging obstacle of the show.

Each dog is assigned and put on a small bench for a hands-on inspection from the judges. They look at the dog from head to tail, examining muscle tone and structure while looking for any disqualifying features like a bad bite or discolored eyes.

After the bench is the fun part, Davidson-Butcher said.

“We show the dogs. Set them square in the front and square in the rear and the judge evaluates each dog according to their breed standard, which includes different things like height, weights, markings and colorations,” Davidson-Butcher said. “They select the dog that is most correct to the breed standard.”

Preacher was the dog that best met all the standards, impressing the judges so much he was chosen as UKC’s world champion.

“It was a huge honor,” Davidson-Butcher said. “We put a lot of work and time and effort into it. It’s a very humbling experience.”

For Davidson-Butcher, showing dogs has been a love since childhood.

“I don’t ever remember not having dogs,” she said. “I grew up with coon dogs. I was in 4-H for 10 years and then went on to be an obedience instructor for 13 years. It’s just something I have always done.”

The best part of showing? To Davidson-Butcher, it’s being able to watch and train the dogs from when they were puppies.

“My favorite part is raising a litter of puppies. I look at that litter of pups and I pull one or two out that I see some potential in, or sparks my eye and I’ll keep those, raise them up,” Davidson-Butcher said. “It means more to me to stand out there with a dog that I have won with that I breed, not one that I bought.”

Preacher was bought, but he recently fathered a litter of puppies, and Davidson-Butcher is already training some of his puppies to follow in their dad’s footsteps.

Now that the winter season is creeping up, Davidson-Butcher said the dogs will be taking a break from weekly shows and will work as hunting dogs throughout November and December.

But that doesn’t mean Davidson-Butcher isn’t already looking ahead. The next competition will be the first weekend of January in South Carolina.

“I’ve done it for a lot of years and I don’t plan on slowing down,” Davidson-Butcher said. “It’s more than just what I do, it’s a part of who I am.”