There's gonna be something off in every dog, even finished Champions. The perfect dog has yet to be bred. It should be the goal of every breeding...improvement upon what the parents are. Different breeders have different sticking points. Some will tolerate a not so great topline but not a terrier front. Some are OK with a low tail set if the rear angulation is dead on. A longer body is permissable in a bitch but not a dog but if the dog is otherwise wonderful, they may be shown anyway. Etc. Etc. That's no different now than it was in the 50's. Our bodies are more compact but still slightly off square. If you have a dog with a longer body, it's be default gonna have longer legs...but they shouldn't be leggy. The overall dog should be in proportion, with no one thing sticking out more noticably than another. I think our heads have evolved into a rounder more pleasing look. Ears have gotten smaller and I'm trying hard to get larger ears back into my breeding program. I think we went through a time that extremely short muzzles were in favor but that lead to bite issues so we've move back to a more moderate length. I would love to see the ideal muzzle length be about 1/2 the width of the head to allow for better dentition. I'm working on it, but it's slow going. I think we'll see more muzzle from now on but, pray God, it's never gonna be long and snipey. We certainly don't want a Manchester Terrier head. One definately must have a good stop and preferrably some width between the eye set.

That said, there are dogs out there that definately look like pets who have finished or are well on their way. It's the judge's interpretation of the Standard, and what's in the ring on a given day. It's sad to say that sometimes they have to pick the best of a bad group. It's few and far between that a Judge will withhold points for lack of merit. I've seen it happen, but not often. Judge's are paid by entry fees and if the entries don't come, they don't get hired. Not everyone is as joyful about maintaining the integrity of the breed as some of us are and entries would fall for judges that did this...or called for the scales. Scales are available at every show but they are only used if an exhibitor calls for them on a competitor or a judge feels that a dog may be over the limit. Again, it doesn't happen often. Honestly, the times I've seen it, the dog's weighed in, with the exception of one, and it was 6 pounds 1 ounce. Many dogs can fool you visually about weight. I don't like to push the limit for just this reason. I prefer a good 5 pounds myself. However, generally, if a judge suspects the dog is over they just don't put the dog up versus calling for the scales and putting the entire judging program behind schedule. The Superintendent's are pretty anal about how much time is allotted per dog.

I think, over all, our breed has maintained. We've got way more long coats now than smooths, simply because long coats were better than the smooths for so long. To this day, it's hard to find a well put together smooth coat. We are working very hard to bring them back up to the same degree of structure soundness what we have in longs but it's been a hard process. That and the fact that long coats tend to take over due to the interbreeding we've done. I'm not sure that we have many pure smooth coat lines anymore so most smooths carry the long gene. I know I breed for smooths and end up with longs all the time...from two smooth parents. Frustrating. Anyway, consistency is the key and while we have refined the Chihuahua, I'd say that in general they have the same appearence as they did in the beginning. Unlike some breeds.

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