If you ever wondered how show dogs look so perfect on show days, the answer is simple: years of work and dedication by a passionate breeder and trainer.
Bridget Simon is not only one of those passionate individuals, she has earned quite a bit of attention among other dog enthusiasts.
The Westlock County resident will be featured in both the spring and summer issues of the Shih Tzu Reporter, a trade magazine dedicated to that particular breed. Simon will be on the cover in the spring, then have a feature article about her business in the summer issue.
She is the proprietor of Simon Shih Tzu, and far from making a living breeding and showing, she does it despite the cost.
“It’s an expensive hobby,” she said. “Some people would say I’m into showing too deep and can’t get out of it now.”
If she could get out of it, however, she probably wouldn’t want to. Her passion for her chosen breed is obvious as her face lights up with the opportunity to talk about her dogs.
She has only been breeding for seven or eight years, but has already accomplished a remarkable amount. She has had a total of eight dogs that are/were champions in one category or another. It often takes breeders 10-20 years to get that kind of recognition, she said.
She currently has only two dogs she’s showing, she said, but has had as many as five different show dogs at once. That was nearly a full-time job in and of itself, on top of her job as the groomer at the Westlock Veterinary Clinic.
Simon currently has nearly a dozen dogs on her farm property south of Clyde: two mothers and nine puppies.
Unlike some other breeders, Simon places fairly strict limits on the amount of breeding each dog can do and also how many litters her dogs produce in a year.
“I only have one to three litters per year,” she said.
She limits the breeding for a couple reasons. She will only let each bitch have about three litters, at which point they are spayed and put in adopted homes. There is also a limit to how many dogs one wants to take care of at any given time.
Most importantly, she said, she limits the breeding because her main goal is to improve the breed. She won’t let her dogs breed with just any other dog, they have to be dogs with desirable traits.
“I only breed champion to champion,” she said.
Her main purpose in breeding is to get new show dogs, so if she’s not looking for a new show dog then she won’t breed.
“There is no reason to breed just because you have a male and a female,” she said.
For breeding she will select a puppy from that litter as a potential show dog, and the ones that aren’t selected are generally spayed/neutered and sold to willing families for $900 each.
Although this translates to an income of about $10,000 per year, her expenses by far outstrip that number. Entry fees and handling alone cost more than that annually, not to mention food and boarding.
For more information about Simon Shih Tzu, visit www.simonshihtzu.com.
