October 28, 2002 – If you've been following DaDane of DaWeek lately, you know all about the annual GDCA National Specialty, which ran from October 13-19, 2002. For those of you who missed it, I've posted the first place winners along with some new pictures & portraits:

– Futurity Winners – Agility Winners		– Open Puppy Winners – Open Class Winners		– Best of Breed, Top Twenty,   Non-Regular Classes
Note: Comprehensive photographic coverage of the 2002 National is available at Amy Johnson's website, GreatDanePhotos.com. For detailed stats covering all of the judging, visit Kim Larrabee's GreatDane-Stats.com.

About this week's picture...
One of the nicest things about attending the GDCA National Specialty is that it gives me the opportunity to photograph many beautiful Great Danes from all over the country. Over the next few months I will be introducing you to a few of them. This week's pick is a lovely uncropped brindle, Glory, who caught my eye at the Agility event. A few days later she went on to win her class in Bred-By-Exhibitor. I asked Glory's owner/breeder, Karen Martin of Diamond Danes, to tell us more about her:

"Glory is a 13-month-old Great Dane. She was born and raised in my house with the rest of our dogs. I knew the moment she was born that she was something special. She had been promised to someone else at that time. When the agreement fell through, I was elated! I told Glory she would stay here with me. We started clicker training at about 5 weeks of age. Glory loves working out problems and reasoning what it is that I want her to do. She started in agility training and tracking at 10 weeks of age. She is a very intelligent girl. Glory has become very special to us for many reasons. I decided when she was pretty young that I was going to do things a little differently, starting with her. As you can see, Glory has natural ears instead of being cropped. I have decided after cropping MANY puppies that it is not what I want to do. We put these babies through an unnecessary surgery because we like the way it looks. No other reason. Then months of taping and hopefully you will have an ear that will stand up. I admit I do love the look of a cropped dog. But at what expense? We have all seen many dogs whose ears are pathetic because they do not stand after all the effort we have put into them. So even though I show in the conformation ring, the ears are not a problem. I would say that at any one particular show, Glory gets much more attention than most cropped dogs, for sure! Everyone loves the natural look on our dogs. It gives them a much softer expression. We just came home from the GDCA National Specialty in Kentucky where Glory did us proud. She won the best class of all!! She won the Bred-By-Exhibitor class and made me very proud. What that means is that I am the breeder/owner – and the handler – of Glory. It makes everything just that much more special. Glory also competed in the agility ring and was the entertainment of the day! It was her first agility trial and she had the time of her life." – Karen Martin Diamond Danes, St. Louis, MO Home of the first CH-TDX Great Dane Breeder of 1997 National BOB winner Am Can Int Ch Diamonds Canadion Style, CD ROM