Wishing for the spotlight
As with many FSS (Foundation Stock Service) breeds, most are looking for and longing for the spotlight. I am no different, I feel that the media would greatly help be the greatest advocates for the breed in America. To my knowledge, no American camera crew or film production company has ever used a Hamiltonstovare in a TV show, commercial or movie. I wish that they would. Hamiltonstovare are easily trainable and ideal for movie making, most of the breed looks very similar and they are strikingly gorgeous.
At one point, Alice had an agent to hopefully launch her into print and screen, nothing came out of it. I spent hundreds of dollars on listing services that went nowhere. I would love to have my guys featured in something at some point.. In Richmond, we have film shoots and TV shoots on a regular basis.
The breed in America is at a crossroads, only myself and maybe one other person is even interested in showing. Most owners of the breed are strictly pet owners, not that it is a bad thing. However, pet owners don't advance the breed, breeders and fanciers do. At my current estimation, it will be at least 2035 before the breed is even remotely close to being fully recognized by the AKC. Some say that the wait is part of it but it isn't, it is a numbers game. The AKC has requirements for numbers registered with the FSS before we can go up to the next level to Miscellaneous. As you move up in the levels, the publicity done and promoted by the AKC goes up. Currently, every time a "new" breed is recognized there are press junkets and loads of media items that focus on that breed for at least a year. It is a wild ride by those that I know who have gone through it or are going through it now. One new breed in particular, the Berger Picard, has been tremendously helped by the media. Without the features that they have had in various movies, the breed would have very little popularity here as most of the breeders of the breed now were heavily influenced by those movies.
So if anybody in any sort of media reads my blog or comes across it, please consider using Hamiltonstovare in any media outlet possible!! I know that myself and the handful of current US owners would greatly thank you and appreciate everything that you want to do.