Zena rises to the top of her game    DOG WORLD

  ZENA Thorn-Andrews, Britain’s most successful breeder in terms of the number of UK champions produced, now holds another distinction, as the only judge currently passed by the Kennel Club to award CCs in all breeds entitled to them.
The only other judge to achieve this in recent times was her husband Terry Thorn, who was also passed for all CC breeds, and who died last year.
Since the KC started publishing the list of group judges in 1984, other all-rounders such as the late Joe Braddon, Catherine Sutton and R M James, came close to being passed for all breeds but never actually reached that point.

Grateful

The final breed for which Mrs Thorn-Andrews was passed is Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, which she will be judging at Bath next year. She said this week: “What is nice is that Terry’s last breed he needed for all breed status also came from Bath show, and it was at Bath that I won my first group with the Irish Wolfhound Ch Edgecroft Simon.” Mr Braddon won the gundog group that day.
She continued: “I would like to say how grateful I am to everyone who has given me the chance over the years to judge their breeds. I did, and do, take it very seriously.”
She keeps records of all dogs to which she has awarded CCs and has found that she has given first CCs to 265 dogs who have since become champions.
Several years ago her Drakesleat kennel became the first to have bred and/or owned 100 UK champions, mainly in Irish Wolfhounds and Miniature Wire Dachshunds, and since then a number of further Dachshunds have been made up.
Mrs Thorn Andrews first awarded CCs in Irish Wolfhounds at the Welsh Kennel Club in 1974 where her BOB was Florence Nagle’s puppy, Sulhamstead Motto, taking his first CC. He went on to gain his title; indeed Mrs Nagle showed him under Zena again three years later when he took his tenth CC and BOB.
Zena’s first Dachshund CC appointments came at Richmond ’77 in Wires and Miniature Wires; other Dachshund varieties followed, and then, in 1982 Pharaoh Hounds, and then Bassets and other hound breeds.
Her first Crufts appointment was in 1983 for Wolfhounds and she awarded BIS there in 2007. She awarded the first set of CCs to Alaskan Malamutes.