Whippet eye colour

I spoke to an old friend the other day and we came to speak about whippets and their eyes. I am more often seeing judges putting down individuals because the eyes are lighter than the coat colour. This upsets me as these judges don’t follow the standard. The standard only mentions the expression but nothing about the actual eye colour. We pay a great deal of money entering dogs at shows and then there are the expenses for driving and so on and since we invest so much time and money showing our dogs I think we at least earn the respect of the judges to judge according to the standard.

Yes, a really dark eye is very beautiful to look at if the expression is nice, but a whippet with a bit lighter eye (which whippets with blue pigmentation usually have) should not be penalised. A few years ago at an open Whippet Club specialty here in Sweden a judge from the continent who is a sighthound specialist kept putting down whippets that according to him had lighter eyes than the coat colour. I was not showing but was at the ringside all day. After the show I did something I have never done before or after, I approached the judge and asked him about this eye thing. He told me it is very important that eye colour should harmonise with the coat colour. I said to him that there is nothing in the FCI-standard (the same as the UK standard) that say a whippet must have dark eyes or colour that is as dark as the coat. He said, I don’t care about that, it’s important to me. I got upset and asked him if he has written a standard of his own? At this point he did not want to talk to me anymore, turned around and walked away! This is a clear example of a judge not respecting the standard or the people who entered their dogs and this is just one of the occasions were I have stumbled upon judges doing like this…