Titles revoked
The founding champion who founded a little too well.
In 1919 Mayor Daron Beck looked at Sittensteigh, saw the dogs already sitting in the good chairs, and decided the town needed a show. He entered Otis, his sheltie. Otis won. The next year Otis won. By the third win, people started bringing their own pencils to the score table. By the fifth, even the hot-dog man had questions.
The audience already had a favorite, a Maltese named Taffy Candy, who lost to Otis with the patience of a saint and the fluff of a grudge. After that fifth blowout an investigation decided the mayor had been generous with bribes and with enhancement products. The awards were taken back. The mayor took an early retirement. Otis, by every account, remained a nice dog who had been entered by the wrong ambition.
The show stayed. That is the part Sittensteigh is proud of. The painting stayed too, because the cousin with the attic said it was culture. The color photograph is a later sheltie who gives the same energy: pleasant, well-brushed, and not the mayor.