Mary, you just taught an old dog a new trick. In that case, I've got a pocket rocket...and mine's a bitch (all terms used correctly)
. Man, I gotta get in the ring...I could use a whole new vocabulary.
Seriously, I have a little girl, Darla, that I thought had good prospects of doing well in the ring until I made a cling-on out of her. Guess that can happen when you're mentor-less.
I have recently met a guy that opened a grooming shop down here. He has years of grooming and handling show dogs and has offered to help me out. I think Darla is a lost cause, attitude-wise, but I'm thinking of trying out my Roger. Win, lose or draw, it'll be a good experience for me and I've got to get my feet wet sometime.
As for the whole 'purse puppy' thing, I've been guilty of using that term myself when people ask me about getting a very small dog. What's distressing is that the ones that ask about them usually know next to nothing about the breed. I don't breed for tinies so I'll usually say something like, "well, she's not a purse puppy if that's what you mean".
People are going to use casual terms in talking about things....I guess it's human nature. What I don't like to see is people trying to profit from terms like that.
In my area, breeders are notorious for selling pups way too young and touting them as 'teacups', 'purse puppies', 'true tinies' and so on. What that usually means is a too young pup being offered and too much money being asked. There is an ad in our local paper now with pups born on 12-19 being sold. The ad hasn't expired yet and the pups are now marked 'sold'
. We even have people advertising 8 week old pups that have had all their shots and are 'ready to go'. All they're doing is selling heartache at the pup's expense. So sad....