The most professional and the best organized dog events in the world are the American ones. A visit to a USA exhibition is a unique experience for europeans and it is a bit like a trip to another dimension in which you have to put aside anything you have ever seen in our exhibitions.   Absolute synchrony, efficiency in every detail, professionalism of all paricipants (organizers, competition directors, hosts and exhibitors) are the basis for a cynofilia that is, from this prospective, at the very top of the world index.
In the USA the "show" is an end in itself and it's the entertainment event the audience finds most interesting and amusing; the exemplar best presented is already spectacular, within boundaries of its breed.
  Dogs are always shown in trot and almost never in footfall, so that exemplars which trot is more fluid and use wider leaps, which limb angle is best - expecially the hindquarters - have better chance of asserting themselves.
  These criteria determined a change in all breeds of American dogs who turned gradually from work-apt dogs into mere exhibition subjects.
  In other words the concept of beauty applied to the American dog drifted away from the zootechnical kind , practical and adaptative (that we consider the one and only to pursuit), towards a type of harmonious beauty that is more conventional and an end in itself.
  The harshest criticism of the Saint Bernard "made in the USA" is the shortness of the limbs (the distance between elbow and ground is much less than 50% of the heigth at withers) and the smaller size (lower barycentre) that distinguishes them greatly especially from the old Swiss Saint Bernard type, as well from the German and   the National Italian one.
The locomotory system is fair in an absolute way although it is not typical of the Saint Bernard, with its abundant muscular mass, great thighs, massive hocks, bulky bone structure though not too sharp. But the most criticizable aspect is their general constitution which brings them closer to the German Shepherd than to a mountain dog. Deprecable are, for instance, the excessive angle of the hind and the croups inclined or overinclined.
In other words since the German shepherd is, as far as trot (motion) is concerned, the dog for antonomasia, the American Saint Bernard is an imitation of the latter. Nevertheless American Saint Bernards have coats that are superior in terms of colours and brightness with excellent mottles, brownish shades and brilliant white colour.
  As for details, it should be said that the American Saint Bernard is very elegant, even if it is not the proper elegance required of the breed. Their traverse diameter is very accentuated, the sternal line reaches often beyond the elbow, foothold basis is wide and the muscle fasces are rather short. As far as the psychical aspect is concerned, they are very calm animals, sexual dismorfism is not accentuated and females are in general better exemplars than males. Criticizable in both sexes is the nose, which is rather small and roundish, the ears are set low at the disadvantage of the skull angularity. Usually the head maintains an infantile shape, so that many of the American Saint Bernards could be defined, from an aesthetic point of view, great puppies. Their muzzle is short, convergency between cranio-facial axisis is solid, the bridge of the muzzle is not always flat but roundish from a frontal prospective, the flews of the upper jaw are strongly developed, the flews of the lower jaw slightly pendent. They present a certain level of overshot bite, now and then there could be found a prognathous subject (in America dog-judges on the rig seldom inspect the bite), the stop is well defined though not sharp, the masseter is well developed, the eyes are round and dark coloured, the neck is set high and its length equals the length of the whole head, the chest is wide, well developed thorax, the back is wide with tight muscles and always straight, the abdomen is full, lowered, sometimes sagged (American Saint Bernards are usually overfed), the croup is wide and slant as in the German shepherd (25º-30º) at times lowered (over 30º). The tail is long, regular aplombs, shoulders are muscular, very long and slant, forelimb very well developed, slightly longer than the shoulder, forearm rather short and muscular, cat-foot, southpaws are almost absent hence it is rare the scything movement, so very common in Europe. The thigh is long and has a large girth, muscles are prominent and very developed, the hind limb is long, the hock is wide and thick, the tibial-metatarsal angle is about 125º (the usual angle in the Saint Bernard is between 145º and 150º), straight-on dogs are extremely rare, footfall and trot are wide and stretched with great drive of the posterior, fatter exemplars have a tendecy to lurch.



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