Freddie's first time at an "unknown" place
Baxter's dog show debut
Freddie and Baxter's first time being separated
We'll start with Freddie.
Although we could have taken Freddie with us to Fribourg, we decided against it because it is NO FUN to sit in a box all day with lots of dogs around. Freddie is always alert and ready to go (unless it's first thing in the morning) and would have been a barking maniac at the show. We had arranged for him to spend the weekend with a dog-loving colleague of a friend. We had a meet up the week before and her Yorkie got along great with the boys and all seemed great. Notice the word "seemed." Well, right before Baxter was to show on Saturday I got calls and a lot of text messages telling me that Freddie was a whining, crying doofus because the woman that she was staying with had rats. Sigh. They weren't an issue the weekend before, but supposedly he was crying at the door and trying to get to them from the time we dropped him off until the next morning (about 15 hours). Luckily, he didn't get to the rats since they were in a closed off room, because I think I would have owed Lou new rats... Oh, our little hunter! By mid-day on Saturday Freddie had more or less given up on the rats and took to snoring on the couch, playing with the Yorkie, and barking at the neighbor dog from the yard, which he continued doing until this evening. We picked him up tonight and, admittedly, I was a bit embarrassed that our normally well behaved dog acted like an annoying, whiny, brat, but what could I do? The little brown dog wanted to hunt rats! No one ever told him that he couldn't....
Now to the show!
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| Now that's a lot of bling! |
This weekend marked Baxter's show debut. In Europe, dog shows are set up are set up according to FCI rules. Unlike in America, Dachshunds make up their own group (FCI group 4), which is made up of Kurzhaar/Poil Ras (short haired), Langhaar/Poil Long (long haired), and Rauhaar/Poil Dur (wire haired) in 3 different sizes: Kaninchen/rabbit sized (chest size under 30 cm), Zwerg/miniature (chest size under 35cm), and Standard. There are also several classes that the dogs can be exhibited in: Baby(under 6 months), Puppy (6-9 months), Junior (9-18 months), Intermediate (15-24 months), Open(over 15 months), Working (over 15 months with working certificate), Champion (over 15 months and a NON-junior Championship in another country), and Veteran (over 8 years). All in all this leads to a long day and quite a lot of waiting since one judge has to judge 50+ dogs.
Regardless, we had a rather nice couple days hanging out with friends from our local dackel clubs, doing a little wandering around and shopping, and showing off our little dog. Switzerland has 3 weekends per year (Fribourg, St. Gallen and now Geneva) with 2 international dog shows each weekend. This gives dogs the opportunity to win CACs (towards Championships) as well as CACIB (International beauty certificates) on both days. This weekend there were ~50 dackels on each day of competition, including 5 Wirehaired standards yesterday and 10 Wirehaired standards today. Most of the exhibitioners are Swiss, but this weekend there were also a few French, German, and Italian exhibitioners.
I'm happy to report that Baxter had a great start to his show career with 2x V1 CAC/J ie, Excellent 1, Junior CAC (towards junior Champion of Switzerland) and 1x Junior Best of Breed.
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| Our accomplishment for the weekend |
In addition, Baxter got to walk in the big ring for BIS-Junior. He didn't win unfortunately, but he did make it through at least 2 rounds of cuts and was one of the last 15 dogs in the ring. Not bad for a first show weekend! Now we have a couple weeks off before the next round of shows. We are going to shows that are roughly 1-1.5 hours away from home for now. Mostly for practice, but if we can finish off a couple Junior Championships, that would be great too! I really have to give a lot of credit to Simon for walking with this little guy in the ring. He is a great handler in the making and puts up with me signing him up for dog shows with the little man. I have to say I'm really happy with how well Baxter did in the stand. I worked very hard to get him to understand that "hold" means to stretch out and stand pretty. Both judges commented on how beautiful he looked in this position. The only thing that the judges really commented on was movement. Baxter is only 10.5 months old and still "loose" and so he has a bit of a shaky/wobbly walk, but both seemed confident that he would grow out of that. Next up will be another IHA and Special Zuchtschau in Offenburg, Germany in March.Now for my favorite part of the weekend... The boys meeting up again.
Baxter has never lived without other dogs. He went from being in a litter of 5 with 3 adult dogs in the house to flying to Switzerland and coming into our home with Freddie. With only a few exceptions, such as separate trainings or vet appointments, the boys have never been apart, and we had no idea how Baxter would react to his friend being gone. He seemed okay the first day and we really wondered if he noticed that Freddie was missing. When we arrived home from the show, though, Baxter ran into the house full speed and searched every room of the house and walked back into the hallway with this look on his face like he couldn't imagine where else Freddie would be hiding. The scene repeated again this evening, which broke my heart a bit. We fed Baxter and then immediately went to pick up Freddie. Freddie was happy to see us, but by the end of his stay, I think he was having a great time with his new Yorkie pal. We packed everything up and headed home. When we opened the door and Baxter saw Freddie was home, you would have thought that we told him he had won the lottery! He was completely wiggly and kissy and just happy. It was really heartwarming to see them so happy to see each other. I really wish I would have taken a video.
Now everyone if pretty exhausted from our long, but very fruitful, weekend.
Congratulations on the great weekend!
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