Liina is home!

After 3 months away, my little zwerg (Barbwired Champagne) returned home with me to Sweden. She was a good houseguest during her stay in Finland and came home with very nice results from the 5 shows she attended:

2xBOB

2xWinner

1xBOS

3xCERT

5xExc

4xExc1 CK

1xExc2

With these results, she should earn 4 new titles upon reaching 2 years of age. Not too shabby for the little girl.

Now we have a little bit of time to rest before the next shows start. Good to have you home my sassy little dog!

Liina BOB in Lithuania

Markku & Liina(Barbwired Champagne) took a show trip down to Panevezys, Lithuania on October 24/25 and came back with great results: 2xExc, 2xCAC, 2xWinner, 2x BOB!

 Furthermore, Markku also took Barbwired Austria-Liina's Mom-and Barbwired De Tomaso-Iita's puppy- who both did very well, earning the titles of Lithuanian Champion & Lithuanian Junior Champion, respectively. Great job Markku and the Barbwired Dogs!

On another quick note, 2 more of Iita's puppies were shown (bringing the total to 6/7) and have received Excellent with CK/CAC. What a super promising litter! Congrats to the owners and breeder and my little start Iita. :)

Baxter's most successful trip

Baxter is finished with his show tour and coming home soon. 

Bax, BIG1 in Thessaloniki

In the meanwhile, here are his stats from his 2 month show tour:

12xCAC, 4xCACIB, 2xresCACIB, 5xBOB, 2xBOS, 2xBIG2, 2xBIG1

 He gained 4 national championships (LT, RO, SE, SRB), 2 international championships (CIB, CIE), 1 Grand Championship (SRB), Welt union teckel (WUT) championship, and has now open championships in AT, DE, HU, and GR.

He and Nikos were a great team and Baxter has gotten nothing but the highest compliments from judges and show people/friends alike. He will return to Nikos next year to finish HU and GR, but in the meantime he will be going on a diet (he was too well loved while in Budapest) and meeting with the badger this summer. I hope to have him in shape for hunting this autumn/winter. 

So excited my boy will be back home to snuggle soon!

What a weekend! New Champion!

So as I alluded to in my last post, Baxter is with a handler friend of mine in Hungary for training and shows. So far he has met with great success, winning his class in all 3 of the shows that he has been in. So he now has show results also from Hungary and Serbia.

The greatest news came today though... Baxter's show results from this weekend (1 national and 1 international show): 2x CAC, 1x CACIB, 2x BOB, 1x BOG2, 1x BOG1!

Aside from the nice trophies, Baxter finished several titles: SRBCh, which then also finishing SEU(V)CH, LTCH, WUTCH and finally... C.I.B (International Beauty Champion)!

I am over the moon and so excited for my little guy! I of course cannot take credit for showing Baxter though, that awesome distinction goes to Nikos Papadopoulos (Sunshineland kennel) for doing amazing work with Baxter in such a short time.



So, many of you might wonder why Baxter is away from home touring central/eastern European shows. Well, the answer is a bit simplistic... Simon and I have decided to separate. It has been an ongoing process and I have now moved to Lund (you may have seen this on the contact page). There were elaborate plans this year to do a few big "show-cations" to try and finish Baxter's Championships and do practice showing with Liina. Since a single income does not lend itself to crazy trips on the other end of the continent, I had to evaluate my options. The result was that Baxter would spend the month of April (and maybe part of May) in Hungary with Nikos and his family, who are totally wonderful! He spends his days running around in the garden with other dogs, show training, and getting love from the family and the weekends showing. Although I miss my little man, it has made the stress of moving a lot easier since there was a lot of tension between the boys at the old house and they had to be separated the past 2 months. Freddie just is not good with 2 other dogs... 1 of either sex is ok, but 2 throws off the balance and makes him nervous and on constant guard. It is also giving me a better opportunity to train and bond with Liina, since Liina and Baxter will ultimately live with me in Lund. So there is the past 6 months in a nutshell. Thank you for continued reading of my blog! I hope for many more dog-filled years to come!

Liina's first time in the ring

So our little Liina (Barbwired Champagne) comes from show and working lines. We have already started working her nose with short blood tracks and hoof drags as well as hunting the mice that have been sneaking into our laundry room since the weather is turning cold. She is really promising and definitely interested in her environment, so we hope that she will be promising for blood tracking and future hunting excursions.

In order to prepare for a future show career we also have to practice. We are still figuring out how to be good handlers with Baxter, so we figured that it would be a good opportunity to start Liina a bit early. She need to get used to the sights, smells, and sounds of a show venue as well as walking on a show lead, stacking, and being examined on the table. In the upcoming month there were 2 puppy shows near us and these unofficial shows would have a lot of different types of dogs and a great chance to practice with the little girl. So today we were off to the Puppy & Junior show in Hassleholm hosted by the Southern Poodle Club. 

Group photo!

Well, Liina's first time in the ring could have gone better. She was a little melty on the table and didn't understand why the judge wanted to touch her all over, though she cooperated with him and gave him kisses. She was very ok with him checking her teeth and tail though. I think that this is where our countryside living is a bit of a disadvantage. We need to get more people over here and have them handle her and feed treats while on the table. She also was a bit of a rocket in the ring for the first 1/2 a lap. Once she settled down, she looked very nice and comfortable walking. Her stacking was also really nice. Liina is a pretty natural self stacker, so a bit more practice to hammer in foot placement and she will be great there.

So, definitely things to work on, but I think that Baxter's first time in the ring was quite similar. It will get better with time and we always have things to work on.

Results from today... 

BIR (BOB) valp 6-9 months with Honor Prize!  No dachshund was placed in group- in Sweden, FCI group 4 & 6 and judged together- but it was still fun to watch Liina trot around the BIG ring. :)

Not a bad start for the little one!

Trials, Shows, and The DTK Dachshund Illustrated

I know that I have veered away from hunting tests lately and have only been talking about our show successes. This is mainly because this spring our main goal was to focus on Spurlaut with Baxter as he needs to pass a Sp test in order to continue on with other tests. As we are still not 100% positive that he is Sp, the rest of our tests are on hold until the fall. From the 1st of May until mid-August there is a hold on Sp tests in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and I believe France. This is when the Hares are mating and having their babies and so it would be disastrous to have a bunch of dachshund running the fields. So we will wait until August and enjoy the "show" season. We are hoping to get the dogs swimming this summer and perhaps we can do Wassertest this August. This will be a bit of a challenge with Freddie as he is a wonderful swimmer and retriever, but a bit unreliable when he has to do both at the same time. I'm hoping that with practice and a real duck instead of toys will motivate him enough to be a good water dog.
 
So about the shows. I realize that I talk about shows I never really state the obvious... they are beauty contests. Of course if you've seen Westminster, Cruft's, or even the fantastic Christopher Guest movie "Best in Show" (2000), you actually have a decent idea about dog shows or the crazy things that can go on there. There are good things about dog shows though. I think that one that I like the most is the comradery between the people. Of course it is a competition, but as you go to these shows, you recognize people and talk to people about their life and their dogs. You get to learn about them and even though some of these people can be a bit... intense... it is a great experience. The goal is to win, plain and simple. Winning brings you CACs and CACs bring you titles, which in turn make your dog more known in the dackel community and more likely to produce offspring. This is, of course, all theory. Hunting trials, to us, are just as important and more fun then going to these shows. In my opinion, a winning dog should still be a useful dog. I'm hoping that our little one will prove to be as  good a working dog as he is a show dog.

Speaking of shows, I never posted pictures from Baxter's big BOB win last weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the BOB ring because I honestly never thought that he would win. Shoulda, woulda, coulda...

Patiently waiting

Having teeth, tail, head, etc... checked on the table

Standing in the ring. This was a challenge since the judge kept the dogs in the standing position during his entire written evaluation. It seemed like forever.

Walking

The original picture was way too dark, this is a bit better

V1 CACJ Jugendsieger!

If you are interested in how dachshunds are judged in FCI countries, there is a wonderful set of illustrations from the DTK club of Baden Württemberg & Hohenzollern: http://www.dachshundklub.de/dwh/der-rassestandard/illustrationen-aktuell
It mainly shows what is a fault, but nonetheless, I think that it is a very informative set of photos.

Sorry that they are in German, but I think that you get the idea about what the judges are looking for.

This weekend we have a "normal" weekend with training with the dogs and some work for Simon and I. Luckily for us it is Ascension and that means that I have a 4 day weekend! Next week will be quite a week for us, aside from being off to Saarbrücken for a dog show, it is Pentecost, and I will be celebrating the last days of my 20s. Another year older and so much more to look forward to!

Baxter goes Best of Breed

We had one goal for today when we signed up to go to St Gallen for the dog show. Our goal was to get Bax the last CAC/J needed for his Swiss Jugend Championship (SKG-JCh). Well, I am happy to report that not only did Bax get the last CAC/J that he needed, but he went Junior BoB and Best of Breed in Wirehair Standards! He then went on the walk for Junior Best of Show and Best in Group IV. By the group IV time, he was about done with showing for the day and instead wanted to run and sit down. I can't blame the little guy, I mean he is only 13 months old. Regardless, Baxter had a fan club and got a lot of cheers when he won BOB against 3 champion dogs.

The little certificates are nice, but ribbons would be nicer. ;)

We are now home. The boys are sleeping and Simon and I are enjoying our celebratory prosecco. Have a great weekend everyone!