Baxter is now a multi-Junior Champion!

Simon and I never thought that we would be going to dog shows when we picked up Freddie almost 3 years ago, but well, it ended up happening.  Well... not with Freddie. As I've mentioned, Freddie is over the weight limit for the DTK (a bit over 10 kg), which doesn't mean that he can't be shown. It just means that he can't be shown in German speaking countries, which happen to be the ones closest to us.

When we picked out Baxter, we knew that his parents were both heavily titled show dogs (they both also have hunting trials, etc... but both are multi-Champions, multi-winners) and his breeders/our friends, would like for him to be shown. We decided to go to a few shows within a 2 hour drive to see how the little guy would do. So far, so good! Baxter is a very promising young dog in a lot of ways. Now that he has some show titles, we're hoping to add in some hunting trials. :) This weekend will be his second Spurlaut practice up in Rheinland-Pfalz. I'm quite excited as it is supposed to be sunny and over 15C (over 60F) all weekend! YAY!

Anyhow, Baxter has now been shown at 5 shows in 3 countries under 5 different judges. He has been 5x V1, 2x Junior Winner and has earned 3 titles: Lux-JCh, SDC-JCh and WUT-JCh. We are so pleased with him! We are of course wishing for more good ratings in the future and a long show and hunting career for this little guy.

Luxembourg and back again

So in the past week, we have stayed in 3 different countries: Finland, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Luxembourg was both a work and pleasure trip as we were kindly invited to stay at our friend Charles' place for the whole weekend so we could attend the Luxembourg dog show on Saturday.

This is one of the biggest shows in Europe and definitely the biggest show that we have been to thus far. On Saturday there were over 2500 dogs present and an equal, if not greater, number were shown on Sunday. For dackels alone (FCI group 4) there were 178 entries. That is a LOT of dackels! In Baxter's class there were 5 males (Baxter included), so the competition was tough. All the males, except 1, were older than Baxter and the oldest male in the class was 17 months and quite developed. We walked around Luxembourg city and walked in the woods when we arrived from Basel on Friday afternoon, so Bax was quite tired on Saturday. You would never know this in the ring though as he walked like a champ. No happy feet, no prancing, but real walking, with head high and looking great. He was the first male to be judged and although we did not get a written evaluation, the judge spent a lot of time looking at Bax and seemed to really like his head and presentation. He awarded him V1 CACL and in Luxembourg, as a junior or veteran, you only need 1 V1 CACL for Junior Champion.
So Baxter gained his first official title: Champion des Jeunes de Luxembourg/ Luxembourg Junior Champion!!

WooHoo!!

This certificate is nicer than a lot of my diplomas.

In Luxembourg, the males and females don't walk against each other for Junior BOB (only the adults do) and so both Baxter and the female Junior Winner (Alexandra v. Tollbach who you all might remember from Offenburg) both walked in the big ring for Junior BIS.

Although we didn't win BIS, it is always cool to make it to the big ring!

Simon was in shock and awe and excitement when he and Baxter won, that we completely ignored everyone's hands and walked out of the ring with a HUGE smile on his face (he later went back to apologize to the 2nd place dog owner for being so clueless). It was really a great day.

On the way home we bought our traditional bottle of champagne, this time, though, it was a delicious Luxembourger Rosé. :)

Aside from the dog show, we go to spend the weekend exploring the Luxembourgish countryside, meeting old friends, enjoying a LOT of wonderful food and company, and spending time with the dogs. A real thanks goes out to Charles' parents for being wonderful hosts and treating us like family. They really went above and beyond and even watched Freddie while we were at the show on Saturday. I think that we have converted Charles' mom into a dackel lover as she offered to keep the boys and for us to let her know when either Baxter or his sisters have puppies.

I really give our dogs a lot of credit on flexibility. They met a lot of dogs this weekend. Aside from Jij and Brigitte's dog Febus (a Griffon Fauve de Bretagne) a very friendly and laid back dog, they met Mika (an Australian shepard), a maltese and a Lhasa Apso, Egon (a Greater Swiss Mountain dog), and Jachen (a black Lab). The only dogs that caused problems, were the Lhasa and maltese, who just did NOT want to get along with Freddie. All of the dogs were male except the maltese and most were uncastrated. There were no battles, no biting, and no dominant behavior from anyone, just a lot of running and playing together.

Today we went on a nice long walk to tire the boys out before the 3.5 hour drive home. Here are a few pictures. Enjoy!

War Cry

Checking out the other side of the stream

Febus

 

Offenburg IHA and Specialausttellung for Dackels

He really is a carbon copy of his Mom- 11 months old

 So we spent this weekend in Offenburg, Germany for Baxter's 3rd and 4th shows. He is now 11 months old and developing quite nicely. We really need to work on ring training, as he is too happy and likes to prance around. I guess that it is better than dragging the dog in the ring, but we still have to work on it. Even with the prancing, the judge on Saturday awarded him the highest rating and asked us how we kept his teeth so white.

V1 CAC/J-DTK, CAC/J-VDH Ortenaujugendsieger

Today was a Special Ausstellung put on by the Badischer Dackel Club. This is our "home" club and of course we would go and support our friends and try for a few more awards. Today Bax behaved much nicer in the ring, but didn't want to stand on the table for the judge in order for her to inspect his tail and rear end.

Simon and Baxter in the JBOB ring competing against Dieter Engel and his junior Female Alexandra von Tollbach (which won JBOB both days)

Regardless, she gave him a very nice evaluation and awarded him: V1 CAC/J-DTK, CAC/J-VDH Jugendsieger!

What a great weekend! With these awards Baxter has earned his SDC (Swiss Dachshund Club) Jugend (Junior) Championship! He should also be eligible for his WUT (World Union Teckel) Junior Championship since he now has 4x V1-CAC/J ratings in 2 different countries.

This made us and Baxter's breeder extremely happy, but now puts us in the position that we should go to 1 more National or International dog show in Germany before he is 18 months old in order to try for the last CAC/J-VDH &/or CAC/J-DTK for him to get VDH J-Ch and DTK-JCh (with a SchwhK or BhFK result).

So a lot to think about.

During the shows we had several visitors come up to us to ask if we were A.) breeders or B.) knew when Baxter would have puppies so they could reserve one. This, I think, is a wonderful achievement and compliment to Markku and his small, but nice breeding program. What can I say? Baxter is a bit of a looker. :)

In addition, several members of our German Dackel club came to the show to watch and acted as a cheering crowd/fan club for Bax. In addition, we spoke with the judge today (Nicole Kübli) after the show was over. We were saying good-bye to friends who were organizing the event and she was waiting around so we said goodbye to her as well. She told us that we had a beautiful dog and really commended us on bringing new blood into the Swiss breeding program. She also encouraged us to keep showing Baxter because he will most certainly do well as he gets older. It was really great to hear such nice words from a judge and I think it made even the dog show skeptics (like Simon) extremely proud and happy.

Now it is getting late. The weather has turned a bit crappy and the two dackels sleeping on my legs have to go outside before we all turn in for the night. Until next time.

International Hunde Ausstellung (International Dog Show), Fribourg, CH

So this weekend marked a few things:

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!

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.

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.