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

 

Starting the SKN

Today marked Simon and Baxter's first of 4 SKN (Sachkundenachweis- Obligitory dog owner course in Switzerland) practical courses. In 2010, Switzerland started enforcing new laws that that require dog owners to participate in theory and/or practical courses. New dog owners are supposed to take the theory course before they get their dog and the practical course is taken after the dog is 5 months old and/or within 1 year of obtaining your dog.

In essence, I think that these courses are a great step in curbing "cute" puppy buying on a whim and forcing people to really look at why they want a dog. Unfortunately, the new system, in my opinion, still contains quite a few flaws, but I'm hoping that changes will be made in the coming years. One of the biggest flaws I see now is the practical course. Every person owning a dog has to take the practical course for every new dog that they obtain. This means everyone, including breeders. Mind you that depending on the Canton that you live in, the maximum number of dogs is something like 2 per person or 2 per household. You can, of course, have more dogs, but I believe that needs a special permit.

Now, I understand the importance of having a hands on course for new dog owners and I think it is a very good idea, in theory. The problem is that the practical course is usually 4-6 lessons for no more than 1 hour at a time. The SKN instructors have a basic "outline" that they have to follow in terms of what they teach the people involved, but each instructor makes their own courses. When Simon did this course with Freddie 2 years ago he came home pissed off after one class because they spent the whole 45 minutes learning how to pet the dog, give it treats, and pick out the right grooming utensils. This would be fine if you had just obtained your dog or if this was tacked onto the theory course, but since you can't take your dog until it is at least 5 months old, we found it pointless. These are the types of things you learn right away if you have at least 1 competent dog person in your life. The dogs were not allowed to interact with each other either since they are all on leash and the trainer was very strict about dogs not even sniffing butts on her training ground. Needless to say, Simon was thrilled when he was finished with that course. 

Freddie was not impressed...

I was supposed to do the practical course with Baxter. I say "supposed to" because the Basel Veterinarians found that my previous dog ownership (our poodle and American Eskimo growing up and our 2 dackel now) were insufficient. Thus, I have to spend at least 5 hours of my time and quite a bit of money to sit through a theory course(of which I'm pretty sure I know everything they'll tell me). This would be ok, except that all of the trainers listed on the BVET website in Switzerland as English speaking, will not hold the class in English. Mind you, my German is ok, but my Swiss German is crap. They have all told me that I can sit in and ask questions after in English if I didn't understand or that Simon can come and sit in with me. Great. A waste of both of our time. Since Simon already took the theory course, he is now taking the little guy to the practical course.


Sorry about the rant. Back on topic. What I find annoying about this new Swiss system is that there is no course for experienced dog owners. Simon would have happily taken a SKN course set that was geared to returning dog owners. Better yet, I think that they should allow for people to skip the course all together if they can prove that they regularly train with their dogs. If you put in the time and money and effort to make your dog a good citizen, reward them for it!

As I said, the whole system is rather new and I'm sure that it will evolve with time, so we can only hope for the best. I'm sure that we will run into issues with this whole system again if we stay in Switzerland, but only time will tell. 

I promised pictures from Italy

So as you know, we were in Italy for Dachshund trials two weeks ago (the 15th-16th of December). Frankly, I can't believe that it was only 2 weeks ago! It seems like much longer...

The trip was about 430km (267mi), which is quite a distance by European standards, but not by my American Standards. It is really a beautiful area with a lot of rolling hills, castles, and great food and wine. What more could you want? (Maps courtesy of Google Maps)

Anyhow,  the weather in Basel had been quite rainy, but relatively warm.  I had been watching the weather in Italy and it was hovering around 5-10 C (40-50F) with a bit of rain, but mostly cloudy. I thought that it would actually be quite good for tracking and trials in general since it would be above freezing and a little moist. Wrong. When we arrived it was dark and there was light rain. I couldn't see much out the car windows since there is very little light on the roads in Switzerland/Italy aside from the car's headlights. When we arrived at our bed and breakfast (a beautiful place in Gropparello -Torre del Borgo), we saw the snow. It was at least a few inches deep and had obviously fallen a few days ago.  Great. We settled down for the night, grabbed dinner at a nice pizzeria down the road, and headed to bed.

Woke up the next day to a cold, grey, brisk day. Checked my email to ensure I hadn't gotten anything from the trial organizers. Nothing. So we headed to the trial location at 10am to check in and pay for for our tracking trials at 11am. When we got to Cimafava, this was the weather situation:

Not the nicest conditions.

Freddie and Simon December 17th, 2011 after their SchwhK

/20.

We were told that tracking would not happen today as the past couple days had caused everything to ice over, making tracking too difficult. In addition there was quite a bit of wind that day, which isn't common for the area. We were disappointed that 2 of our 5 trials were cancelled, but so be it. The weather was not on our side. We were told that this type of weather was not common for Italy this time of year and that this year had been especially snowy. It reminded me of our nice weather the year before and wished that we had the same luck.

Since we had all afternoon free, we went shopping at a local shopping center to pick up lots of wine, meat, cheese, and Christmas goodies to take home. Went back to the agricultural center in Cimafava where the trials were held for a delicious Italian lunch and got updated on what was happening tomorrow and when we should meet back for the exams. We then made what was left of the day into a site-seeing adventure to the nearby town of Castell'arquato to walk around the old town and see the castle.

This is the same field pictured above 1 year later.

All of us enjoyed the old town and stretching our legs walking through the city and up the hill to the castle.

The snowy road up

The dogs weren't sure what I was doing, but they both seem concerned for my well being.

We ended the day kicking back at the bed and breakfast, having tea with the owners, who are some of the nicest people that I have met, and chatting for a while about life, work, dogs, travel, etc...

Everyone looks pretty comfy!

The next day we got up early and headed back to Cimafava for Sauprüfung (Wild Boar trial) and 2 Fox trials. Unfortunately, the weather was even crappier than the day before:

In addition to iced over snow, due to thawing and melting the day before and freezing over night, we had very, very thick fog. It was so thick that you couldn't see a car more than 10m/30ft in front of you. The result of which was us almost getting rear-ended trying to turn into the parking lot of the trial grounds. The picture above was taken around 10 in the morning when some of the fog was starting to lift a bit. Supposedly, fog is common in this area due to lack of wind. I don't know, but we certainly aren't used to conditions like that. It was Freddie's first time in with the Boars and although we hoped for the best, the reality was that he was too inexperienced to find them. He searched well enough, but without any visual cues (due to fog), he wasn't sure what he was searching for. He got about 5 minutes to search a wooded, enclosed area containing two boars. Supposedly even the conditions were bad for the seasoned dogs. We were told that only 10% of the dogs entered passed the exam and normally this number was closer to 50%. Mr. Palladini did invite us down to practice on the boars in the future if we would ever want to try the test again.

After Boar we had 2 fox exams. I won't go into too much detail here as I explained them (more or less) in a previous post. I am happy to say that Freddie walked away with 2- 1st place ratings and 1 second in trial. There were 40 total Bauprüfung (fox or hare) that day, so it was quite a lot of waiting. We started at about 9 am and finished around 2:30 pm. After that we were on our way home.

Freddie with his 2nd place medal, ready to head home.

 Even though the fog had started to clear throughout the morning, it was back in full-force by the drive home.

My view from the Italian highway

Funnily enough, the fog started to lift just as we hit the Swiss border, leading to a wonderful view of the Alps at sunset. What a great way to be welcomed home!