Puppy development

Hi again.
I have been absent for a long time, I know. Well, for various reasons, I have been in Finland since the 1st of May. Yes, it has been SO difficult to leave beautiful Sweden in the springtime, but I have been helping out here with my friend's house, goddaughter, and their new puppies. What's that you say... puppies? Ohhhh yes, that's right, I'm with Markku & Salla and sitting next to where I am typing are 4 adorable dachshund puppies (and mom of course!).

2 of the girls, taken 3 days ago

Although the puppies are of course cute, it has really been an eye opening experience to watch their development 1st hand. When I arrived the puppies were exactly 10 days old and now they are approaching their 4 weeks mark. I've seen their eyes open, heard their first peeps, watched them take their first steps (though walking is still a bit awkward for some), figure out that their brother and sisters, as well as mom, can be played with, chewed on, slept on, and barked at, and eat their first meal.

In addition, I have gotten to experience tiny puppy kisses, having my fingers "chewed" on (their teeth haven't erupted yet), being barked at by the feistiest little girl, and today there was a play battle between my hand and the lightest girl. Lastly, I have gotten to see tiny puppy tails wagging so happily when mom comes in or we come in to talk to them. Of course these little things have me wrapped around their paws and I melt when I look at them, but this has been a totally valuable time for me as well.

I, one day, hope to also breed. The whelping box, the care, the day to day activities and well being of these little guys are important. In addition, Salla is giving me lessons all the time in what happens when during development and how to start picking out important attributes in young puppies. Although I've read all about these things, it is a different matter seeing them "live."For these puppies, it is too soon to say anything about their movement since walking is still being mastered, but one can look at them structurally; in the rib, hip, front legs, back angulation, length, and make an educated guess about height. We of course all have our favorites. :)

Who doesn't love sleeping puppies?

I will not be here to see the pups off to their new homes, but some have already found some great and enthusiastic new owners and I'm sure they will have long and happy lives. No, I will be returning to Sweden in about a week to pack up the apartment, move to a new, awesome house with garden(!!), and start a new job in June at the Biomedical center in Lund. Last, but not least, I will get to see my boys again! I have missed them all (the 4 legged ones as well as my 2 legged one), even though my time here has been highlighted with my happy, beautiful goddaughter, puppies, and great friends, it will be great to have things back to "normal." :)

The new "home" for our little pack (the Audi is already comfy)

The boys enjoying a walk in the countryside near the new house

What a way to end our show year!

We decided this fall that we wanted to take a week long vacation to celebrate finishing our degrees. Of course we planned on bringing the dogs with, so I looked for a few locations that I'd like to go to and also possibilities for dog shows or trials. Low-and-behold, there were double CACIB shows in Wels, Austria, only 2 hours from Vienna. Even better, there was a lovely Wine and Spa hotel, that I had seen on CNN about 2 years ago as one of the top wine destinations in Europe, only an hour and a half away. We've been wanting to visit Austria for the past couple of years, but never made the 8 hour trek to Vienna. So after I finished my degree in October, the first thing I did was to book hotels and sign up for the dog shows.

Well, I have to say, our last dog shows of the year paid off! After a disappointing weekend in Geneva in November, in which Baxter received the Excellent 1, but the CAC was withheld, this was a great pick me up. Not only did Baxter receive Excellent 1 with CACA (Champion certificate in Austria) on Saturday, but he repeated the win on Sunday and, in addition, picked up another CACA and a reserve CACIB! The CACIB is given to the best male, so our little guy was picked as 2nd best male dog.

There were over 30 dachshunds from all over Europe there this weekend, so we were very happy about our first wins in Austria. Now we have at least 1 year to collect at least 2 more CACAs. :)

Not only did we have a nice time and, of course, had some nice wins, but we finally met the breeder of Freddie's father Kobeddus Effendi, Caroline, in person! We have been Facebook friends and emailing back an forth for years now, so it was nice to finally meet and chat.

Now Simon, the dogs and I are having our vacation. We explored Linz a bit and visited the Christmas market and had great views of the city, even though the weather was a bit crappy. Now we are settled in for the night at our fantastic fancy hotel. It is the best graduation present that I could have at the moment. :)

So with our wins, we are ending our show season. It has been an amazing year and I couldn't ask for more from the dogs. They have both done amazing and been incredibly successful this year. I can only hope that 2014 will be as fruitful as 2013!

Italian trip 2013

This year we decided to make our trip to Italy slightly earlier this year to ensure that we would be able to get in some tracking trials. We signed Freddie up for tracking as well as fox trials and with Baxter we focused on tracking.
We went down a few days earlier this year in order to do a Saupr. practice as well as try our little dog on the fox. We couldn't have picked a prettier day to drive down. Please enjoy some of Switzerland's gorgeous views. :)

Driving through the Vierwaldstättersee in Central Switzerland 

Simon is from this area and I have to say, I'm jealous I didn't have this view growing up

A view of the Alps 

Our last sunny view before the Gotthard tunnel

  

Ticino was cloudy, but the hanging clouds are beautiful

Getting closer!

This region of Italy is often quite foggy

A little sun to end the day

We were extremely happy with the extra private practice at the Palladini's house. Antonio and Barbara are really some of the nicest people that I have met. Antonio was more than willing and happy to allow us to try Baxter in the artificial fox den and pit both dogs against the boars. Success in both practices and maybe we will try the small one on these trials in another year or so, but we didn't want to overwhelm him this time.

The boys were ready to go! Freddie spent much of the time in the front seat "driving" the car while we were waiting for our start times. Baxter occasionally jumped to the front, but preferred sitting on top on the wine that we picked up.

Waiting for our tracking trial

My team

Success! Great track guys!

Picking up our awards for tracking

All I can say is success! Freddie is really coming into his own as a hunter and I really need to get my hunting license ASAP so I can continue with this talented dog. Not only did he ace his 40 hr tracking trial with 100 pts and a CAC (a certificate towards an Italian working certificate), but he once again was a maniac on fox. In both trials offered (BHFK95 and FBJA) he received 100 pts, 1st prize and 1 RRCAC(2nd reserve) in FBJA. The Fbja competition came down to how quickly the dogs made it to the fox. Amazingly, there was a standard long that was amazingly fast at 15 sec from the entry to the fox. Just for reference, the fastest kanninchen dachshund in an earlier trial made the trek in 9 secs, so this longhair was quick! Fred took what seemed like the longest path possible (which included a dip/incline) and took 26 sec, putting him in 3rd place of the 4 top dogs. For the BHFK95 he did amazing and pushed the fox like a champ, but did the trial in 4 min 13 sec and he would have needed to complete it in 4 min for the CAC. Oh well, no worries! Still a great job!

Atta boy Fred!

Our haul

Additionally, Baxter did amazing on his tracking exam. Both Simon and the judge were amazed at how meticulous and focused the small dog was on the trail. He just needs a bit more practice on corners as he tends to overshoot, then back track and start again. We are planning to continue with tracking practice this autumn since it is great exercise for the dogs and for me! Hopefully we can continue to get better and better. Next year's goals include finishing Freddie's Italian working championship, tracking and hunting tests in Germany with the boys, and hopefully partaking in working trials in the Nordic countries. Of course at least one of these goals require me to follow up in my goal to complete my hunting license/exam! Let's see what next year brings!

CH Landessieger, Eurodog Show & Formwert

Hi everyone!

Please forgive my tardiness as we have been having a great couple of days in the Geneva/French area! Yesterday was the Swiss Landessieger show and today was the Euro dog show.
 I am happy to report that we seem to have broken our SG streak and now have a few more "V"s under our belt. In the Swiss landessieger show Simon and Baxter received a V3 in junior class. Not too shabby considering the other competitors were the WUT Weltjugendsieger and the German Klubsieger. Baxter was officially the best junior male from Switzerland. ;)  Maybe next year the competition won't be so tough!

Today was the Euro dog show in Geneva. Baxter was in a class on 12 junior males and managed to receive a V rating. The competition was tough and the dogs that won yesterday also received Junior Winner and Junior Reserve Winner today. Simon and Baxter are still learning, but showed very nicely after a few tips from our mentors/breeders.

Big congrats today go to Baxter's Mom: "Taxette's Isla Margarita" who was V2 Veteran Reserve at the Swiss Clubsieger yesterday and V1 European Veteran Winner today! Congrats Iiris!!!

We are so excited to own such a wonderful dog and hope for many more great show days.

Furthermore, Baxter received his Zahnstatus (tooth status) as well as him Formwert evaluation.  Bax has no missing teeth and received a great evaluation. After sending in the paperwork, Bax will be approved for breeding in Switzerland.

Great and fun weekend so far!!!

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

 

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.

Where is my white Christmas?

 I'm originally a Wisconsin girl. I'm used to harsh winters with grey skies and snow that falls and piles up so that the ground is white from roughly November until April. After my Bachelor's degree I moved to Colorado to pursue a Graduate degree. Now Colorado is synonymous with mountains and skiing and I never thought that the weather would be better than Wisconsin. To my delight, the average temperature in Boulder, Colorado was 45F and had 300 days of sunshine.
These pictures are a few years old now, but they were taken on a hike that I went on in January 2006. Yep, this is Boulder in January.









About 2 years ago a friend called me on Christmas from Boulder to tell me that it was 70F and they were grilling out for Christmas dinner. Boulder did get snow and when it snowed, it tended to be epic snow. It would snow like crazy for a couple days and be cold, then later in the week it would be sunny and everything would melt. It was a fun place to leave for a few years.

In 2008, I moved to Basel, Switzerland. I have to admit I had gotten soft after living in Boulder for 3 years and was terrified to move to Switzerland with cold, Wisconsin-like winters again. Well, after 4 years I am happy to report that Wisconsin still reigns as the worst winter place I have ever lived. Basel is in this little, wonderful pocket where it is relatively sunny, warm and milder than the rest of Switzerland. It was over 60F (17C) on Christmas Eve and sunny. Christmas day was similarly mild, but with a bit of rain.

My view from Simon's parent's house in Luzern (central Switzerland) on Christmas day. The only snow present was on the mountains

I have to admit that there is a little part of me that misses a white Christmas, but at the same time the mild weather suits me well. I've become soft after being out of Wisconsin for almost 8 years. We may still get snow this year, but for now, I'm enjoying running the dogs, shopping, and enjoying the rest of my winter holiday.