Baxter Passed his Wassertest

Today in Uezwil, Switzerland, Baxter (Barbwired Better than the Rest) passed his Wassertest with flying colors! Simon and Baxter were the first team to participate and Baxter was SUPER excited to go. Simon said he flew into the water, grabbed the duck, and brought it back to shore like a pro. I wish I could have been there to see it. The judge said that there was nothing more to comment other than it was great work!

Finnish Fox Trials

So we returned from a busy weekend in the North, only to find that the 10˚C (50˚F) weather that we left in Basel has long since disappeared. It seems that the snow followed us home. <Sigh> So much for spring! So aside from meeting and fussing over my new god-daughter, I was lucky enough to join my friend at a fox trial in Finland. I figured that this would be a good learning experience and an opportunity to compare trials from Germany, Italy, and Finland.

Although the weather in Finland was cold (-20˚C/-4˚F at night and -5˚C/23˚F during the day) and snowy, the skies were nearly always sunny and clear blue. The surroundings in Finland remind me a lot of Northern Wisconsin; pine and birch trees everywhere, small lakes, stony outcroppings, rolling hills, and sparsely populated. I really enjoy the feeling of a home away from home.

Anyhow, back to the Fox trial. The first difference between the German and Italian trials was the location. We arrived at this beautiful little barn and country house, but as you can see, there was a LOT of snow. So how do you have a artificial den test when you can't see the ground you ask? Easy. You put it in the barn! The second story of the barn was more or less dedicated to the trial set up. The boxes, compared to the German test was much smaller in scale and even a bit smaller than the Italian set up.

 

Unlike the previous tests that I have observed, this test wasn't limited to dachshunds. There were a variety of dogs there that day-12 dogs in all- including a smooth dachdhund, a wirehaired dachshund, a few parson and jack russel terriers, border terriers and a couple German Jagdterriers. Each dog is allotted 20 minutes for the test, but based on it's skill, the test time could last as little as 10 minutes. 

How the test runs:

Here is how the set up looks from above. I can't remember the exact dimensions, but the idea is similar to what I have encountered in other countries.

The luolakoirien taipumuskokeessa(LUT), aka underground trial, as I experienced it/was explained it has different levels: LUT D-B and LUT A.  LUT A, being the most advanced. I will talk about this a bit more later.

First, all dogs are put through the empty den to check for Baulaut (voicing in an empty den with no quarry). After the dog has successfully completed the Baulaut portion, the test can begin. The fox is released into the cave and separated by bars (the blue entry way). By the way, these foxes weren't the red foxes I was used to. They were beautiful, fuzzy grey foxes, which are still a form of red fox (Vulpes vulpes), but the coloration is different. The fox is then allowed to run to the first holding box. The dog is then released (left tunnel with the green run). Unlike in the German test, this green block represents the "small" part of the tunnel and the dog must do it right away. Also, unlike the German test, the tunnel does not narrow in width (height staying the same), but the width stays the same and the height becomes much lower.

Very basic schematic of the dog's side of the tunnel. The green is the shallowest part at ~6 inches (15cm). It may be slightly more, but I remembered my friend saying it was similar in size to the German test.

In order for the dog to go through this part, it literally needs to crawl through on it's side... at least the dachshunds need to because of their large chests.

After the dog is inside and past the narrow part, the dog must pursue the fox as that fox is moved from box to box, much like in the German exam.  It must bark and put pressure on the fox for a few minutes. I believe it is at this point that determines the B, C or D grade of the exam. On the overview above, you will see that the right hand tunnel of the figure 8 has yellow stars. The dog is graded on how close it gets to the fox, while giving pressure. I believe the markings are put something like 10, 25 and 50 cm away. The closer the dog gets and barks and pressures the fox, the higher the rating.

To end the trial, the fox and dog are put in contact with each other. All of the boards separating them are removed and the dog is allowed to pursue the fox as it would underground. The foxes of course can fight back, so this really determines the courage of the dog. The judge and veterinarian have to keep a close eye on the going on so that they have the opportunity to separate the animals by bars before anything can happen. In one case, there was a dog that was snapped at by the fox and did not want to pursue it any further. The test was stopped and the dog failed, not physically injured, but mentally unable to continue.

The LUT A exam is more difficult than the LUT D-B because of a further obstacle: sand. In the LUT A, there is a pile of sand that the dog must dig through in order to continue with the test. I was surprised at the amount of sand added. The blue trapezoid below is a fairly accurate representation of the added sand amount. Once the dog has dug himself through, the exam continues similar to before.

Sand has been added after the first box as an additional barrier

In Finland you can gain working championships through most hunting trials. To become a working champion on fox in Finland, a dog must pass LUT B 2x and LUT A 1x.  I hope that I got most of the test details correct. I spent a lot of the day babysitting and not as much watching the dogs, not that there is so much to watch besides some small flags flapping to show the location of the animals. It was a wonderful, amazing sound to be underneath the trial set up though! The dogs and foxes running through the wooden boxes above your head and the barking...Wow. I'd love to try our dogs on a test like this, but I think that this is a wish for the future.

Swiss Working Dachshund Statistics

So I have been very impatiently waiting for the newest SDC member magazine to show up and yesterday it finally came. I raced through it, just glancing over the pages until I found this:

What is this table you may ask? This is the working statistics for Switzerland. Basically every test that is passed (that isn't something totally specialized like the Italian Fbja) is counted for points. The dogs are then ranked based on their point totals. Now, not every dog owner turns in their point totals, but several do and I like to see where we fall on the list.

This year I am happy to announce that Freddie is #4 on the list! We came right after the 3 dogs that all participated in Vp. For two relatively novice dackel owners who are just getting the hang of these trials, I think I can call it a success! So hopefully this year brings a hunting license into our lives and continuation with more hunting tests with our boys.

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!

A little more about last weekend's trials

So I promised to write a bit more on each of the trials. 

We we're planning on doing 5 tests: SchwhK/40, SchwPoR, Saupr, BhFK95, Fbja

Due to the weather in Italy, the two tracking tests were cancelled. Bummer. It had snowed at some point earlier in the week. We were told that the weather had basically fluctuated from above zero and sunny to -5˚C or colder at night. This basically led to melt during the day and icing up at night. In addition, the night the we got there it was rain/snowing and on Sunday until at least noon, the fog was so thick that you couldn't see more than about 5-10 meters in front of you. Not ideal for a lot of tests, especially not tracking as any of the sprayed blood would be underneath an ice layer or washed away completely.

Since we didn't have any tracking tests, we ended up eating a really nice lunch at the area where the trials were held, doing some shopping, and doing some sight-seeing. Near Cimafava/Piacenza there are a lot of castles and we ended up going to Castell' Arquato and taking a nice walk around the town and up to the castle. We also loaded up on a lot of nice wine and Italian Salami, Parma, and other assorted meats.

On Sunday we were up bright and early to be at the trials in order to compete in Saupr. Freddie had never competed or tried to find a boar, but we thought it was worth a try. For Saupr, basically the dog is put into an enclosed area containing a couple of wild boar and he is supposed to track the boar and bark at the boar and work it until the hunter can get there. Freddie searched, but again, due to the snow, wind, and very heavy fog, he was not able to find the boars in the time allotted and was eliminated from the test(Not completed). Antonio was very helpful though and offered for us to come down early before the next tests that we competed in, in order to have a practice on the boars. I think we will take him up on it.

 Freddie then competed in 2 different fox trials.

  In one, he had to first find the fox and then work the fox and "push" it through a series of boxes. The "pushing" only begins after the dog has already bayed at the fox for 2 minutes and then they have a maximum of 5 minutes to move it. They can only receive 100 points if they move the fox. In the other he had to find the fox and work it continuously for at least 3 minutes.

Freddie did well in both, but did not receive full points in because he had a few breaks in his barking (maybe 10 sec, but this was enough to take off a bit) in one test and in the other he was spot on and really wanted the fox, but he didn't push it hard enough to move it. He had never had to move a fox before, so we didn't expect him to ace this test. This didn't matter to us, we were more excited that he performed so well in a completely unknown Bau and really wanted to work. He went in the hole for the second test without a second thought.

Even though Freddie is a fairly high and big dackel (though he is more long than he is wide and looks very proportional), he loves the fox hole and is very passionate when working the fox. I think we will be competing in more fox trials with him in the future.

Just a quick update

So tonight will be a short post as we just got home and everyone is tired.

Due to really crap weather, all of the tracking was cancelled. Bummer. This left us with the entire Saturday to eat, drink, and sight see around the beautiful countryside. We visited a local castle and gave the dogs a nice walk around in the town.

As Baxter is 2 weeks too young to compete, Freddie was our working dog. This worked out fine as Baxter would have only been tracking anyhow.  Anyway, Freddie has really found his forte in the fox hole. He did 2 fox trials:
Prova in tana artificiale su volpe (Fbja:Fuchsbodenjagdarbeit)
Prova in tana artificiale su volpe DTK/FCI (BhFK/95:Eignungsbewertung fur die Bodenjagd)

I'll explain more about them later.  Anyhow, to our delight, Freddie received 94 points (1st prize) in each trial and was the second best dog in Fbja which got him this pretty little trinket:

The fox hunter taking a well deserved nap

It's not a CACT, but we had a great time and look forward to going back next year.

Trials this weekend

Last year we went down to Italy to participate in our first Dackel trials. The advantage of driving the 4.5 hours to Italy versus sticking around up here and doing trials is:
1.) Timing
2.) Cost
3.) Variety
4.) Need for hunting license

Since neither Simon nor I are hunters and mainly participate in these trials for the fun of working with the dog and harnessing its natural talents, we do not yet have hunting licenses. To participate in certain hunting exams such as blood tracking in Germany or Switzerland, you need to have a hunting license. The German and Swiss hunting licenses are INTENSE. They are, more or less, equivalent to a Master's degree and a lot of work and money. Right now my German is not up to par to pass a test like that and we don't have the time or money at the moment. Several Swiss hunters actually pass the French hunting exam, which is not as intense and perfect for people like us who don't necessarily want to hunt at the moment, but may some day. Right now we just want to be active and train our dogs and will consider studying for the French exam after we are both finished with our degrees.

The variety of tests that you can participate during these weekends are mind boggling. They have fox, tracking, Vp, Sau, etc... Last year at the same trials they had 170 exams in one weekend. Crazy. This was a bit insane and we were only 1 of the 170 signed up for. This year we will participate in 5 exams: Fbja (Italian Fox test without contact), BhFK/95 (according to DTK rules), Sauprüfung (Wild boar test), SchwhP. o. R. (blood tracking without judge), and SchwhK/40 (40 hour old blood tracking). We're hoping for positive results in all trials, but we will see.

The timing for us is great. Italy is warmer and drier this time of year (on average) than Switzerland, so it's a nice winter holiday.

Lastly, the cost. Most things are cheap compared to Switzerland, but these trials are a great deal, especially for first timers like us who just want to try out a bunch of trials and see how our dog does and have fun with it. As members of the DTK/SDC, we would pay ~ 300 Euro ($390) to participate in these 5 trials, in Switzerland we would pay ~250 CHF ($270) for only 2 tests (Switzerland doesn't have the equipment/ability to host Fox tests or Wild Boar tests). With the Italian tests, we will pay around 150 Euro ($195). For PhD students with a limited income that still want to work with the dogs, this is great to try out, plus it's Italy. The food, the sights, and the people are great. It's a really nice weekend.

I can't wait to see how Freddie does and to hopefully see his natural talents shine!