Spiel ohne Grenze

 Literally, this translates to "Game without Borders" and it is a yearly event at our dog school in Basel. This year roughly 20 dogs of various breeds ranging from Chihuahuas to Yellow Labs and mutts of all sizes participated with their people. It was a lot of fun and I'm only sad that I didn't get more pictures! Many people were there with their cameras though, so I'm hoping I can link you all to the photo gallery in the upcoming days,

So what is Spiel ohne Grenze? It is an obstacle/challenge course with different stations. At each station one is graded on how well he and his dog perform the task. This year we had 10 stations set up in the training space.

Station 1: Blow dart practice
Our trainer Karin is a wonderful woman, if not a bit crazy. She is a Poodle and Border Collie breeder and a hell of a trainer. She believes in positive reinforcement, but also realizes that some hard-headed breeds (like bulldogs and (cough) Dackels (cough, cough)) do not always respond well to soft training. She does not enforce things like choke collars or shock collars or anything that intense, but basically she lets the dogs know that she is boss and when she says play time is over, it's over! Anyhow, she has a farm in Germany and aside from her dogs, she keeps chickens, geese, goats, etc... Well, one day a goat got out and the neighbor was threatening to shoot it since it was trespassing on his property. Karin tried to catch the goat, but couldn't. For some reason she owns a blow gun and had tranquilizers on hand. I think you can guess the outcome. The goat is still alive and doing well.

She decided that we should all practice our blow dart skills. There was a small stuffed doll worth 10 points and a stuffed bear worth 5. Hardly anyone was able to hit the targets. I managed right under the bear's foot. Boo! Simon and I went back after everyone was finished to try again and I have to say, we got much better at aiming and hit the targets multiple times! Practice makes perfect I suppose.


Station 2: Sausage, sausage everywhere!
In this exercise, there were about 10 bowls of sausage set up along a 15-20 ft track. You had to leave the dog at the starting line, run to the finish and call him. The dog lost points he he stopped along the way for a snack. Baxter did this amazingly well. Simon called, he ran, he stopped to peer into a dish, was promptly told to "leave it!" and continued on his way. Freddie on the other hand was a little shit head and decided that eating sausage from one of the bowls was nicer than listening to me. He came to me very guiltily afterwards...

Station 3: What do you know about dogs?
This station was all on the people. We were asked questions about dogs such as:
What was the dog breed featured in the movie "Babe"?
How many groups are dogs divided into in the FCI?
Do dogs sweat?
Do dogs display "handedness"?
How many teeth to adult dogs have? etc....
 Both Simon and I passed with full points. :D

Station 4: Bend over and throw it!
This was again all on me. We had 5 balls and had to toss them through our legs and into a bucket a distance away. I managed to make one or two! Ya!

Station 5:The great search.
At this station there were 3 hula hoops hidden in the bushes. In each of the hoops a few pieces of Frolic, which is labeled as "dog food" but the nutrition in that stuff is horrible. It would be like feeding kids nothing but candy. Needless to say, most dogs go crazy for it. Well, all except our garbage can Baxter. He turned up his nose at it and instead decided to use that bushes as a toilet. Anyhow, the goal was for the dog to find the treats in all 3 hoops within 1 minute. Freddie was much better than Baxter, even though he thinks that the hula hoops are really evil entities.

Station 6: Show off!
This was where our trick dog had time to shine. Each dog had to perform 5 tricks that were not "sit" or "platz/lie down." Freddie is very willing to learn new tricks and so Simon had taught him quite a few. We did roll over, give paw, speak, manly (sitting on his haunches), and dance. The trainers were all very entertained. :)

Station 7: Find the dog
This was a challenge, but really funny to watch. We were blindfolded and then had a tarp put over us before being spun around several times to disorient us. The dog was tied in the pen and we had to find them within 1 minute. Simon was lucky enough to get an excited Baxter than ran to him when he did excited talking. Freddie was very apprehensive about why I was dressed in a sheet and somewhat avoided me. I found him though, but I think I stepped on his foot. Oops! All was forgiven and I received a lot of kisses once the tarp came off.

Station 8: Dackels rule!
This was the station that I first was quite freaked out by because the hurdles were set REALLY high. They were taller than both the dogs and I was worried about them trying to jump them. Instead, they were there for the dogs to crawl! Ha! Having dogs that are only 1/2 as tall as normal dogs had an advantage! :) Both boys looked at us like, what? This? It's like the coffee table at home. Do do do do.

Station 9: More ball throwing?
For this task that dog and our trainer stood in a kiddie pool and we had to throw balls into it. These are the balls like they have at McDonald's playlands, so they aren't hard, but nonetheless, I thought that Freddie might get freaked out by this. Nope. He stood there and looked at the couple balls that managed to plop into the kiddie pool. Baxter tried to play with them once they made it there.

Station 10: Follow the carrot.
Remember in the old cartoons how if someone wanted to get a lazy horse walking they would tie a carrot on a string to the end of a stick? Yes, well, that was essentially what we had, except it was a 2 foot stack of dog treats. We were given a serving tray with 2 water-filled glasses, the stick with treats on to hold and had to walk with the dogs in slalom. This was not the easiest, but it was certainly funny to watch and perform. It was funny to watch the different dogs reacting to the treats, some were very determined to get them, no matter the height!

In the end, this year's obstacle course was a bit more people based than in past years. Last year was supposedly very agility based and had moving platforms, the high platforms, hoops to jump through and a see-saw as well as questions. I love that the group really tries for a wide variety of activities and changes it up every year. Of course all of the hard work is rewarded with beer, grill food, lots of yummy salads and desserts and at least a gift for the participating dogs.

All in all, Freddie and Baxter were 4th and 3rd respectively. :) Both received treat bags with lots of goodies and Freddie got an extra bag for 3rd place filled with treats and toys. Additionally, we went for a run around the park and some river swimming and ended up with a couple very tired dogs. It was really a wonderful way to spend the first official day of summer.

(Note: I will update with pictures in the upcoming weeks so you can all see the silly things that we had to do!)

The boys are gearing up for Wassertest!

So we had an EXTREMELY cold and rainy May. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for the dogs to go swimming since the river was super high and super fast. We were in Central Switzerland visiting Simon's parents last night and decided to take advantage of the fantastic weather today to explore some spots on the lake for Wassertest (Water test) training. Simon's father suggested a little part of the lake near a swimming area and nature reserve, but not in either. The water is fairly shallow, so Simon and I could easily go in about calf/waist deep and get the dogs if they were in trouble.

Not a bad view, eh? I think we will be coming back for more practice in July.

 One of our problems with Freddie and water retrieving was always that if the toy wasn't interesting enough and went too far in, then pffft, forget it. The toy was gone. We have lost several floaty toys due to our hard headed, brown dackel. I saw this wonderful idea on http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/ a while back, but I currently can't find the post! Basically, one of the dog owners tied feathers to a floaty toy in order to make it more interesting for the dogs. Since we had 2 frozen ducks in the house, I thought I'd give it a try. We took a wing off of one of the ducks and tied it to the dog's orange floaty. Man! You would think it was Christmas!

I love swimming dackels! They look like otters.

Baxter easily went into the water for a few short and progressively longer swims. He did a couple ~8 meter retrieves before getting tired. Swimming is new exercise for him and although he loves it, he seems to get a bit tired after a while and gets a more nervous about the longer swims. I'm not positive if he really is tired, but this is what it seems like. Not wanting to have a negative experience, we kept the remainder of the swims shorter (max 4-5 m) and provided a LOT of praise. I know he would have gone in for the toy without the wing, but this really helped with the prey drive.

Our big surprise came in our water hating brown dog! I've mentioned several times that Freddie is NOT a water dog. He goes chest deep and then does a lot of thinking, seeming to weigh his options in order to decide if he really needs whatever it is that's in the water. We were planning that our practice today would be just for Baxter, but nope! Low and behold Freddie's amazing hunting drive turned on and that one duck wing was more than enough to make the orange floaty worth saving!

Freddie jumped in in front of Baxter on a long swim...

and the boys brought in the toy together!

close up of the long swim

Here you can see the distance a bit better. The other shore was ~25m (70+ feet away)

There was a sand bar, so some of the time Freddie was able to "hop" his way along for about 4 m before swimming. Baxter, being shorter, had to swim more. Regardless, both dogs did fantastic! It was a great surprise and now I'm hoping that we'll be able to sign these 2 up for Wassertest with the SDC this August. Now both boys are pretty tired from their morning swim. The ducks are ready and waiting, all we need is a bit of time. :)

News from the North and Swimming!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Simon and I are deep into thesis writing and paper re-writing/submitting, which are putting long posts and dog-related activities on the back burner.

We went up to Saarbrücken for the 1 day National Dog Show in hopes to get Baxter his last CAC-J for his German junior Champion title. The judge gave him a wonderful evaluation, but only a SG (sehr gut) rating. It was a bit shitty since his main complaint about the dog was his movement. He said that he had good stride and ground coverage, but was wobbly and his joints were still too loose. We have heard this comment before, but most judges realize that he is just about 1 year old. I have to admit that I felt better knowing that only 1 junior dog (of 6 total male and female) received a V (Excellent) and I would guess that at least 1/2 of the dogs entered received SG ratings. Of course we were disappointed that the winning streak was broken, but 7 shows and 4 Junior Champion titles is not a bad career start! On a side note, I have to recommend Saarbrücken as a real hidden treasure of a German city. The city itself sits on the border to France, is incredibly green, hilly, full of beautiful old buildings, and has a great little old city center. Despite the result, we had a wonderful time and enjoyed the city more than I could have imagined. :)

In other news...
Baxter's mom Iiris "Taxette's Isla Margarita" came out of "retirement" last month and added new titles to her already impressive list: Latvian, Lithuanian, and Baltic Champion! It was great news to hear that a 7 year 11 month old dog could still make a huge impression in the ring. Iiris turned 8 a couple of weeks ago and now competes in Veteran class. At a recent show in Kuopio, Iiris and her daughter Bella Bambina "Iita" (Baxter's sister) were both rated Excellent and CQ. CQ, if I understand this correctly, we don't have this distinction in Switzerland, means "CAC Quality" and these dogs would then compete for CACs and/or CACIBs. Iiris received BOB-Veteran and Iita, Best Bitch 4. A HUGE congrats to Baxter's family!!

Looking good at 8 years old! Iiris (left) with 13 month old daughter Iita (Photo: M. Varjosalo)

    
Lastly, I don't want you all to think that we have given up on our hunting activities! Unfortunately, all of our "normal" dog activities are a time sink. I love them, but we had to prioritize right now in order to get everything accomplished for ourselves. Since Baxter was not able to get in enough tracks for us to be confident that he would pass his Spurlaut exam, we decided to wait on further training until fall. We were going to do a few tracks throughout the spring and summer, but it has been so cold and wet this year that laying out blood tracks would be a bit of a waste. Maybe the sun will finally make an appearance in June...

Freddie is not a water dog. He swims beautifully, retrieves like a champ, but is unreliable with the two things together. I kind of think he developed a dislike for the water when he was about 1 year old, swam a bit too far into the river and decided to climb onto a rock, refusing to come back to shore. I had to wade out to get him (luckily the river was only 2.5 feet deep or so) and bring him in. Since then, he will swim, but the toy has to be worth saving. Baxter on the other hand is looking to be a much braver water dog. As a puppy, he spent a bit of time watching the fish in a colleagues back yard pond and tried to catch them by walking on lily pads. Needless to say, lily pads do not hold 4.5 kg puppies and at 9 weeks old, Baxter showed us (Thankfully!) that he could swim. Lately he has been wading in a lot of the little streams around the dog park, but these were at most chest deep. Last night we decided to take a walk after a long day of work at our local dog park. The river that runs through the park is the Wiese and connects with the Rhine just slightly downstream of the dog park. With all the rain we have had this year it is quite fast and deep at the moment (still less than 5 feet deep, but that is several dackels high!) and we were reluctant to let the dogs swim. Baxter had other plans though and kept trying to go to the edge and take a dip. Finally we got to an area with a small inlet where the water was mostly still. I threw a nice big stick in about 6 feet from shore and the little one jumped in to get it. No problem! Simon threw it a bit farther on the next go and Baxter retrieved it and decided to swim a bit farther out before turning around and heading back to shore. He got a lot of praise and treats and I figure that if he'll go in with little problem to get a stick, then a real duck should be just fine!  We got a few recommendations regarding more still water in the area and I hope that we'll be able to do some practicing before too long.

Ok, that's it for now. I'll try and update a bit more in the coming weeks, but until then, I wish you all a great start to June!

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!

First time in the Saugatter

Even though the spring weather has turned from warm and sunny to gloomy and rainy, training never stops. Yesterday Baxter went to his first clicker class even though it was quite cold and rainy. I think that this may be the magic trick to getting him to walk normally on a leash. It is really amazing, he walks nicely on the show line now, but goes like a bat out of hell on the normal line. Time will tell.

In other news, we ventured to France today to try our luck in the Saugatter. It was a 27 hectare fenced in area (roughly 67 acres) contain 2 boars ranging from 30-60 kg (65-130 lbs). The area was roughly 1/2 covered in brush and forest area and 1/2 field, but the forest wasn't continuous so there were a lot of places for the boars to hide. Our group was made up of 6 dackels and 1 Bavarian Mountain Bloodhound and 2-3 dogs were out searching at one time. We followed the dogs, with large sticks in hand, through the whole area, up and down steep, slippery, muddy hills for about 1.5-2 hours, but alas, we did not find the boars. Maybe we were lucky. The first group of the day did find the smaller of the 2 boars and it didn't end too well. The boar decided to run at the dog and handler instead of turning and running. Luckily no one was too hurt. The dog had a minor injury on its foot, which needed to be looked at and bandaged and the handler had to get 3 stitches to close up a cut on her shin. Nonetheless, this really illustrates the real dangers of hunting for these animals. The boars we were working with were relatively small and tame. If it were bigger it could have done quite a bit of damage.

We decided to only go out into the enclosure with Freddie, since he is older, more experienced and has better obedience and recall in case we needed to quickly get him out of the situation. He did really well in searching the forest on his own without going too far. It was good practice for a potential future Stöber exam. Only one dog let out any indication that he had found something, but it was really short. A few barks and that is it. Ideally, the dog should work the boar, alerting it's owner as to where the animal is and keep it from going too far. I think this was a great place to practice, but too big for the inexperienced dogs in our group. Later this year, there will be the possibility for going to a 2 hectare (5 acre) saugatter and I think we will try our luck there. For now we are all quite tired and I'm sure we'll all have sore muscles tomorrow. Til next time...

Happy 3rd Birthday Freddie!

Today is dreary and rainy here in Basel and, frankly, I'm a bit apprehensive to spend 2 hours in the rain for dog training. Luckily we have a lot to celebrate since today is Freddie "Fallilou du Sangre Bleu"'s  birthday!

Freddie was one of 2 males in a litter of 5: Fallilou, Fauve, Furka, Fargo and Frieda were born April 20th, 2010 about an hour southwest of Paris. There were 2 dark wild boar puppies and 3 brown puppies. They were the first litter from Canaille de la Meute a Cheops and Kobeddus Effendi in the kennel "du Sangre Bleu".

Freddie is (of course) the puppy standing on the other puppies.

Playing with Mom

All the brown puppies liked to stick together

Chewing on sticks with sister Frieda

We drove from Basel to Paris in July of 2010 and picked Freddie up and the rest is history.

The first meeting

Tiny Freddie

In his 3 short years Freddie has accomplished a lot (considering his first-time novice dog owners). He was rated V at our club zuchtschau in Germany and V,V1 JBOB at the Split 4 Summer Shows in Croatia and yes, there were other dogs in Junior class. ;) He has successfully completed Schussfestigkeit, Spurlaut, BhFK95 in 2 countries, Schweissprüfung, Fbja (IT fox test) and BHP 1&2. We continue to go to hunting activities and practices with him and hope that in the future we will be able to add to his list of accomplishments. In addition to hunting work, we actively take him to obedience/ability trainings. He is extremely bonded to Simon and the two are a fantastic pair.

Many happy returns Freddie! I'm looking forward for what's still to come!!