I’m out.

For now I am officially done with the show ring. I am not bitter, it was a learning experience and I may try it again someday with a different breed, who knows. It’s just a difficult thing to pick a dog that will have all the characteristics that a show dog should have as a puppy. Sienna is too tall, her ears are too long, her tail is too bushy and long, she is still too narrow and her nose is too long and skinny. Yet out of the 10 puppies from her litter, she was the “show pick”. Ironic that 15 months later the same person that picked her to be the “show pick” was the person saying that she looks “too tall” now. It just goes to show that even someone with knowledge of the breed and a veteran handler and breeder can’t always tell.

I will still continue in working on her obedience title and her hunt title which I believe we will both enjoy more than the show ring.

Sorry Eukanuba and Purina, but I guess we won’t be available for your shows!

Show number 5 - Conformation and obedience.

Show 5, confirmation and obedience.

Day 1 – We had obedience first at 10:30am, since my husband was the one who was taking her through, he was nervous. When the time came for him to enter the ring, I was pretty nervous too, I think the only one who wasn’t nervous was Sienna and really it was all about her today and just how good and obedient she is, a talent show rather than a beauty pageant like conformation! So anyway, it seems like it took forever for her to have her turn and I think she was tired but she did alright. She could have done better but for her first time out, I think she did just fine…….until the sit/stay – this is where she is to stay in a sitting position while her owner/trainer stands about 30 feet in front of her. She is not to move. Well, Sienna was bored I guess and she decided she was done and got up and slowly walked over to Michael and then sat right beside him – this disqualified her, bummer. So we high tailed it out of there to make it in time for the show ring.

Here I took over and now she needed to pay attention to me. Well, she had been working with dad all morning and I think she was a little off. I was a little off too, it had been a long day and to be quite honest, I really don’t enjoy the show ring and Sienna doesn’t really care for it much either. It’s not fun for the dogs, they run around a circle, have a judge feel them up, run down and back and then the judge picks a winner. Well, we were the only ones in the ring so we took blue, then we went up against the other winners and left empty handed again.

Conformation is a subjective beauty pageant. Some days the dog with all the Chessie qualities win and some days it the dogs with the darkest fur, sometimes it the dogs with the curliest fur, sometimes it’s the judges favorite handler, I’m not sure. This I do know, Sienna, for as beautiful as I think she is, doesn’t have the broad chest and head that Chessies are known for. Perhaps someday she will have those traits but for now, she really doesn’t stand a chance unless I get a judge that likes my cleavage or prefers skinny chessies.

Day 2 – Pretty much the same as day 1, except that this time she stayed for the full time in the sit/stay. She didn’t qualify though because she didn’t get enough points overall.

I’m not even going to mention the conformation ring – why bother.

Careful where you smack your Chesapeake.

Ok, so the title makes it sound as if I beat my dogs and that is not the case but if you have ever owned a Chessie, you would know that they are VERY STRONG WILLED dogs, VERY EXCITABLE, HARD HEADED as well as being LARGE and STRONG. There are times when you need to get control now and sometimes that takes brute force. I know this because I have 1 and ½ chessies. Rudy is part ½ Chocolate lab and ½ chessie and 90 pounds of muscle. He loves to announce every person that walks down our street. But even worse, is what he does when someone actually comes to our door. (We have teenagers so this is almost every day). He barks, and jumps and makes sounds like he is going to tear whoever they are apart – I have witnessed many grown men (UPS drivers and so on) RUN back to their trucks when they have heard Rudy. We haven’t even talked about what I have to do in order to let someone in. But before I go any further, I need to say that Rudy is a GOOD BOY, and even though he may sound vicious, he is so sweet and gentle and has never hurt anyone that we have let into our house. But I have no doubt that if a stranger were to break in – Rudy wouldn’t hesitate to live up to his reputation that has been bestowed upon him by delivery men. Anyway, back to beating my dog. In order to get him to calm down enough to let someone in, there have been a few times when I have had to raise my hand to get him to back off. And this I will say, it literally hurts me more that it hurts him. His bones are made of titanium and I have had bruises to prove it. He’s getting better at not being such a spaz but he has a way to go.

My other chessie is technically still a puppy. At almost 15 months she is about 75 pounds of pure energy and muscle. So the other day as I am preparing to take one of the other dogs on a walk, in her excitement she was jumping up on me and in order to keep from getting jumped on, I put my foot up and kicked at her (not intending to connect) but my shin hit one of her reinforced steel bones and left me with a bump and a bruise that still hurts 3 days later.

Now I am not condoning beating your dog but at the same time, certain breeds need to be reminded of proper behavior and who is boss – that should always be the owner. Like I stated before, I am usually the one to get hurt and the only thing that gets hurt on my dogs is their pride (for about 30 seconds). I love my dogs and I don’t think that anyone out there would ever think otherwise, in fact I’m sure most people would think that I spoil my dogs – which I do!

Show 4 and the results are.......

Show 4 – The results are in. Well………….we collected a different color ribbon this time – red. Yes, that means we came in 2^nd in our class…….out of two dogs…….both days…….oh well. I guess you can’t win them all.

NO BAIT IN THE RING!

No bait or toys in the ring?????? Oh no what will we do. That’s what most of us thought when we saw the sign that said “no bait or toys”. Most of us will use a treat of some sort in order to get our dogs to stay still or perk up and look happy or just as a reward for being a good dog. Others will use toys with squeaker or a favorite toy for the same reason. But the judge has the right to make the choice as to whether or not he wants those to be allowed in the ring. Well that’s what Sunday’s judge decided. It turned out to be OK, but last minute change can be frustrating and let’s face everybody likes a reward.

The Judge speaks!

Normally when you enter into the dog show ring the only things that the judge says to you are: Please take your dog around the ring, down and back please and maybe he/she will tell you to go around again. He/she doesn’t even speak when you win, lose or come in 3^rd, he just points. So you walk out of the ring trying to figure out what was it that the judge liked about your dog or what he liked better about the other dogs. No feed back, no constructive criticism, just a ribbon or sometimes just empty handed.

Well, on Saturday, I had a judge that spoke. He said the usual things and then after my down and back, he said “do you know what pacing is?” I hemmed and hawed and said, maybe, I think so. So he explained what pacing was. It is when your dog runs with both right legs moving together and same with the left. Pacing is bad. What the dog should do is when her front right leg moves back so should her back left leg. He then said, “Sometimes if you go a little faster and pull on the lead a little bit that may correct the problem”, then he told me to go down and back again (not only did he tell me what to correct, he let me try it again – wow!) So we did, then he told me that I would get the feel of it and gave the blue ribbon to the other dog and we got the red. Oh well!

Signing up for dog shows

When you have a dog that you show, you of course have to enter your dog by the cut-off date, in the category/categories that you want. So far, we have done 3 shows and have just signed up for our 4^th show.

There are at least 3 different superintendents that run the shows that we have entered, BaRay, Onofrio, and Kevin Rogers. Now there are probably more, but these are the 3 that I have had experience with, so these are the 3 that I can talk about.

The technological age is so awesome in so many respects while at the same time it can be a major pain in the butt when people running the websites don’t make things “user friendly”. For example, BaRay Events has an awesome sign up form that you only need to fill it in once and it remembers you the next time. You only need to click on the events that you want and at the end of the form, you have fees so you know how much your paying and exactly what events you have signed up for, not so with Kevin Rogers.

Kevin Rogers has the most unfriendly sign up form I have yet to see. If I had never entered a show before, I’m sure I would have messed it up since, all they have are blanks and you have to know exactly what you are signing up for or you won’t be signed up. For example, Sienna is now 13 months old. I can sign her up in the 12-18 month class or the open bitch class, the reason I know this is because I have signed her up 3 previous times and have seen the different categories. On this site all they had was “Dog Show Class” and a blank place where you needed to fill it in. For the obedience class, it was the same thing; it says “Obedience Trial Class” and then a blank to fill it. Well Sienna has never been entered in obedience before and so I figured if I put down beginning, they would know what I meant. But no, they did not. So when I finally got my confirmation letter all she was signed up for was the show ring. So I tried calling but of course I just missed them. So I called the next day several times and all I got was a busy signal time and time again, so I also faxed them and sent an email. The next day, no response – NONE! So I called again. This time I got someone and she explained that I needed to write NOVICE A. Great, now I know and I would have figured it out had it been a multiple choice. She said they did get my fax and that by me writing “beginning” they just assumed that I started writing something but didn’t finish. I tried to tell her that the site was not easy to use but she just didn’t seem to understand that I found it difficult; I should have just filled in the right thing! I asked if there was somewhere on the site where it would at least list the different categories and so on. She told me to go to the AKC site, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to have to go to different sites to fill in a dog show form, nor do I want to have to call people and bug them, I want to have all my choices listed for me and all I have to do is click or check the one I want.

My other complaint was that they didn’t list any of the fees so I blindly gave them my credit card and didn’t know how much I would be paying. Other sites list the fees and will give you a total at the end so you know how much to deduct from your account. I found out at the show just how much I was being charged for this show because I must have written down my number wrong and they had trouble processing it. Ironic that they couldn’t process my payment without all the information! Perhaps I should have made them guess my account number? How come she just didn’t know all the numbers of my account? Gee what do you want from me, all the information??????