It has been a while since an update on what we’ve been up to with Ringo (and what Ringo has been up to with us). That’s not so much for a lack of things to report but because I’ve generally been feeling too frustrated with him. Today, that cup just about flooded at the Boxer Championships.
Shows this year have been generally abysmal in terms of his behaviour. First day of My Dog in January was a disaster with him being super-charged and not very friendly towards other dogs. We even withdrew from the second day. At the local special at the beginning of the summer, he growled at the judge. Last weekend in Sundsvall, he had major issues with other dogs, but showed okay other than that. And today he so crazy the judge disqualified him because she couldn’t judge him. He actually behaved very well towards the other dogs, making me think he was in good balance, but then he just whirled around when she was going to check his teeth and feel over his body. Worst, however, was how he got stuck staring at something (I have no idea what) when I was going to run him. He almost dragged me out of the ring.
And that (well, the summer shows, anyway) followed on 10 weeks of obedience training with a very good trainer and some pretty significant steps forward in terms of obedience. We’ve also seen the trainer’s trainer twice during the summer for some one-on-one consultation. Now, I know it will take a long while to sort things out, but I don’t know if I have the energy for it. If I manage to improve on one thing, a new problem crops up. Right now, I feel like giving up on shows and obedience and forgetting all about Ringo being a working dog. Problem is, he really needs the training, but I find it hard to motivate myself to do it if I can’t have the goal of competing him.
I think someone is getting a lump of coal for his birthday next weekend instead of a stuffed toy. ;P Then again, he’ll be looking at me with a sad, wrinkly face all week…so probably not.
I’ve been bad about updating what’s going on with Ringo, but rest assured, he’s going strong the usual way. Which perhaps isn’t all that great. ;P
The cold, snowy winter meant a distinct lack of training outdoors, so a few weeks ago I finally got us signed up for a class at the local boxer club. I wish this one had been offered a year ago, because I am getting some good help both with how to train Ringo for the possibility of a working dog competition and, more importantly, with how to work to calm and balance him. They’ve worked with boxers like him before and its helping a lot so far.
Unfortunately, it did not help one bit yesterday when we finally got around to doing his second mentality evaluation as part of the process called “korning”. It is test for working dogs, which if they pass earns them the title “Korad”, that looks at their mentality and conformation. The conformation went just fine, but he missed passing the mentality evaluation with 10 points. We had all been worried that his fear of fireworks would mean problems with the gun shots (plus, up at the regular club he has had issues with shots, though I have a theory or two about why), but that part he passed with flying colours. However, he missed a huge chunk of the test completely when he was too wound up to actually grip and tug on the test object. Instead, he just kept jumping up on the person handling the test…
In part, I feel he failed this section (which he did poorly during the first mentality evaluation too) because he was allowed to spot the toy used for the next part of the test and ran off to play with that instead. His concentration is poor, so a distraction like that made it so much harder for him to get it right. The more I think about that, the more annoyed I get ... but, oh well. Can’t do anything about that.
Overall, the evaluation showed what we expected: he’s extremely high-intensity and he goes over the edge into stress a lot of the time. I did not agree, however, with the evaluator’s feelings that once he had worn himself out a bit on the initial, quite physical tests, he became more passive out of being a little weighed-down by the following tests which are more about challenging his nerves. No, he became more passive because he was exhausted. He was also given a 3 for whether he approached the scary obstacles on his own or needed help. The 3 is supposed to describe that he needed help several times, but he only needed help once, which should have been a 4.
In conclusion, I will be annoyed about this one for a long while, especially after considering it a bit more. He was never going to get fantastic points, because he has his issues, but I think his chances at the “grip & tug” part were spoiled by him being allowed to spot the other toy and I think that there was one incorrect 3 that should have been 4. So, yeah. Annoying.
But, we’ll of course push on with the class in hopes of some future competitions if he becomes a little calmer and more balanced. We will also be going to a boxer show next weekend and two or maybe three more of those during the summer. The local one sure, and the Swedish Championships, but the rest depends on how it fits together with vacations and such.
Tonight was the first training session of a course I’ve signed up for at the local boxer club. It appealed to me because the idea is to work on the various exercises that are part of competitive obedience and to do it focused on what each dog already knows, allowing for a group with very mixed experience. Seeing how up and down Ringo can be, it seemed like it could suit him.
Since there won’t be much in the way of shows for a good while, I am going to try to improve my reporting from other activities in Ringo’s life. Given that its so far been next to non-existent, improving it a little bit shouldn’t be so hard. ;)
Today we finally got around to doing some proper tracking for the first time in a good while. In the past, we’ve stuck almost entirely to letting Ringo look for various toys, but now we got some proper wooden markers. We also fixed up some clothespins with ribbons on so we’d know where we had gone, and we put down two tracks. One straight line with one of the markers at the end, and one angled line with one marker before and one marker after the bend.
A little mishap led to Ringo running back and grabbing one of the markers from the second track right off, but at least he grabbed it and came running with it. Then we went off picking mushrooms—or, well, looking for mushrooms, anyway—and returned about an hour and a half later. Ringo was a bit stressed and not very focused, but even so he found the second marker on the track that was supposed to have two (but where he had already nabbed one) quite easily. The best part was that he grabbed it right off, without any prompting from me. Looks like teaching him how to indicate the markers won’t be too hard.
The second track he picked up well on his own, and followed fairly well. He also went right for the marker as he found it, though didn’t pick it up right off. But he marked it clearly, and took it as soon as he was asked to. Overall, I am quite pleased, since its been a while. Someone who knew what they were doing could easily get him ready to compete ... of course, I don’t. ;) But we’ll try to work in a more focused way on both the tracking and obedience this fall.
Today, the time had come for Ringo’s ‘MH’ test, which is an evaluation of his mentality. In general, it is done between 12 and 18 months of age, but we felt Ringo was too immature this autumn and then it took until now before the local boxer club arranged another one. Given that he has shown a fear of fireworks as well as reacted to gun shots, I was very nervous about taking the test (the last part of the test is four gun shots). In fact, I almost changed my mind about doing it today, as late as when we were out there and ready to start. But we decided to go ahead anyway, and given the end result I am very glad that we did it. Instead of scraping by on the shots, Ringo passed with the best possible score. Whew!
Now, mind you, I am pretty certain it had a lot to do with him being dead tired at that stage, because he had been so keyed up earlier and managed to get himself quite worn out from lots of pulling and from his usual sensitivity to warmth. However, even taking that into account, his reaction was miles better than I had expected. He also surprised us (less positively so) by not doing so great when it came to gripping things and when it came to curiosity. At home, he’s ferocious when it comes to grabbing and holding onto things, and tug of war his a favourite game. He also tends to be pretty curious. But today, he was actually quite reserved. I think he becomes a bit more passive when he has a lot to process, basically. It seems to be either going totally bonkers because his brain overheats, or becoming very pensive.
He also showed some very interesting reactions to people. If the helpers initiated contact with him, he went wild with joy, jumping up in their faces. If they did nothing, he just sniffed them and ignored them. To some degree, I think this is because of his age; he’s started to learn that if someone doesn’t show interest in him, he’s supposed to ignore them. In any case, we were thrilled with him passing with such a good result on the shooting, and it was interesting to see how he reacted to the other parts of the test.
Today was the first lesson of Ringo’s new course: tracking. Since the next obedience course isn’t scheduled until April (which is just as well, because he needs a lot of training before then), we decided to indulge his interest in tracking in order to give him something to spend some of all his energy on. So, now I am sitting here with really sore hands, because he was (as usual) absolutely wild when getting to meet with other dogs and do super-fun things like follow a track made by dragging a deer hoof over the ground.
Since he saw us put the track down, it was a little hard to get him to track with his nose down all the time, and he also went waaaaay too fast (when competing, the dog isn’t allowed to pull on the leash, so we have some work left), but he more or less got the idea and happily grabbed and carried the hoof. We sure can’t complain about his interesting in grabbing things.
After we had finished up, we passed by where they do agility training, and tried out one of the obstacles (a big, inverted V) with him. First two tries, he ran to the top and then jumped off because he didn’t see he could go down the other side. Third time, he did it properly and really fast. He sure isn’t afraid of heights. In fact, a teensy bit more caution would probably not be a bad thing. But oh no, he’s a boxer through and through.
Today was the second lesson of Ringo’s obedience course. This is stage two of basic obedience and after my dad had him for all of stage one (which he did this spring), I had said I’d do at least some of stage two. Last week, I had too much work to go along, but today I decided I could take the time out. It proved to be an ... interesting experience.
