The things you do when you’re into dogs (and horses, too). Like getting up at 6 am on a Sunday morning to head off to a dog show. Of course, not just any dog show, but Ringo’s first official dog show. He turned 9 months 6 days ago, making him eligible for the Junior class (for dogs 9 to 15 months old) at the official all-boxer show for the boxer club in the area where we live.
As before, he was more than a handful once we reached the show area. With 103 more lively boxers there, it looked like he’d never calm down. He just wanted to play with everyone, boxers as well as their humans. And then we were faced with an added complication. At the same time as the dog show, a mental evaluation was going on for another group of dogs. This includes gun shots being fired, and Ringo has shown himself to be rather bothered by this. Fireworks scares him quite a bit and gunshots makes him wary. He doesn’t really try to run off, but he gets distracted. We’re hoping it will get a little better with age and some work on desensitizing him, but it wasn’t a welcome addition to the dog show today, that’s for sure.
Since he had been entered fairly late, we were the last of the eight males in the Junior class. Unfortunately, no one informed the mostly inexperienced handles in this class that it was okay to wait outside of the ring as the judge did the individual evaluations of each dog. We saw this done later, with the older dogs, and kicked ourselves a bit since the wait proved to be a bit too much for Ringo. At the start, he stood fairly well, but after a while he got really, really bored and started play-fighting with me. I had to wrestle with him quite a bit before I got him pinned between my legs, and by that time I was exhausted.
Fortunately, he behaved fairly well for the judge. I got him to stand fairly well (we practised a lot yesterday with plenty of chicken), though again we saw later that it was perfectly fine to have someone else stand outside the ring to get the dog to stand more attentively by showing a toy or something. The biggest issue was communication with the German judge who spoke no English. I didn’t quite get how he wanted me to show the teeth, or whether he wanted to check them himself, so Ringo got a bit tired of having his mouth messed with. I don’t think it ended up affecting his evaluation too much, but perhaps. He also didn’t run great—mostly, he leapt and bounced, though so did several older boxers too. Not uncommon at a boxer show, and judging by the evaluation, the judge saw enough anyway.
As for the evaluation, it was delivered in German (no doubt with some spelling errors in my transcription below). Fortunately, I managed to get help to provide a translation:
Medium-sized red-golden brindle. Well-developed/well-rounded head. Full bite, medium-broad jaws. Dark eyes. Square build with good depth of chest, straight back, well-angled front legs, very good hind legs. Good movement.
Result: JUNKL-1, JUNKK-4
This means that he was judged to be of quality 1 (out of 1-3) in the individual evaluation, which means he is considered a very good breeding result, and that he placed fourth in the comparative evaluation. He did not, however, get an HP (a “Prize of Honour”) this time. Only the dog that won among the Juniors got one, and none of the Juniors got a CK (a “Certificate Quality” prize), which is needed to go on to the final round against all the winners from different groups to compete for the Certificate (of which you need 3 to become a champion). However, at just 9 months and 6 days, he was the youngest of the Juniors, so I am fairly pleased with him taking 4th out of 8.