The Blog of the Frog

It was my birthday last Tuesday….they’re always a bit mixed, this year was rather depressing on the back of grandad. Though Facebook was rather fun…I had birthday greetings from all over the world, from Australia to Sweden and America to Germany.

It picked up in the evening – Tuesday is ringcraft night and when we arrived a few people gave me cards, and I had a helium balloon and badge from two Clumber Spaniels that I sometimes handle! Made my day. As usual, almost all my presents benefited the dogs rather than me 😉

On Saturday we went to a companion show that usually has obedience…travelled all the way to find they didn’t this year. In fact we’ll gloss over the whole thing, it was too hot and just not a good day 😆

On Sunday I had found out about a companion show which definitely did have obedience! If it had been anywhere in land I wouldn’t have gone – too hot for the dogs – but it was right on the coast, so off we went. Arrived (with full compliment of dogs – Vale, Solei, Darwin and Elton) and it was gorgeous – perfect temperature with fantastic views over the sea. I’d decided to just put Darwin in the pedigree classes, Vale in the Veteran novelty class and then do the obedience with Solei and Elton. There were only two obedience classes, the first one I couldn’t do (won too much) and there was no way Elton was ready for the second one, so I entered Solei in that class and then put Elton in the first class Not For Competition, to do a training round.

Darwin was 2nd in his AV Toy class – because “we must encourage the children”!! I kid you not – the judge actually SAID that to me, as she placed a young girl of around eight 1st and Darwin 2nd. Vale won AV Veteran, and then at the last minute I decided to put Solei & Elton in the Brace – which they also won!

In the obedience, as it was a relatively basic class (heel on lead, heel free, recall with finish and sit and down stays – ie nothing that requires him to work away from me and then get the opportunity to run off) and it was fairly hot, I decided I would take Solei in without warming him up at all. We paid the price for that on his first stretch of heelwork, he was working a little further forward than he should which then led to a crooked sit when we did the first halt (very unusual for Solei), but after that he settled and his heelwork was brilliant….recall was perfect, as were stays 🙂 He ended up 2nd, behind a Border Collie!

When I (eventually) managed to take Elton in for his turn I was very excited about having him at a show to see what he’d do. He did a few puppy classes (mainly socialisation) when he was little, other than that he’s never been to an obedience class and I’ve done very little work with him outside. We’ve done a lot of practice, but 99% of it has been at home inside! I think I worked with him in the garden once…and this show was on grass.

He was a star! I was absolutely amazed. We went in the ring and the first exercise was heelwork (only on lead). We’ve been practicing, but I couldn’t believe how incredible he was! It was quite basic heelwork with just a couple of turns, but his position was almost perfect and the judge said (and it was the end of the day, he was the last dog to work) that his heelwork was the best she’d seen all day 😀 After that he was very distracted by everything that was going on around him, which caused a lot of problems with his stay for the recall – funnily enough it wasn’t the stay that was the problem, it was getting him to sit! Eventually I left him in a stand stay, which worked much better. The sit stay wasn’t nearly so much of a problem, he was concentrating a little better by then.

There is so much potential there, I’m very excited for the future <3

Ok, as I was saying!

I entered Solei for his very first big obedience show, over two days. On Saturday he was in Pre-Beginners (bottom class) and on Sunday I put him in both Pre-Beginners and Beginners (next class up). Pre-Beg is the only class that doesn’t involve a retrieve, and his retrieve is *very* dodgy – put it this way, in an unfamiliar environment he had yet to bring it back first time 😆

On Saturday it poured with rain the whole time I was there…I got soaked to the skin, very cold and came home early 😆 Soleidid a lovely round, and only lost 4 marks…he was lying joint 8th when I left and ended up just out of the top 10 – not bad in a class of 47 dogs! Though because he lost less than 10 marks he still got his first Certificate of Merit 🙂

On Sunday I wanted to work him in Pre-Beg early but the stays were at 11am and of course sod’s law, they stopped as he was the next dog to work! He was really fired up and focused, by the time we’d done the stays I’d lost him so put him away for a bit…then they stopped for lunch andit was a two hour break because of a meeting. Long story short I ended up having to work his rounds straight after each other, which does not sit well with Solei at all. He isn’t very confident anyway, and finds the chair bumping over grass quite scary so tends to jump out to the side and/or lag behind…he’s getting better, but he gets worse as the round goes on, so if I go straight from one to another the previous will be fresh in his mind andhe’ll tend to lag from the start.

Anyway, we worked Beginners first and he did the retrieve!! He wasn’t in the least bit interested in retrieving (or even holding it) outside the ring, so I really didn’t think he was going to fetch it. It wasn’t desperately clean, but he did it! That was the highlight of my weekend 😆 He’s come such a long way – this was a dog with zero toy drive that wouldn’t hold anything in his mouth and had zero interest in play.

Pre-Beginners his heelwork was as expected – laggy! Heel Free in particular was very expensive – he lost 11 in total andI think 7½ was on that – he ended up ages behind me at one point! Though the judge marked very strictly, andso even with that he was still 13th out of 47.

In Beginners, he was 7th out of 49!! Losing 6¼, so got a Certificate of Merit there too 🙂 Very proud of him for his first weekend of big shows!

The following Friday mum and I went up to Newbury, for Southern Counties Champ Show. Way back in November I’d booked a Travelodge room (yayfor £9 rooms!), to be only our second time away overnight in the last 10 years (and hoping Crufts would be a success, as we hadn’t been at that point!). I had a lovely day on Friday, watching the gundog and utility groups and spending money! Then we had an evening meal in Sainsburys cafe, and went off to the Travelodge. I can highly recommend it – despite being at the services it was a lovely place, much nicer than the Coventry one I’d booked for Crufts. The dogs had gone to T, and S was going to bring Elton up for me on Saturday. As it happened Solei was meant to have taken his Bronze Good Citizen Award at some point in the previous months, but the opportunity which was meant to come up hadn’t…and he needed to have passed it by the next week. So S brought Solei up as well, so he could take it at the show!

It’s always very strange to be at a show with a completely different group of people, so after Friday it was quite nice to be back amongst the “Papillon people” on Saturday! Elton had a 4th in Junior Dog, the dog that won the class going on to get the CC! Later he was unplaced in the Junior Stakes, but the placements all went to big names andhe got a good hard look and the judge even came back to give him a secondlook, so I was still very pleased with that!

Oh, and Solei passed his Bronze with flying colours 🙂

Just 6 days later it was off to Malvern for Three Counties! Elton was once again in the cards, getting a 5th in Junior Dog and then to my delight coming 3rd in a very large and diverse Junior Dog Stakes! The Stakes also had prize money and he won £10!!

Next up was a companion show, where the judge was a bit of a surprise – having judged the same show the year before! I’m not showing Solei this summer (bar obedience & maybe the odd brace!) and I didn’t want to put Elton in, so that left Darwin and Vale. I knew she wasn’t overly keen on Darwin – having had him under her last summer – but he has matured and as we were there I thought he could go in anyway. He suffered his first ever defeat in AV Non-Sporting 😆 coming 2nd.

Vale did AV Sporting pedigree class for fun (not being the right “type” I don’t usually do the pedigree classes with her) and was thrown out, so we returned to our usual favourite of novelty AV Veteran! Which she promptly won 🙂 She’s such a lot of fun to show and I’ll be very sad when she can’t do it anymore (this could well be the last summer I’ll be able to cart her round, she’ll be 11 in September)

Yesterday we went to an open show, for a change! My first general open show since Elton won the Puppy Group at the beginning of May. A friendhad been under this judge with her Phalene, in an Any Variety Not Separately Classified class, and she’d called her a Japanese Chin. So I’d thought very hard and debated much about whether to enter or not! Eventually decided I would, because I wanted to go to a show and we had Papillon classes this time, so at least she couldn’t mistake Elton for a Chin!

Sorry to say I was proven correct! She didn’t look at Elton, he was on the end of the line and slightly round the corner, and when she came down the line she didn’t even bother to walk all the way to Elton(!) He was placed last. I’d also entered Darwin, who fared slightly better – he was 2nd in Open, but behaved ABOMINABLY! I think he may well have been in with a chance at winning it, but he wouldn’t move properly and was obsessing with getting his head down on the mat. Dogs 🙄

Today we’ve just got back from another companion show, because it had obedience. It was very hot, too hot for Solei to want to work! Elton and Darwin both did the pedigree classes and Elton was thrown out, Darwin won AV Open! And then lost BIS purely because the judge thought he was too thin…she said as much to me. C’est la vie! He is a touch on the slim side at the moment, we’re working on it!

Solei and obedience….what can I say! I put him in two classes – for a change I thought he could do the middle and top classes, the top class having a sendaway in which he’s never done outside the house/garden. In the first class he blew the retrieve – there was a clump of grass (more like hay) in front of where the dumbbell had landed, which was so innocous you didn’t even notice it….unless you were Solei. He went out to fetch it, stopped at the grass, sniffed it, decided that wasn’t what I wanted him to bring back and ran off!! Ran out of the ring and ended up over by the pedigree ring, saying hello 🙄 I didn’t think he was going to come back, so I started off out of the ring to fetch him….I’d only just got out of the ring when he turned tail, came charging back into the ring and jumped up at judge’s (who had her back to him) legs 😆 Made her jump! It was actually very funny, you could almost see him “oops, sorry about that – got a bit distracted. But I’m back now, where were we?!” 😆 Grass suitably moved, I did the retrieve again and he was fine the second time. So there went any chance of placing in that class!

On to the higher class, and this time the failure was the send away. I was actually very impressed with him – got into the ring and discovered it was a really long send away. He went away beautifully, but then got distracted sniffing the marker, forgot what he was meant to be doing and recalled. So there went that! The judge wanted him to succeed, so we did it again – same thing happened. Did it a third time, and before I sent him the judge went and stood by the marker. When he got there, she tried to PUSH him into a down!! I was too much of a chicken to say anything, but I was so annoyed…you don’t just manhandle someone else’s dog without asking. Needless to say Solei was not amused, and he’s quite a sensitive dog so I just have to hope it hasn’t done any damage now! Especially as it was his first attempt at a send away in competition.

Oops, that was rather longer than intended…

Oh dear…

Solei did his obedience at the companion show on the 25th April. I also put all 3 boys in the pedigree classes for a bit of fun…Elton (who behaved horrendously! It was only the 2nd time he’d ever shown on grass, which was also rather long for his little legs – so movement was barely assessable!) was 3rd in AV Puppy, Solei 3rd in AV Open and Darwin won AV Non-Sporting 🙂

Solei did two obedience classes. The easier class he did very well, the harder class was fine except the retrieve! Retrieve and Solei aren’t a match made in heaven at the best of times, and on this occasion he wasn’t paying attention to where I threw it. I sent him out to fetch it, he sniffed about for a while looking for it and then decided he’d give up and run in very fast enormous circles round the field(!!!) When he gets like that there’s no calling him back, so I waited for him to do a few laps and get it out of his system and then called him back – he came and the judge asked if I’d like to do that again! We did, and actually he did it very nicely the second time – shame it didn’t count! I also did the bottom class with Darwin, for a bit of fun. He wasn’t very good but he did it! His major failing was the down stay – I haven’t done any practice on grass, and he broke it because the smells were too much and he felt the need to get up and sniff them properly 😛 Needless to say he didn’t place, neither did Solei in the harder class – but my little star won the easier class! Really pleased with him, especially given that was his first obedience in show environment since last September.

The primary reason that once again I haven’t written for so long (didn’t want to open this post with it!) is because three days after my last post we lost my grandfather. He’d been in hospital for an operation and hadn’t been recovering as quickly as had been hoped, but the doctors were all still convinced he would make a full recovery….then he contracted pneumonia and was gone within 24hrs 🙁 It’s all been very difficult and there’s such a lot to sort out as well – we’ve got the house and all the contents to go through. I had so many plans for this summer, and so many things we were going to do together….gone, just like that.

On the 3rd May we went to an open show, just Elton showing – his last open show in puppy! He decided to go out with a bang, as he was Best Puppy in Breed and then PUPPY GROUP ONE! Both mum and I were in tears…Elton is very special anyway as I bought him with money from granny after she died, but having just lost grandad as well…I expect you can imagine. He went beautifully in the Best Puppy in Show ring, but she wasn’t interested in the little dogs. I liked the fact he ended his puppy career with two puppy group 1s – his first open show, and his last (in puppy) open show!

Three days later we went up to Stafford for Birmingham National Championship Show. Elton was 2nd in a very nice Puppy Dog class, and then won Novice Dog! He was meant to be in the Puppy Stakes as well (this being his last ever show as a puppy), but upon looking at the catalogue I discovered I’d mucked up the entry and put him in the Special Beginner Stakes instead! As it happened it was irrelevant because when I put him down outside the ring he totally freaked – no idea why, but it wasn’t worth risking just for a stakes class. So I didn’t take him in.

I think it was just after that (possibly before – but it certainly lasted up until the 19th May or so) that he started going all peculiar anyway. I put it down to teenagehood and new fear phases and hormones! He was spooking and being scared at things that I didn’t think he was….and I have my kitchen fenced off as a large puppy pen. Elton goes in there when not supervised, because he and Darwin get carried away and wind each other up. In the mornings I feed the older two, then put them outside and get Elton out of the pen to feed/train him. For about a week he wouldn’t come out of the pen, he wouldn’t even come up to me and if he did he’d cower and try to roll over like I was going to beat him! If I offered him food he’d take it and just drop it. Then he snapped out of it as suddenly as it’d come on! All very odd.

The 14th May was Elton’s first birthday 🙂 I bought a balloon, mainly for photographic purposes – I’m really impressed! The guy in the shop said it should last a week or two (inflated on the 14th)…it looked good for a month, and although looking a little deflated now it’s still attached to Elton’s bed happily floating! I made a birthday cake, which went down well with all three boys!

The next day I went to a breed club show – taking Elton, Jason and Tosca. My little boy, on his very first day out of puppy, was in his first Junior Dog class! Also in Yearling Dog (12-24mths) and Phalene Dog. He was 2nd in Junior, 1st in Yearling, 1st in Phalene and Reserve Best Phalene in Show! Not bad for 12 months and 1 day 🙂 Jason was 2nd in Open Dog and Reserve Best Dog – second year running I’ve handled him to that placing! Tosca won Limit Bitch, Best Bitch and then Reserve Best in Show! Which made her Best Phalene in Show automatically. What an incredible day 😆

Oh and somewhere in the middle of that I had Pippin, Elton’s brother, to stay. Must’ve been end of April because I had him for that companion show on 25th…he was meant to be coming to live for a while, but in the end I only had him three weeks because Solei would NOT settle down with him – he was constantly tried to mount him, and it wasn’t fair on all concerned…so he went back to T.

22nd May it was off to another companion show – no obedience this time. Vale came 🙂 I love it when she comes along, showing her is so much fun. Elton did his first “big boys” AV Non-Sporting class and came 3rd – very respectable, considering he still hadn’t got the hang of behaving on grass! Darwin won AV Open and was Reserve Best in Show! 😀 I didn’t show Solei at all. Vale did three classes – she was 2nd in Waggiest Tail, 3rd in Best Veteran and 1st in Best Condition! It was a lovely day, really nice show – though a bit too hot!

The next Friday was Bath Champ Show. Elton didn’t go badly at all and was 4th in his Junior Dog class, and then 5th in the Junior Dog Stakes!

I think that’s enough for now, because the next day Solei and I embarked on our first open obedience show which’ll be quite longwinded – so that’s for the next post!