Cheyenne’s WD

New Working Dog

Ro-Lyns Cheyenne Mtn Dreams WD

Loved by Tina Cox & Robin Zerbst

CH Tealwaters Timberdoodle Song X CH Ro-Lyns Mtn Dreams Echoing

This certification means a lot to me as this was a title that required a great deal of determination not only by me but Cheyenne as well. We started participating in field work three years ago when Cheyenne was six years old and it was a very rocky beginning since both of us had no clue what we were doing. However, with the dedication and guidance of our good friends David and Michelle Keehn of Dusty Rose Chessie’s who worked diligently with us for many weeks we finally figured it out, and now Cheyenne lives to retrieve her birds! So a big thank you to Dave and Michelle, without you we would never have achieved this.

 

This is the photo and text I submitted to the ACC, my national breed club for the next bulletin, I figured since this title is kind of a big deal for me and Cheyenne she also deserved a blog post all her own.

Chessie Weekend

What a wonderfully exhausting weekend

Saturday was our *B/OB, this is an event my dog club does to work towards becoming licensed by the AKC so we can hold our own shows. We had a wonderful turnout and everyone had a great time, I was not able to get very many pictures since I was so busy with dogs. I am so proud of Maia, she received first in her class and yes we had competition! She stood pretty good for exam and moved beautifully around the ring. It was a great opportunity to practice with her in a relaxed show setting.

The nice thing about pictures is you can see things that you otherwise would not know is going on; like in this picture I see I have let the collar slip down a bit.

 

Then Sunday was the day I have been waiting for with great apprehension and excitement…WD day! Cheyenne and I have been working for this for the last three years; she ran in a WD two years ago but we missed our title by one bird. This time we nailed it, she was awesome and she is now a WD titled dog

RO-LYNS CHEYENNE MTN DREAMS WD

I am still flying high from the weekend and I could not be more proud of my girl’s. I will not pursue any more tests with Cheyenne but we will still go to training to have a good time until she tells me she is done! Maia and I will continue moving forward with her conformation training and entering a show here and there for the exposure and practice until I think she is more mature, then we start trying for her Championship (CH) title.

This was a great weekend of people coming together for the benefit of the dogs. We had a wonderful time working with our dogs, socializing and eating. I can’t wait for the next event!!

 

*Sanctioned Matches Defined.

A sanctioned match is an informal event at which neither
Championship points nor credit toward an Agility, Rally,
Obedience, or Tracking title are awarded. They are
events at which dog clubs, judges, stewards, and
exhibitors and their dogs gain experience needed for
licensed events.

So You Want To Be A Show Dog!

My friend Jodi over at jodistone-life with Sampson and Delilah…the 411 asked me a question regarding what is stacking your dog. I tried to explain this to her in words, which I don’t know how helpful that was, so I looked around the internet for some video’s and found this site

http://www.ehow.com/videos-on_1340_train-show-dog-show-ring.html

I thought for those who have never attended a dog show or trained a dog for the ring would get a lot of insight from these video’s on the work and training that goes into getting a dog ready to enter the show ring.

I have read posts from others with some very negative comments regarding dog shows and I think that may come from lack of knowledge about them. So here’s a little dog show 101; the history of dog shows dates back to the mid 1800’s. The Westminster show began on May 8, 1877 and is held in New York at Madison Square Garden’s, it marked its 136^th year this past February and is the largest all breed show; it is the second-longest continuously held sporting event in the United States behind only the Kentucky Derby.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that a dog show is a beauty pageant; nothing could be farther from the truth. Judges examine the dogs and place them in accordance to how close each dog compares with their mental image of the “perfect” dog as described in the breed’s official standard. The standards describe the characteristics that allow the breed to perform the function for which it was bred and include qualifications for structure, temperament and movement. These official written standards are maintained by each breed’s national club and published in AKC’s “The Complete Dog Book”.

When you enter the ring the Judge  will examine or “go over” each dog with their hands to see if the teeth, muscles, bones and coat texture match the standard. Then the Judge will examine each dog in profile for general balance, and watch each dog gait, or move to see how all of those features fit together in action.

Here is the link to the Westminster website and a video of well you guessed it, the Chessie’s from 2012, it gives you a good picture of a dog show in action.

http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org/videos/#/Breed%20Judging/2012/Sporting/vid:17897680

So you see it has nothing to do with beauty at all! Because what it comes down to folks is to show the Judge your cream of the crop so to speak, dogs you would use in your breeding program to enhance your breed. You only have two minutes to show the judge your dog and let me tell you it goes by quickly so you have to be paying attention and do your best to present what you hope will be the dog the Judge awards the points to.

I hope this was helpful in explaining what a dog show is all about!

 

MSDA’s Judges Education Seminar

Well it has been a very busy weekend for us, we helped and participated with the Judge’s Education Seminar Saturday and Sunday. For those who have never heard of this I will try to give you a brief explanation; for the past four years the Michigan Sporting Dog Association (MSDA) has held a Sporting Dog Judge’s Training Education Seminar here in Michigan, this gives judge’s the opportunity to get hands on experience judging various sporting breeds and is required by the AKC for them to earn their judging license for each breed they will be judging. This year it was held at the D Bar A Scout Ranch which is a beautiful facility and worked very well for the dogs. This is a two day event starting at 8am and ending around 4:30pm. There is also a live demonstration of these breeds doing the job they were bred for. This is most exciting and very educational for the judges; last year I over heard one judge say she had never seen water retrieves before.

The Michigan Chesapeake Bay Retriever Club (MCBRC)  (I am a member/board member) represents the Chessie’s at this event. There are four sessions each day and we do a Power Point presentation first that gives a little history ( you can see more on the history here) of our breed and then in depth information about everything in our Breed Standard. After the presentation the judges are shown the dogs in a show ring setting so they can look at them move and get their hands on them to feel coat textures, bone and the over all conformation of the dogs. Each year this is made possible by the people in the Chesapeake community volunteering their time and their dogs. We have always been able to present to these future judge’s of the breed every color and many types from various kennel’s, males, females, and all ages. The feedback from the judges’ is very positive and we have been able to debunk some of the misunderstandings they had about the breed; which is a good thing.

This was a great opportunity for me to get Maia and Titan out for some socializing and conformation training. They both did very well and by the end of the second day they were pros…well maybe not pros but they were getting in to the swing of things. I was not able to get any photos myself because I was so busy with dogs, not just mine but others as well; I showed 3-4 dogs at each session, which means I ran around the ring and stacked dogs 12-16 times each day…shew I’m tired just writing about it I do have two pictures of Titan that my friends took for me, one is of him stacked, however his front leg and rear leg is not placed properly but over all it is not a bad photo and the second one is of him moving around the ring and this one is quite good.

It was a great weekend but exhausting for all of us!

If you would like to see more photos you can view them on MSDA’s facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.128694513936385.21715.128289133976923&type=1

 

 

On another note, I dropped Titan off at the trainer’s on Sunday evening after the seminar and couldn’t help myself so I texted her yesterday to see if he did okay and of course she said he did just fine but I needed to hear it for myself I will update on his training as it progresses.

Show Update

COBO was a blast!! It was so much fun meeting Laurie Bartolo, Jen and Leroy.

I arrived at 8:30 this morning just in time for the national anthem, for those who have never been to a dog show they always start the show off by playing the anthem and sometimes we even have the pleasure of someone singing it. There were  a lot of beautiful Chessie’s there and I even went over to watch the Newfie’s, well mostly I wanted to see Leroy and Jen. Leroy is even more handsome in person, he has the softest coat and he is one of my favorite colors, brown   Spent the whole day socializing and catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while and then Laurie found me, well where else but in the Chessie isle. 

I took almost 200 pictures and here a few, well maybe more than a few

                                           Our friend Leroy, isn’t he gorgeous!

This is my other girl Searra, she is Cheyenne’s and Riva’s sister and according to her I was supposed to have brought her home to live with me not Cheyenne!

           This is the Veteran Bitch Sweepstakes class and Searra won today!!

Our friends Deb and Gunner, he loves his mom!

                                   The second dog is Reveler, the girl’s brother

This is our friends  Larry and Moose, he was Best of Breed and this is his Group 3 placement

                     Our friends Dave and Scout, they have had a rough day

Our friends Rick and Millet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                             Seara & Reveler, we hope you enjoyed the show!

Claudia Orlandi Seminar

This Saturday I am attending a seminar on breeding and anatomy; this is being presented by Claudia Orlandi, Ph.D.. She wrote the book “ABC’s of Dog Breeding” which is a home study program covering the genetics of breeding. I read and took the test in the back of the book a couple years ago, sent my test in to the AKC and received a completion certificate.

I have been waiting for a long time for her to come to Michigan again to give her seminar and now she is finally going to be here and not only will I get to hear her lecture on this book I will have the pleasure of hearing the lecture on the “Practical Canine Anatomy and Movement”

But wait it gets better, they have had such a large group of people register that they did not have enough dogs to use for the hands on anatomy section so they sent out an email requesting dogs. I thought about it and figured what the heck I will volunteer Cheyenne and great news they accepted my offer. So not only do I get to attend a seminar I have been waiting a long time for my beautiful Cheyenne gets to go with me. My friends over at Dusty Rose Chesapeakes will also be attending with one of their dogs, in fact it is because of them that I know about this book.

I love to learn all I can about the genetics and structure of dogs and I think you can never stop educating yourself. There is always something new to learn and in the long run it helps to make you a better breeder.