2023 National Specialty
The 2023 Swissy National Specialty was held in Santa Rosa, CA, on October 22–26, the first time in California since the 2003 show in San Diego. Of course we had to go, even though Rüdi was still a bit too young to do some of the events I'm most interested in. But we had a blast while we were there, and we met a lot of great people, some of whom we already knew by name, but it was mostly a completely new world to me. Seeing something like 120 Swissies all at one place at one time was definitely something else!
One thing I had noticed in the past is that it seems like many of the top show Swissies have lots of letters before their names (conformation champion titles), but not many after their names (activity titles like obedience, rally, drafting, etc.) Consequently, I had decided I wanted to go into the show with Rüdi having four basic titles behind his name; three (FDC, BN, and RN) are described on his main page. The 4th was a CGC (Canine Good Citizen, which all dogs should have!). After failing his first attempt at it, he passed with flying colors on the 2nd attempt on September 2 at the Southwest Obedience Club of LA test match. In fact, not only did he pass the CGC, we were offered the chance to also do the advanced version which he also passed, so he now had a CGCA behind his name, just in time for Nationals. He went into the show as “Hoberg's GSMD Adelboden Adventure BN RN FDC CGCA”.
The Specialty itself was a lot of fun and very hectic. While he was too young to participate in drafting, weight pulling, and pack hiking, he could still do the obedience-type events. First he earned his Trick Dog Novice (TKN) title on Tuesday afternoon. He was being a stubborn little cuss, but he finally figured out a fifth trick to complete the title.
On Wednesday he got the second leg of his Rally Advanced title and was on a team that placed second in the Team Rally Novice competition. The team competition doesn't count for anything other than bragging rights, but it was great working together with three other dogs/humans to go through the course to see how well we could do together.
And for the biggy … when the show planning guide first came out in late spring, one of the perpetual trophies described was:
“Highest Scoring Dog in Novice A, the Carolyn White Memorial Challenge Trophy. A large ceremonial Swiss cow bell offered by Friends of Carolyn White. Initiated in 2004 at the Lexington Kentucky National Specialty.”
As soon as I saw “cow bell”, I leaned over to Rüdi and said, “We're going for it, mate”, even though we hadn't even earned his Beginner Novice obedience title yet. We got to work, and he passed his Beginner Novice tests in June.
Leading into October, I wasn't really confident that he could pass the Novice A test, but we entered a bunch of tests leading up to Nationals to judge where we were and for the practice. The first attempt on October 14 was an “NQ” (not qualified — i.e. failed) since he decided to go exploring the steward table, a backpack outside one of the corners of the ring, the judge, etc., rather than staying next to me during the off-leash healing pattern.
Next attempt was the following Thursday on the first day of the Harvest Moon show cluster. Another NQ — I gave too many commands trying to keep him somewhat close to me. You aren't really allowed any verbal commands once you start; I was nervous and just messed up. On Friday, a miracle happened; I stayed quiet, Rüdi stayed close enough, and so we qualified by the skin of our teeth. Saturday was a similar story, so we again squeezed by and had our second qualification. On Sunday, he decided to go walkabout again, so an NQ. For those keeping score, he passed two out of five attempts.
So on Wednesday of the Nationals, it was anyone's guess how we would do. There were only two of us competing in Novice A, and Leon, our competition's dog, chose a very unfortunate time to stand up and scratch, and was thus NQ'ed. (Lest I sound too mercenary, both human and dog are quite delightful, so I feel bad for them — but only a little since they would have beaten us otherwise. ;-/ ) So all we had to do was qualify with a score of 170 (out of 200) or higher to win the trophy. When it was our turn, Rüdi did his thing, I kept sufficiently quiet, and once more we squeaked by: 171.5. Not only did we win the trophy, it was also Rüdi's third Novice A pass, so he earned his CD title as well. I was ecstatic, and the trophy chairperson was relieved (since she didn't want to take it back to Massachusetts), and when it was time to award the trophy at Thursday evening's banquet, she didn't even read off the formal citation; she just said “Come get your trophy, Mike!” Mission accomplished.
Endnote:
I sent the trophy picture to the SENNtinel (aka SENN), the Swissy national club magazine, for the National Show roundup issue. I figured it would be buried somewhere in the middle with pictures of other award winners. To my astonishment, they chose it for the cover of the issue, so at right is how the magazine cover looked when they sent it out late December.
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