We have now been at home for a few hours (watching harness racing on and off) after getting up at 6 am in order to be comfortably early at the boxer show arranged by the regional boxer club. During the summer, each region within the country-wide boxer club arranges their own show for just boxers, and these are generally the most prestigious shows for boxer owners. So far, throughout the last two years, we’ve had mixed results, with the best being a victory in his group when he was a junior and a reserve (fifth, basically) placement in the young dog group at the Swedish boxer championships last year. No CKs (championship quality) at boxer shows so far, though, and I would certainly love to get one this year. But, it does take finding a judge that likes Ringo’s type, as I’d say he’s pretty good, but not stellar enough to wow just any judge regardless of their preferences.
I knew the judge for today probably preferred a somewhat different boxer judging by the dogs he had liked at previous shows in Sweden (there’s a database on-line where its possible to check the results for any official Swedish show), so my hopes were for good behaviour from Ringo and a red ribbon (for quality 1) in the individual evaluation. And that is pretty much what I got. In fact, Ringo surprised me by being both very well behaved and alert, which is something we don’t always manage to get at the same time. He bounced up once when the judge held up a pen to check alertness, and did one little jump when we started running, but otherwise he had his feet on the ground all the time and stood quite well too. I felt pretty confident that we’d get our red ribbon, and we did. However, when the time came for the comparative evaluation, we were the second pair to be sent out of the ring. The critique, however, sounds pretty good from what I have been able to make out of it (its in German, and hand-written):
Medium-sized, red-golden brindle. Good head and a suitable nose. Brown eyes, somewhat small incisors. Very good neck. Deep chest. The angulation is good in the front and very good in the back. Free movements.
The winner of Ringo’s class (the open class, which is where all males over 2 years go unless they go into the working dog group or the champion group) was a dog from the same litter that we had actually considered a dog from before settling on Ringo. They’ve had an informal rivalry ever since facing off at the first ever show for both of them when they were puppies (Ringo won that time), though we’ve ended up showing Ringo rather more. Kingston, as he is called, is a bit taller and lighter than Ringo, and I had suspected that he would do well for this judge as a litter mate of his had done well for him. So, he won, with a CK, and then he ended up missing out on best male very narrowly, placing second in that class after a lengthy deliberation by the judge.
We’ll have to tell Ringo he now has some catching up to do, to see if it might spur him to be a little extra pretty for the other boxer shows this year. ;) We’re hoping for at least two, possibly three more, though it really is no fun to get up at 3 or 4 am, so we’ll see. Either way, he was a very good dog today, and that sort of progress matters the most.