Tip Tail

Bleh, I have been sick since last Wednesday and I’m feeling guilty about not working with the dogs as much as I want to. So here they are all hogging the couch.

I know that they are, really, just fine having a few days off… maybe I’m starting to feel better and so I want to work more now, but I still feel rotten enough that I’d rather sleep all day. I need some Costa Rica vacations, maybe they would settle me down and heal me up…

I just have a bad cold. Not the flu. The flu would take me out for a week and I’d feel all weak and awful. I just have a head cold and stuffy nose and achy joints and stuff. I am pretty sure it’s not the flu. I’m glad it’s not the flu!

Well I hope I get better for ASCA agility next weekend. I have Tatum entered in pre-novice, scary! Now I’m getting nervous about it!

Just saw this picture of Tatum and had to post it up. She is so pretty!

Well, just a wee update on Angel. She is doing pretty good. She is old, for sure, and very slow. I wish we could do more for her but there’s no cure for old age. Ugh. She goes slow everywhere, but she eats really well, potties outside just fine, and likes to chew on pig ears.

She doesn’t play much anymore… she does sometimes, but I have to keep Jet away because he will pull toys and socks right out of poor old Angel’s mouth. She doesn’t have the strength or the attitude to get toys away from Jet. And Jet doesn’t understand that Angel needs gentle play now.

Maybe when it warms up we can get some outdoor fireplaces and sit outside with her and relax. She loves it outside. But it’s a bit too cold now and so we keep her inside except to potty. She is a good girl and she’s hanging in there are we love her very much.

Jet came with to the agility trial last weekend and he had a great time. He is such a good boy. I hope he stays a puppy for a while… he is my baby boy and he is so friendly and loves everyone. He does think that he should bark at the buffalo, though. He is such a goof sometimes. So we walked around the buffalo a bit and he seemed to get used to it after a bit.

Maybe they used some Baldwin hardware to build the buffalo… it’s a cute dude. They have some ugly ones around the city too, but this is one of the nicer ones.

I haven’t been working with Jet much lately, been focusing on the darn spare bedroom and the agility trial. But that’s all done now so we can work some more, and he loves it!

Here is Chase’s Jumpers with Weaves run from last weekend. He did good, a couple of mistakes… I think I need to invest in buying a good quality triple jump. He takes it out. And we don’t have one so we need to work it.

It’s a good run. I wish Saturday would have gone as well as Friday. I pulled him off the course a couple times on Saturday because of some mistakes. I don’t really think that does anything for him, but once I’m out of sync with him it all falls apart so going on is really kinda pointless. oh well. Maybe an auto insurance quote would help us get our thing together… hrm.. maybe not!

Well I sent in the entry for the DOCNA agility trial.. and I entered Tatum. She’ll be in ASCA this month, but only in pre-novice because I can’t chose to jump her at 16″ unless she’s in veterans. That bugs me. I won’t jump her 20″. So DOCNA will be our first real venue…

I don’t know if she’ll qualify, but I want her in the environment and to see how fun it is. I only entered her in Jumpers and Gamblers. She doesn’t weave yet, but it’ll come this summer. Maybe some ring terminals will help… hrm. Maybe not.

She is my baby girl and I’m excited to enter her in agility. I don’t think she’s really ready, and sometimes I’m nervous, sometimes I’m not. But it’ll be fun either way!

Yup, he finally got a Q in AKC! Hehe… he’s been in Excellent for a while now, maybe even a year… I forget, it’s too depressing to keep close track. We have a hard time in excellent in AKC with the twisty courses. But we got a Q, so maybe we actually can get an AX… but I dunno. The second day was an icky day.

This is his Q run, nice huh? Clean and everything! I can’t even use malignant Mesothelioma as an excuse for not Qing… hrm… Anyway, it was a fun day.

So, there’s an AKC agility trial this weekend that I’ve entered Chase in.  We’ll see if all our work with Stacey has paid off!  One thing I learned was… you do not have to be in perfect position to start signaling a front cross. But we need front cross work because I’m always behind Chase, and so I don’t do many front crosses. They have always made me nervous, even when I was running Levi! Maybe some muscle milk reviews would help me perk up my running!

So anyway, I’m not expecting much.. but I’d like a Q. I’m only going Friday and Saturday. Maybe we’ll get a FAST Q, but I’d prefer a standard or jumpers Q. I don’t Q with Chase much in excellent, and so some positive reinforcement for the handler would be nice!

Unfortunately, Chase is unhappy with our foster dog Titus. Chase doesn’t like other dogs very much… he has space issues and doesn’t like dogs getting into his space. He gives off the weirdest signals. And Titus doesn’t know how to interpret them so he just stares at Chase. And no matter how much I tell Titus that staring is really bad dog manners, he doesn’t understand and keeps on doing it.

So we keep Chase and Titus apart. But it’s been getting worse lately. Chase took his frustration out on Lucy the other day, and even broke skin on Lucy’s nose. That is rare for Chase, he never breaks skin. So we are in need of a new foster home for Titus. We do have to put Chase’s needs first… but we’ll get Titus a great new foster home, or even a great forever home, which would be best!

I wish some sort of diet supplement would help Chase mellow out, but we’ve already tried many things. He has a low thyroid and he’s being treated for that. We just need to give Chase a good home environment too. He’s a good boy and he works so hard for me.  So, we’ll see, Titus will get another great place to stay!

I’ve been reading a lot about international dog shows and registries and clubs the last few days and oh boy, I think my head is getting ready to explode with all the confusing information!

I do, however, think I have it all straight. I thought I’d post about it to help me remember when I forget in a couple of days. It’s good information and maybe it’ll help out someone else as well sometime.

As ya’ll know I have a Danish Swedish Farmdog and they are are a very rare breed in the USA.  They are not an AKC (American Kennel Club) registered breed. The AKC is the largest pure-bred dog registry here in the United States. I’m not saying they are the best… I’m on the fence about the AKC.  I wish they would enforce the integrity and ethics of their breeders more, but they don’t, and therefore they will register litters of puppies that may even come from puppy mills. And we all know how terrible puppy  mills are and we want them all gone off the face of the planet.

So if you are a person, or a dog, floating around the world and you want to know which registry has the most… well, punch I guess you could say, in the world, which one would you guess? Well, it’s no US registry that’s a fact.  And not surprising since the USA has a horrible dog overpopulation problem and needs serious reform… that’s coming from me from the rescue view of the USA though… and I’ve seen too much rescue in my life.

Anyway so what’s the club? Well, it’s the FCI.  What does FCI stand for?  I’m gonna have to copy and paste because I can’t pronounce it or spell it: Fédération Cynologique Internationale

The FCI doesn’t register dogs. They register Breed Clubs around the world. One breed club per country. The USA does not have a FCI member breed club. Not the AKC or the UKC or ARBA or any other clubs. The AKC has a reciprocal agreement with the FCI though so pedigrees from AKC registered dogs can be exported overseas to other countries and it keeps the validity of their pedigrees so they can be bred in other countries and recognized there as pure breds.

Each country (other than the USA) has a breed club that is a member of the FCI. From what I could tell, that breed club writes the Standard for the breed, and the breed club and the FCI work out all the details about the standard so the breed is the same all over the world. Since there is no FCI approved registry in the USA, quite often the US breeds become isolated and only breed with other USA dogs and, therefore, can become quite different from dogs of the same breed in other parts of the world.

All this is pretty interesting isn’t it? LOL well maybe if you have a rare breed dog which is not AKC recognized, which I do.

So anyway, what do you do if you have a rare breed in the USA that was imported to the US from another country, such as, say, Finland, just to grab a country out of the air? What if this breed is not AKC recognized? What if you breed this dog in the USA… can you ever register the puppies anywhere and sell them as pure-bred dogs or export them to other countries? Well… you can, but there’s a catch.

If the breed is not FCI recognized, and they are not an AKC breed (either regular AKC registration or AKC-FSS (Foundation Stock Service which is where the breeds go first before they are fully AKC recognized), you are pretty much out of luck. If the breed is AKC recognized you can get an Export Pedigree and that is recognized by the FCI. Even though AKC is not a member of the FCI, the reciprocal agreement the AKC and the FCI have means that the AKC dogs can be exported and bred and recognized as pure breds in other FCI countries. None of the other USA registries such as the UKC (United Kennel Club) or ARBA (American Rare Breed Association) are FCI members. Nor do they even work with the FCI in any way. In the USA only the AKC works with the FCI, and even then it’s not a full membership.

However, if your breed is FCI recognized then you are in luck. There is a place you can register your dog in North America that is FCI recognized. The Canófila Federation of Puerto Rico, will register your pure bred dog if you have a pedigree from a FCI member club. So… since Jet was born in Sweden, and he has a pedigree from the Swedish Kennel Club, I can send his pedigree to the CFPR and get him a registration that will be valid for breeding him in the USA (however, in Jet’s case, his SKK pedigree is good for that, I’m just talking generically here, but I don’t know if his puppies could be registered in other countries without the registration from an FCI member club). If I breed him here (to a bitch also registered with an FCI member club) and register the litter of puppies with the CFPR, then they should, I assume, be FCI recognized because both the sire and the dam are registered with an FCI member club. So the puppies could then be sold to homes all over the world, and the kennel clubs in other countries would recognize the puppies as pure-bred Danish Swedish Farmdogs.

Kinda cool huh?

I have heard that some breed clubs might have agreements with the kennel clubs of other individual countries and that, if the breed is not an AKC recognized breed, the countries still might recognize the US born dogs and allow the puppies to be imported into those countries with an ARBA pedigree, or perhaps some other pedigree from another USA registry which has been negotiated by those particular clubs. Which is all fine and good but then your options are limited to those specific countries. FCI has over 80 member countries and that allows for a much more diverse gene pool instead of being limited to just one or two other countries.

So that, in a very big nutshell, is what I understand of the FCI and breeding and moving dogs from country to country. Maybe Google will index this page and it’ll be able to help some people (and their dogs). Oh, I got some of this information from this Falcao Podengo Pequenos website that is all about the FCI and other dog breed registries. Those dogs look like a really cute breed too! But I do like the short hair of the Farmdogs.