HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!! I

Hello. Toby and I have been working on commands for about a week now and he is doing very well!! He was 14wks old on
2/16/01. Toby is a very smart Boxer. He is probably the smartest one we have had, and we have had 9 since 1992. We have three now. Anyway, toby does well at the commands we have been working on like sit, shake,(both paws) stay, come,(very well) down,(doing better). He has retained this knowledge better than I have seen with our others in the past. My wife and I have not been that interested in showing until now. We want very much to show Toby, but we have never tryed our hand at it before. We have been trying to get him into the stance that we have seen in the books. You know, the beautiful sloped back you see with the excelent show dogs with their back legs stretched back behind them. I think the term is "Stacking". PLEASE!!!!!
Someone help me out here. I have tryed everything I know to do, and he absolutely will not do it for me. I am convinced that I'm doing something wrong. We have tryed holding a treat in front of his nose while trying to get his back legs to stay back, but nothing seems to work!!! I did see on a boxer site that a man had built a grooming table with the dog's feet standing on perches that he had placed in the position that he wanted the dog to stay in. There was nothing but air under the dog other than the perches he was standing on. This looked like it would work, but looked expensive. I am absoletely losing it here!!! Am I the only one having this problem??? If not, please let me know what I am doing wrong!! Also, Toby comes from a very good line of Boxers. However there are no champions in his bloodline as far as I know. Am I wasting my time trying to prepare him for the show ring?? He meets the standard very well. I would like to think taht we are not, but I have heard that if the dog in question has no show blood in him this maybe knocks off some points with the judges or something like that. We're just now learnig about the show ring, and any and all help is appreciated. I have found a kennel club in our area that we're going to ckeck into and maybe join. For now though I'm relying on all of your expertise on this subject.
Thank you for the help. The Bowmans.

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Billie- Fawn female, docked tail natural ears, 5 1/2.
Lucy- Fawn flashy female, docked tail, natural ears, 8mos.
Toby- Fawn flashy male, docked tail, cropped ears 14 wks.
Greg and Elizabeth Bowman North Ga.

[JulieM]

Christina is right, the best way to learn about showing is to go to shows and talk with people who are doing it. Rick Tomita's book The World of the Boxer has a good step-by-step on how to stack your dog, and so does Show Me! A Dog Show Primer. Neither is as effective as having someone show you hands-on, though.

As for bloodlines - there is no way for the judge to know if your dog is from show lines or not. Judges do not know the names of the dogs they are looking at, much less the pedigrees.

I'm not sure what kind of training you're doing - if you're doing clicker training (or even if you're not ) go to http://www.shirleychong.com and go to the Keepers pages (might be called Training Tips) - there are some good Conformation training methods there. The key thing to remember is that at 14 weeks it's going to be very hard for Toby to stand still at all, much less in the position you want! Start small. When he's standing still for one second, click/treat. Gradually increase the length of time, and build in a "Stand" command. Then work on getting the front feet properly placed, then the back feet, then the neck, head, ears, then assign a different command (to differentiate between Stand as used in the CGC exam, which means stand still but foot placement doesn't matter, and a show ring stack. I wouldn't use "Stack" as a command, though, because it sounds like "Stand" I'd use "Pretty" or "Square" or something else.) The Keepers pages go into much more detail on this.

Don't forget to work on gaiting as well - it's different than "heel" where the dog is looking at you (you want him looking straight ahead, ears up). For this reason, it's generally not a good idea to teach this using bait, as the dog will look at the bait.

The perches your talking about are pretty popular - there is a commercial manufacturer called Happy Legs (www.happylegs.com) - I think they're pretty expensive, though. I've been told, although I haven't tried it yet, that you can fill coffee cans with water or sand and use those instead - much cheaper.

Good luck!

Julie

Thanks alot guys for the help as I need as much advice as I can get. We have inquried about kennel clubs here and have found one in the Chattanooga TN. area. I have also found out that they also have a traing shcool near by and we're going to try to get him into one of those ASAP. The website was a great help. I'm going to try one of the clickers. We have just been using treats and he has done pretty well, but also he gets board real easy. He seems to like them for the first four or five commands, but then gets reluctant to eat anymore. I break them in half so that it doesn't make him full. I think the clicker method might be a better idea. Thanks once again. I appreciate that this forum is in place. It helps alot of people to answer questions that otherwise wouldn't be answered due to people who don't know, or don't want to give the time of day. Thanks once again, the Bowmans.

[JulieM]

One thing about clicker training treats - when you're first teaching a behavior, it helps if the treats are especially yummy - cooked chicken, cheese pieces, liver - something that they'll get really excited about. They seem to learn much faster than with ho-hum treats.

Julie