Eve is officially out of the naughty corner!
Back in February of this year, at the Gore shows, in only her 2nd weekend of being a show dog. Eve (Kitaco Fat Bottomed Girl) at the grand old age of 14 weeks, ended up on report as a Baby Puppy. It had been a long weekend of travel and admiring passers-by wanting to cuddle her, so by day 2, she was tired, had had enough of all this adoring attention and told the judge exactly what she thought of any further attempts to approach her in no uncertain terms. In the ring. While standing on the table. Ooops.
In all seriousness, it was a devastating blow to us and her brand-new handler, Tash, especially, as we all knew what a sweet dog Eve is and that this one moment in time was so out of character for her. She had such great potential and now she was under threat of being permanently banned.
But the rules are the rules. We have seen plenty of examples of poorly behaved dogs that probably should have been put on report and weren’t, so we could appreciate a judge with a zero-tolerance policy towards any hint of aggression, even if it was our dog being naughty.
We appealed the decision to no avail, so Eve had to get off report the hard way, by being observed for 6 show days. During these observations, she could not put a foot wrong or look crosswise at a judge. Or anyone else, for that matter. Failing one observation meant being banned from showing for life.
We weren’t worried about that, though. We understood that this incident was the outlier not the norm. Eve is the sweetest dog and loves everyone – she’s Ben’s daughter, so how could she be anything else? – but we had to be absolutely sure. We gave her a break for a couple of months and then worked on getting her back into the ring and making it as positive an experience as we could. Tash worked on her regular training and socialisation while Tracey concentrated on her ring craft.
We are delighted to report that our plan worked, Eve has now passed all her observations and we have been officially advised by Dogs NZ that she is no longer on report.
Along the way, while still under observation, she won Best Puppy in Show in Geraldine and two FCI Best Junior in Groups. If you’re going prove you have what it takes to be a show dog, that’s not a bad way to do it.
So, it’s back to regular showing for Eve, who is now working on her Championship title, and a reminder that any dog can have a bad day, but if you work through it, when you have such a fundamentally sound temperament as Eve does, one little setback isn’t the end of the world.
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