Kerry Blue Terrier Performance Newsletter

May 2007

By Jane Eno

I am keeping my writing short this month to save room for a tribute to Lisa Frankland’s UDX Kerry Blue Terrier, Lav. He passed away in May, and Lisa was kind enough to write down his story for us all to share. It was hard in some ways for me to read, because I know just how much he meant to Lisa and how she must feel at this time.

Eve Fishell finished, with her senior dog Tonka, what I believe is the first PAX in the breed. The PAX title is top agility title offered out of the Preferred classes in Agility. Like the MACH, the dog must complete 20 double Qs, (one in Jumpers and one in Standard), on the same day with perfect scores and at or under standard course time. Preferred dogs are allowed a few extra seconds and to jump one height down then the regular classes, but this does not diminish the challenge of qualifying in both classes on the same day. To have Tonka add this title to her already impressive collection is a wonderful achievement for the Kerry world.

Look for the picture of Lisa Frankland’s, Katie, in June’s Dog World, featured in an article on the new sport of Strong Dog.

BRAGS

From Eve Fishell:
Today, Tonka completed her requirements for the PAX (Performance Agility Excellent) Title. This title is awarded to a dog competing in the Excellent B Preferred Class who achieved 20 Double Qs, ( perfect score in standard and Jumpers in Weaves in Excellent B at the same trial). Tonka finished in style. She started the weekend with 17 DQs. She qualified in all her runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday to finish her title. She is the first Kerry to achieve the PAX title. She is now Tantara's Honky Tonk Girl CDX MX MXJ PAX MXP4 MJP2, and in Canada, CH Tantara's Honky Tonk Girl CDX AgMX

Tonka will be 11 years old in September. She now has 21 AKC titles and 7 CKC titles to a total of 28 titles, not counting her AAC and NADAC titles.. She beats her mamma - Streaky who had 25 titles at her death.

Thank you Tonks! Far more important than titles and achievements you have given me so much - your daughter Tide, your granddaughter Molly, and the enormous contribution you continue to make to my mental, emotional and physical health.

From Patty Sontag, Marlborough, MA:
Just a bit of a brag to announce that Duffy achieved his Rally Excellent title under Judge Dr. Ellen Adomelis on May 5th at the trial held by the American Bullmastiff Association in Franklin, MA! On top of that, he also placed 3rd with a respectable score of 93!

Duffy has done a great job in Rally, achieving all 3 legs at each level with no NQs, and has even placed in some very competitive classes. We will probably take a break from showing in Rally for awhile, as we train heavily for our debut in Utility, (hopefully next November). We will still show in Open at select shows.

We do plan to show at the Patty Ruzzo Memorial Classic at Tails-U-Win in Manchester, CT in July, so we are also working to polish our Open routine, since cash prizes will be awarded!

As another small brag, Duffy also received a bumper leg in Open B with a score of 188 at the trial held by the Labrador Retriever Club or Greater Boston in March in Franklin, MA. Not too bad, when you consider we’re showing in the same class as OTChs and UDX dogs! I’m still in awe of those dogs!

From Dana Kincaid:
Daisy completed her Rally Excellent title on May 19, 2007, and the same weekend.

From Virginia Barishek, Philadelphia, PA:
After attaining his RAE, Andy, (Garryowen's Smarty Pants, UD, RAE, NA), is continuing to work in combined classes in Rally Excellent B and Advanced B. At Lower Bucks DTC, he earned perfect scores of 100 in each class, for 1st in Excellent and 3rd in Advanced--the 1st in Excellent was ahead of Border Collies and Shelties, BTW. At Penn Treaty KC, he got a 98 for 1st in Excellent, and a 97 for 3rd in Advanced. At Trenton KC, he qualified in both classes, and took 2nd place in Advanced with 100 points. At Allentown DTC, he qualified in Excellent with 95 points, and took 4th place in Advanced with 98. The next day, at Berks County DTC, Andy qualified in Excellent, and took 1st place in Advanced with 98. In Rally, tied scores are decided on the basis of time---just behind Andy, in 2nd place, was his "little brother" Finn, with a score of 98. (This made me decide it was time to start entering Finn in Excellent---more about that in a minute.) The following weekend was Memorial Day and the Freehold, NJ, cluster; Andy was entered on Saturday only (Monmouth KC) and my other dogs on Sunday (Plainfield KC), in punishing heat and humidity. On Saturday, Andy qualified in Excellent and took 1st place in Advanced with a score of 100. Appropriately, on Sunday, he rested while Finn and Rosie worked!

Finn, (Finbar's End of the Rainbow, CD, RA), was introduced to outdoors, off-lead work at the Lower Bucks DTC trial, and did well in Rally Advanced B with an 89. At Berks DTC, he took 2nd place in Advanced B with the same score (98) as the 1st place dog--his "big brother," Andy. Finn's debut in Excellent B was at Monmouth KC in Freehold, NJ; we NQ'd, mainly because our 3-Step Backup is still "iffy," and we also needed a bit more practice on the Moving Stand. However, the next day, at Plainfield KC, Finn earned his first leg in Rally Excellent B, with a score of 86.

Rosie, (Andy's Little Flower, RN), usually comes along for the ride, so when possible, she is entered in Rally Novice B or Prenovice Obedience to gain working experience. At Garden State All-Terrier, Rosie took 3rd place in Rally Novice B, with a 91. At Allentown DTC, she got an 89. At Monmouth on Memorial Day weekend, she got an 88. The next day, at Plainfield, she worked with better focus, despite the heat, and got a 96.

With the recent summer-like heat and humidity, it's time for a break. We'll be looking for seminars and workshops, and the occasional trial, preferably indoors with air conditioning!

Passing the Torch

By Lisa Frankland

This was supposed to be a brag, and in its own way it still is. On May 12, my Katie Rae completed her Utility Dog title in style: she qualified three days in a row to earn her UD and a bumper leg! She then went out that last day and earned her Herding Instinct Certificate to boot. She is now Ch. Casey’s Rae of Sunshine UD, RE, AX, AXJ. What made it even more special is that Katie’s breeder, (who is also Katie’s co-owner and a close friend), Lois Croley, was in town for the breed shows, and got to see Katie’s big finish, (as well as her terrorizing the sheep). Katie adores her “Mommy Lois,” (and the cookies she always seems to have in her pockets), and Lois was concerned enough about her presence being a distraction that she watched our performance while hiding behind a door!

The judge’s final words of “Exercise finished...congratulations, you qualified.” were accompanied by resounding applause, hugs, cheers, and even some tears. Just five days later, though, I was dealing with tears of an entirely different sort, as I said goodbye to my old guy, Lav. He was 17 years old, my first Kerry, the first dog of my adult life, and my first competitive obedience dog. I’ve been meaning to write his story for a few years, never intending it to be a memorial.

I had fallen in love with Kerry Blue Terriers after reading about them in a book when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t until April of 1990 when I had been married for a while and expecting my first child, that I was able to get one. We were living in Colorado Springs at the time, and after a few fruitless attempts to find a Kerry puppy in the classifieds, I wrote to the address in the USKBTC’s ad in Dog World for the 1985 Handbook. The address happened to be Carl Ashby’s; he sent me a very nice reply saying that he and Jaime had puppies available, but suggesting I check with Chuck and Lois Croley in Littleton first. It was pure serendipity that the Croleys still had three 12 week old puppies available from the latest of their infrequent litters, and following a series of events that included Aaron and I having the biggest and actually only major argument of our marriage, Lois nearly showing us the door after Aaron told her he wanted something more “wolf-like,” and the puppy I had dreamed of owning for years getting carsick all over me, we finally got the little lavender boy home. Yes, that is how Lav actually got his call name . . . not from his registered name, (which Aaron came up with afterwards), but from the colored rick-rack that the Croleys used to identify the puppies. (For the same reason, the yellow girl was called Amber until the day she died). We could have changed his name, but it just seemed to fit him so well—he was Lav! It turned out to be not only a unique name, (a good thing for a performance dog to have), but one that lent itself to some hilarious misunderstandings: Tavish, MacTavish, Radish, Love, and Lab, along with the all-too-frequent assumption that Lav was a girl.

One of the things that had attracted me to the breed in the first place is that Kerries are supposed to be very intelligent and trainable, and I wanted to do obedience. I had watched my cousin’s husband put a Companion Dog title on their Old English Sheepdog and thought it looked like a lot of fun. So Lav and I jumped right into training classes at Pikes Peak Obedience Club: First, puppy class, followed by beginning obedience, then advanced beginner. It was in this class that we hit our first snag—Lav was in the throes of puberty, and I was having trouble finding time both for him and my then infant son, Will. We were “strongly encouraged” to repeat the class; in other words, we flunked! We did successfully complete the class the second time around; then it was on to novice class, and preparing for the CD.

The transition to formal competitive obedience was not easy, as we both had to get used to working without additional commands or signals, and with no praise allowed except between exercises. A lot of people give up at this point, but I had my sights fixed on a title, and was fortunate to have some terrific teachers and role models who encouraged me to go on. Our first trial was a disaster. We were not prepared to work in the confusion of a dog show environment, and Lav was extremely distracted. We somehow muddled through the heeling exercises, (Lav air scenting and looking around the whole time), but then he swerved out the ring gate during the recall and broke both the sit and down stays. We went back to the drawing board with a lot more practice in different places and at some matches, and several months later finished his title in three straight shows with scores all in the 190s. I was so proud when I received that first title certificate from the AKC!

That was May of 1992. In August, we moved to California, and my daughter, Meghan, was born in November. There wasn’t much in the way of obedience classes in our area at the time, but I did hook up with a local kennel club that held informal training sessions that were supervised by a long-time obedience judge and AKC delegate. We didn’t get much in the way of instruction, but mostly figured it out among ourselves. I am forever grateful to author Diane Bauman and my very dog-eared copy of Beyond Basic Dog Training, because I literally trained Lav “by the book!” It was in this way that we got through Open and most of Utility training. (A Terri Arnold seminar helped us put the final touches on Utility). Lav earned his CDX in July of 1993 in one incredible weekend. The Ventura County Fairgrounds are right on the Pacific Ocean, and it is one of the most picturesque and pleasant venues you can imagine for a dog show. The title picture I got shows me and the judge kneeling in the grass with Lav, all three of us relaxed and beaming, and is my all-time favorite show picture.

Utility training was a little more challenging. I quickly found out why so many people refer to it as “humility,” “futility,” and “the heartbreak class.” I frequently became frustrated when Lav wasn’t mastering the exercises as easily as he had done with Open, and I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t always fair to him. This would make Lav very confused and stressed out, and since I hated to see him acting like I had been beating him, this made me take a good, hard look at my training methods and my behavior, and forced me to read him; to try to understand what was making him act a certain way and what I needed to do to fix it; to lighten up and not take a failed exercise personally; to praise the good more than I corrected the bad . . .in short, to become a better trainer. Lav earned his UD in January of 1995, in just eight attempts. The Utility Dog Excellent title, which requires ten combined qualifying scores from Open B and Utility B, had just been introduced the year before, and that become our next goal. We got our first UDX leg in May, and by September had earned seven. Then things began to fall apart. Lav started failing the directed jumping exercise in utility, and it wasn’t long before other exercises were affected as well. It was during this same period that he was also viciously attacked by a black Lab, while we were out on a walk; he escaped with relatively minor injuries, but the experience left him unable to stay focused in the ring. Desperate for an answer, I asked my vet to check his eyes, and she said that it looked like he had the beginnings of PRA. I was devastated at the idea of my six year old dog going blind, but tried to stay calm and objective until a veterinary ophthalmologist could confirm it. When we finally got an appointment, the specialist carefully examined Lav’s eyes and subjected him to an expert proximity test, (i.e., rearranged the furniture and observed how Lav made his way around a darkened room), before announcing that there was absolutely nothing wrong with his eyes. Yippee!

I took a couple more months off from showing, and concentrated on rebuilding his confidence and completely retraining the directed jumping exercise, and by late summer of 1996 we were back in action. It took him just five tries to earn those last three legs, and one of the NQ’s was my fault when I told him to retrieve the wrong glove. He also took High Combined on both of the last two legs. The show where he finished in October of 1996 was about a 90 minute drive from where we lived, but several of my training buddies and dog friends made a point of coming to cheer for us. It was a horribly long day. Utility B was held at 9 in the morning, and Open B didn’t start until after 3; and there was also some concern that not enough dogs would hang around and show in Open B for it to count as a leg. (This was back when the AKC required a minimum of 6 dogs competing in an open class for it to count). But, this is what I love about obedience people . . . every single person, even the ones whose dogs had not performed well that morning, made it a point to come back in the afternoon and show in Open B anyway, so as not to blow anybody else’s chances for a leg. Lav gave my friends one heart-stopping moment during the retrieve over the high jump, when his dumbbell bounced into the far corner of the ring and everyone expected him to go around the jump on the return. But, Lav knew better. He grabbed that dumbbell and headed right back over the jump to me! And although Lav normally had very reliable stays, I was so nervous during this part, that I was literally praying out loud behind the blind. I was so thrilled that we had finally done it, that I started crying as the judge said exercise finished. Lav became just the second Kerry to earn a UDX. (Evelyn Gansfuss’ Stellar was the first). Nearly 11 years later there are only three more, (Max, Phoenix, and Jessie), which gives you a pretty good idea of the level of training and commitment involved in earning this title.

There were no UDX2s or so on at the time, so after Lav got his UDX, I put him in semi-retirement, only bringing him out to the occasional show for fun. Sometimes I didn’t even enter both classes. The only time I trained seriously after that was when we qualified for the 1997 AKC Obedience Invitational. What a thrill that was! I wasn’t planning to go, as it was in St. Louis, quite a distance from southern California and more than I could justify spending to travel to, but the KBTCSC and KBTCNC and several of their members actually donated enough money to cover my airfare and expenses. So, we went. We had fun. I was very proud of Lav’s attitude and consistency through six rings of competition, (the equivalent of two open and two utility classes all mixed up), and in the end we placed 2nd in the Terrier Group, just half a point, (out of 680 total points), out of first place, and in the top half of all the competitors. That silver medal is proudly displayed in my china cabinet to this day!

A few months later, we moved to Virginia, and I only showed him a few times after that, most notably at Garden State All Terrier Club in 1998, where he won High in Trial and High Combined. We then had some fun dabbling in tracking, which we didn’t get far in, and the then new AKC sport of agility. Lav easily earned his NA and two NAJ legs before yet another move, this time to Colorado in 2000, sidelined his training for good.

Lav had a very long, full retirement where he traveled with us, enjoyed long daily walks and regular outings, volunteered as a therapy and obedience demo dog and romped with Katie, who joined our family in 1999. He hung out with our cats, (especially his best buddy, Flea, a seal brown Siamese mix who passed away last year at the age of 19),and continued to good naturedly tolerate a menagerie of household pets, including rats, reptiles, and guinea pigs, and played host to a stream of canine fosters. Lav ended up introducing my daughter, Meghan, to the sport of dogs, as well, by serving as a extremely trustworthy, (and handsome!), juniors dog for her to learn on at classes and matches. Lav’s last official appearance was as a 15 year old in the veteran’s sweeps at the 2005 KBTCSC summer specialty, expertly handled by none other than the little girl, by then a young lady of 12, that he had helped raise and train. Although he gradually slowed down and lost his vision and most of his hearing, Lav continued to enjoy a good quality of life until shortly before he died, peacefully, at home and in my arms.

I’ve told Katie that she has big shoes to fill...very, very big shoes. That may sound a bit melodramatic, especially considering that Katie has already earned more titles, in more venues, than Lav ever did, and will no doubt earn even more before she is done. But without Lav to pave the way, to set the standard, to train me, I doubt that I ever would have gotten as far as I have with my wild child. More importantly, Lav was my protector all the times I was home alone; my bridge to new opportunities and friendships wherever we lived during my husband’s military career; the best friend who was always there to share the highs and lows in my life, my four-legged personal trainer who demanded his evening walks regardless of how tired or depressed I felt after caring for two small children all day; the outgoing, good-natured boy who treated nearly everyone, human and canine, as a friend; and the wonderful creature who taught me not only to become a better trainer, but in the process a better parent and better person.

I’ll miss you, Lav-a-dog.

Casey’s Lavish Mischief UDX, NA, CGC
January 11, 1990-May 17, 2007

Last Updated: 06/05/2007, 9:45 am