In just over two weeks, Axel will be headed out on a short road trip with his breeder. That’s right, it’s showtime again! This time, he’s going to a sieger (German-style conformation) show: American Rottweiler Verein’s 2010 Nationals.
Once upon a time, we could count on at least three or four sieger shows a year within easy driving distance. This hasn’t been the case in the last few years. Axel’s last sieger show appearance was when he was about 18 months old; he’ll be four this November. It was his very first show outing and he did very well, placing second in a fairly large 12-18 month old class.
As you probably know by now if you’ve been visiting us here, shortly after his second birthday, Axel started showing in AKC and has since earned his AKC championship. Now you might think that an AKC champion will automatically do well in other conformation venues, but this is not always the case. The sieger judges value movement and athleticism more than the AKC judges, and Axel is an athletic dog who did well at his first sieger show, so I’m hoping he has a good chance at a placement next month.
I know I’ve been promising to write a real post about sieger shows for a while now. But for now, I am just going to send you to an article that explains sieger shows simply and better than I could at the moment:
Conformation Shows – German Style: A Beginner’s Guide
And since I always try to find ways to show off my own dogs, I’m going to send you to Axel’s galleries from his first sieger show:
Axel – USRC Nationals ’08
Axel – more USRC Nationals ’08
The show photographer for that event was Christina Meacham of vom Blaurasen Rottweilers, who does a lot of sieger show photography. You can get a good idea of what the venue is like by looking through some of the albums from shows that she has photographed:
Rottweiler Sieger Show Photography
I’ll talk more about our past sieger show experiences and our last-minute preparations for this one over the next couple of weeks.
(NaBloPoMo | August ’10: 22 of 31)
Who is that handler in the AKC Championship picture? I assume she’s a pro handler? I’ve seen her before at shows around here handling Rotties.
That’s Julia Foster and she is in IL, WI and IN pretty often. I saw on your blog you were at Waukesha earlier this month; one of the Rotties she showed there is Axel’s half-brother. I have only good things to say about her, and how she magically turned my wild child into a show dog 🙂
I don’t care for American show line GSD’s at all, but some of the Rotties she handles are gorgeous. I’m just glad I don’t see her showing any Sammies – those pros are hard for bumbling idiot owner/handlers to beat. 😀
I never even considered handling Axel myself, but in the future I’d like to try conformation myself with a smaller breed in which more dogs are owner handled.