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UPDATE - MACH Emmy - 8/01!  Read More

In the spring of 1994, Wendy Mayhall (Savoy Boxers) called me asking if I knew of anybody wanting a boxer puppy for obedience and agility. She had a little female in July’s litter that had a strong food drive and great working ability. She really wanted to place the puppy because she was becoming too attached to it. I really wasn’t looking for another dog at the time, although my oldest son Frankie wanted his own 4H dog and my boys love boxers. Laika, my old boxer, was semi-retired, and Icee, my Terv, was the dog I was competing with at the time. I tried to convince myself that I couldn’t afford a new puppy at that moment, but I went to look at Wendy’s litter anyway because I admired the working ability of her line. Although I had always preferred fawns, I fell in love with Emmy right away. She had the most expressive eyes I had ever seen on a boxer.

Emmy turned out to be perfect for Frankie’s 4H project. He could do junior showmanship, obedience, and agility with her, although I had to be very watchful of the training program because 4H is not a good place to start a new puppy, as their training methods are rather outdated. I worked with her slowly and let her be a puppy for a while, since I was busy showing the other dogs. The 4H competitions, especially the Florida State Fair, were really good exposure for her, and nobody minded that she was a little wild (except maybe Frankie). Obedience was not her favorite thing, since the 4H program was rather boring and harsh, but she loved agility from the start and was totally fearless. I had to be very careful that she did not injure herself in her recklessness, and in fact, had to set her up to actually fall off the dog walk (the USDAA height), with me there to catch her of course, so that she would realize that she actually had to look where she was going.

Boxers are late maturing and I don’t like to show them in Obedience or Agility until they are about two and a half years old. In USDAA dogs can’t compete until they are eighteen months old anyway, so Emmy’s competition career did not begin until she was two. At the time that Emmy started, I was working on Icee’s NCDA (now UKC) ATch. I found that NCDA was too restrictive for Emmy, and since I did not want to slow her down, she has never competed in that venue. I really liked the Junior Handler program in USDAA, so Frankie decided that I could show Emmy in the regular classes and he would show her in Junior Handlers.

When AKC finally started its agility program, Frankie was happy to finally be able to compete and title Emmy since, AKC was not as difficult as USDAA. He did quite well, taking Emmy through both her Excellent Standard and Jumpers with Weaves titles. He even competed quite successfully as a Junior Handler in the USDAA Nationals in Cleveland Ohio in 1997. As he got older and busier in high school, however, Frankie no longer had time to go to many shows, and I decided to finish Emmy’s Master Excellent titles in Standard and Jumpers with Weaves.

I said before that I don’t like to show a boxer before it is two years old, and I can honestly say that it took another two years before I had good control of Emmy and we started to really work as a team. She is not a dog that you can drill repeatedly (no boxer is). She gets easily bored in a class situation. She can participate in a seminar as long as there is not too much intensive drilling. Emmy’s the type of dog that when she does a sequence correctly, sees no point in repeating it. During the tapings of the Zig and Zag Alpha dog Challenge, there was one day in which we did three shows. The particular game that we were taping was a relay race in which each dog had to run the course three times. Our team was chosen to do the "test shoot" as well, and in the morning between 8AM and 1PM we ended up running the same course twelve times! Keeping Emmy from shutting down that day was the most difficult task I have ever accomplished!

After we completed our Advanced title in USDAA, Emmy and I hit a plateau. Competing at the Masters level in USDAA was a totally different ball game, the course times so fast that we were walking a fine line between fast and out of control. I had to do a lot of re-training to work at higher speeds while still hitting the contacts (Emmy hates yellow :-). I worked on more and more speed without sacrificing control. My timing, thinking, and reaction time had to get faster. Timing is crucial when running a boxer (more so than other breeds), and if we wait too long they will make up their own course. To improve as a handler, I had the help of my Tae Kwon Do coach Master Ron Greene. He coached me on my conditioning, performance, correct diet, and even gave me pointers on a better diet for Emmy. He advised that I increase her protein intake, which he calculated based on her ratio of muscle to body fat. Adding raw ground beef to her food every day has increased her activity level, and minimized muscle pulls.

I believe that conditioning a performance dog properly is the most important first step towards a long and successful career. Since Emmy and I compete in USDAA and NADAC as well as AKC, she has to be capable of running four times each day in a show weekend. Our conditioning program consists of some road work for endurance (for both Emmy and me), basic skills of course, and jump conditioning with exercises taken from Chris Zinc’s books: Peak Performance, Coaching the Canine Athlete, and Jumping from A to Z. Correct jumping skills will save a dog from a lot of wear and tear. I have to thank Steve Frick for many tips on conditioning my dogs properly. In order to get Emmy used to going in the ring four times in a day, I will do a quickie sequence with her (maybe 2 or 3 minutes) three times a day, a couple of days a week. Of course, I always work on speed and accuracy, so if I don’t feel up to running and performing at my best, I don’t train. I always train like I show and try to show like I train. I work Emmy every day, short, fast sequences, stressing fun and playing a lot. After a long show weekend, we always take Monday off.