- [Announcer] Dogumentary TV,
producing the best breed documentaries.
(whirring) (dog barking)
(upbeat pop music)
- I'm Reegan Ray, I'm a boxer owner, lover, breeder
and I'm a herding judge and I'm a big advocate
of people doing something with their boxer.
(light instrumental music)
As a child, had a boxer growing up.
I don't remember that boxer, but I heard so many stories
about it growing up that it had
to be the breed that I chose as an adult,
and once I lived with one that was it.
I had a really smart boxer puppy,
and I wanted to do sports with her
but I didn't really know what to do
and I tried all kinds of things.
I did agility and obedience, I tried lure coursing.
Just anything that would get me out
doing something with her,
and one of the trainers I worked with,
suggested that I try herding,
and I really had no idea what that meant.
I kept contacting Terry Parrish and eventually she said,
okay, come on bring her on out here,
we'll throw her in some sheep and see what happens.
And she put her in with the sheep
and my husband and I watched.
Had no idea what she was doing,
but Terry was very excited about it.
So she said come on out
and let's see what this boxer can do
and that was just the beginning.
They weren't approved to compete
in any venues at that point.
So I was just training just for fun,
and then as time went on and she had an outrun
and she was able to do these things.
Walking up on the sheep.
Moving them away from me.
Keeping herself under control.
Anticipating what I wanted.
It started to look like I had to compete with this dog,
and little-by-little got in touch
with the American Boxer Club, American Kennel Club.
Wrote a petition which Terry helped me with
and several other of the trainers around here,
and we got the boxer approved.
The American Boxer Club is,
they're supportive of agility and obedience
but really hadn't thought about the boxer
in some of the ways that it was used in the past.
And even though they were considered a drover's dog
and originally it was the Munich Butcher's Club
that wrote the first standard for the breed,
there was an idea that they worked on cattle
but really they were thought of as a guard dog.
They'd been the first dogs used in war, carrying messages.
So the idea of them working stock,
even though they'd been a hunting breed.
They'd worked in the hunt they were a catch breed.
So they were sent out, they had the flushing dogs
and then they had the dogs that held the prey down
for the hunter to come.
We knew that they were able to move animals around,
but it wasn't clear what they'd done in the past
in terms of managing stock.
And that's really true of most breeds.
That the most history that we have
on animals moving stock is the border collie, of course.
The real herding breeds have a natural understanding
of their pressure around stock,
and likely boxers or the precursor to the boxer,
the bullenbeisser or the hunting ancestors
of the boxer, may have moved stock around
but not like the Border Collie.
There isn't that finesse, and style, and beauty,
and ability to sense how they're pressure affects the stock,
except in some individuals.
So we're finding that some boxers are very able to learn
how their pressure affects the stock
and then they can help you do a job
because they're an all-purpose breed,
so they were used on farms, they were used for chores.
We just don't really know what and in what capacity,
just that they're very biddable breed
and once they learn how to do something with you,
they want to do it.
That's probably the biggest attribute of the boxer,
is it wants to be with you, and it wants to please you,
and do things for you,
and they're very smart and quick to train up,
so it makes them really wonderful dogs to do
any kind of sport with because they train so quickly,
and you can go out and have fun, kind of right away.
(laughs)
In the courses that are designed in
AKC and American Herding Breed Association,
really are for many, many breeds to be able to compete
and I think a better word for it is exhibit.
You're able to train your dog to do this activity with you
and then exhibit your relationship
so I was drawn to this (laughs),
I get teary-eyed about it 'cause it's kind of profound.
Your dog is working so far away from you
and you're with an entirely other species,
and the working dogs, all of them, have to put their prey
right aside, in order to do a job with you.
Bring sheep to you, move them through obstacles.
The courses between
AKC and The American Herding Breed Association
are designed to exhibit that relationship
and that ability to move stock calmly and thoughtfully.
It's all about the careful management of livestock
so the border collie has its own organization.
They, of course, compete in all of these
and often win everything because that's the breed,
that's the one to do that with.
Most ranchers are gonna choose a border collie, right?
But it doesn't mean you can't go out and have fun
and do things with these wonderful working dogs
that want to do a job with you
and this is just, we have a couple of venues in which
to exhibit their ability to do a job and do a hard job,
a job that requires some intelligence and self control,
the ability to wait and listen,
to work away from you, to make decisions.
Once they see, it's amazing to me that in
some of the more advance herding courses,
dogs can pattern train, of course,
but the sheep are always going to do something different,
so you can never anticipate what
any group of two, three, four, 20 sheep are going to do
and your dog has to, not only respond to your command,
but it has to think about what your intentions are,
at the highest level.
(upbeat electronic music)
I do love it though, I just,
I couldn't believe what my first dog, she's now passed,
what she was able to do
and how she was able to figure things out and,
there were times when there were other dogs working
in the field at lessons and things,
and they'd lose their sheep and they'd come running past
and Pip was her name,
Pip would just put herself into a down immediately.
Those weren't her sheep, this wasn't her job,
she was letting the other dog work,
things I didn't command her to do
but after many, many years of working around stock,
she just knew.
That's a pretty heady thing,
that's a pretty wonderful relationship to have with a dog,
or to see them get to that level of thought so I think
people who get involved in herding, appreciate that.
They see how much the dog has to think.
The arena courses, there's a lot of obedience herding
that you can do and have a great time
and never train that hard or never become that
level of trainer and still have a great time,
and a lot of people do that, most people do that,
and then you get to that level where you want to seek out a
championship and really exhibit the things your dog can do
and you're gonna have to do this course a lot,
and you're gonna have to compete against the border collies,
and you're gonna have to get first places,
against a lot of border collies
and in the American Kennel Club, you have to have major,
which means there's some competition,
there have to be the numbers there,
and boxers have done it.
So I have, along the same line, I bred Pip and I got Fred,
she's now seven and a half,
the brindle boxer that I was showing you today.
She has her advanced titles in the American Kennel Club,
she has intermediate titles in
The American Herding Breed Association
and we're starting on her advance titles.
She has titles out in the field on B course,
which is considered the border collie course,
with the big outruns and it's so much fun
to exhibit her doing that and keeping it under control,
and there are other venues that the,
there's something called
The United States Border Collie Handlers Association,
that really, you only see border collies in and
her grandmother, Pip, competed in that,
exhibited I should say, a few times and qualified
and that was a pretty amazing thing to be out there with
only collies and this one little boxer.
So that was Pip and she had two championships
and she also had a tracking championship.
I didn't get into IPO, or they know call it IGP,
shoots in until Fred, the brindle female that I have now.
So she's seven and a half and has her IGP Two,
so I've gone through two levels of that with her
and the herding is something we started with first.
It was the sport I knew the best,
and she also has a tracking championship in
The American Kennel Club and then I bred her,
and I have Winston, her son is 16 months now
and is starting to get into the big arena
and get a little control of himself
and understand how to move sheep
and how to read them a little bit.
Well, he doesn't read them yet.
(laughs)
But he's getting there.
He's certainly interested in them
and I plan to go through the levels of herding with him
as well and he's got the first two levels in
The American Kennel Club of tracking titles as well
and we're starting him in IGP.
He's been working on that for a little bit too.
We'll probably trial him in about a year.
(peaceful music)
When I first got involved with dog sports,
I wanted to have a relationship with this
really smart breed, I just thought they were fantastic.
I loved how goofy they were,
I loved how they put all that aside
and were able to become very serious
when they saw something was important to you.
If you live with a boxer,
you see them do the most amazing things.
Really, really smart things.
I had a boxer that,
okay so I have a glass of water,
next to my bed and I'm thirsty, I'm drinking the water
and my boxer comes in and she looks at the glass of water
and she runs to the bedroom door and she comes back
and looks at me and looks at the glass of water,
runs to the bedroom door, okay, alright, so I get up
and I follow her down the hallway
and she goes and stand over her water bowl which is empty.
That's a boxer. (laughs)
I can tell you lots of crazy stories like that
but I always loved the breed
and I wanted to do something with them that showed this off
and have this relationship for other people to see.
So when I got involved in herding,
as time went by and I saw the boxer could do
a little of this and a little of that,
gosh, we might get through the first level
and oh my goodness.
Getting out there and exhibiting this
wonderful working dog and the things they are able to do.
Herding is a difficult job, it's hard to train,
it's very challenging to exhibit a good herding run
at the highest levels and boxers can do it.
Strangely enough, herding became the thing that made
people think, oh, gosh, if they can do
what the border collies do, they're pretty smart,
and I think it kind of got into people's ego
and into their hearts, I'm gonna do that too,
and it's pretty wonderful to be apart of that.
I want to support anything that keeps
the breed intelligence, their athleticism,
their desire to do something with you, alive.
(lighthearted music)
♪ A little bit of paradise of earth ♪
♪ Gotta get there first ♪
♪ Can I go with you? ♪
♪ A little bit of feelings I can't shake ♪
♪ They're the ones you make ♪
♪ And I think you'll do ♪
♪ And if you see it like me ♪
♪ You can get it for free ♪
♪ If you're ready to lead ♪
♪ A little bit of heartache never killed ♪
♪ You ran it through ♪
♪ Or buy into ♪
♪ I'm walking on this hill of mine ♪
♪ Just gotta get past it ♪