When we checked email this morning, our mood quickly changed from one of casual routine to excitement: Dog News had sent an email in which the main topic was entitled, “Rethinking the judge’s exam in the age of covid.“  Any hint of a return to normalcy, especially when it involves dog shows, is cause for optimism.  That said, the word, “rethinking” suggested a change from the familiar, and indeed, it is.  Show judge and Rottweiler fancier, Jane Hobson, demonstrates how to evaluate a dog “hands free” in this video we encourage you to watch.  While judge Hobson touches upon the challenges of this method for a table breed or coated breed, owners of heavily coated breeds (read: corded dogs) will find it less than ideal.  Shoulder shrug. If “Love in the time of Cholera,” looks different than love during a time of robust health, one suspects that concessions have to made on the road to full normalcy (read: a vaccine) during a pandemic.

This post, however, isn’t about those compromises, it’s about something Ms. Hobson mentioned in the video, and that was the “Sieger-style” presentation as seen at Sieger dog shows. It’s possible that some readers may be unfamiliar with Sieger Dog Shows, so we’ll do our best to explain them, but know that what you saw in the video with judge Hobson is based on Sieger shows, and not a strict adherence to them.

A Sieger Dog Show is a German-Style Conformation Show, and we stand corrected if we have this wrong, but we’ve only seen this style of show offered for Rottweilers and German Shepherd Dogs. In some of these shows, the dog must already have a Schutzhund title.

Dogs are shown naturally, which is to say that hand-stacking is not allowed. Handlers show their dog’s teeth to the judge, and a toy may be used to elicit expression or animation, but there is no bait allowed. Still, dogs can be encouraged with with toys from outside of the ring by a second handler (what we’d call “double handling” in an AKC ring). Another departure is that handlers can be switched at will.

Each dog is individually critiqued out loud by the judge,  and when the judge is satisfied that he or she has been able to evaluate all the dogs in the ring, s/he awards placements from first to fourth place.  Ultimately, the exhibitor is given the judge’s critique and a rating with regards to the dog’s conformity to the breed standard.

A Sieger Show is similar to an AKC conformation show in ring procedures, and that it has classes for gender and age groups, but the titles awarded are different:

“Sieger” is equivalent to the AKC’S “Best in Show” title, but for males.  To get this title, a dog is required to have a SchH or IPO title and a ZtP, BST or Gekor;.

“Siegerin” is the female “Best in Show” and has the same requirements as the Sieger;

“Jugend Sieger” is the youth male “Best in Show” for dogs under the age of two, and it has no working title requirements. Its counterpart is “Jugend Siegerin,” the youth female “Best in Show” for bitches under the age of two.

The United Schutzhund Clubs of America has offered Sieger shows, and, in fact, the biggest single breed dog event in the world is a Sieger show in Germany for German Shepherd Dogs that is hosted by the Schafer Veein. Held in August or September, some 40,000 spectators come to watch around 2,000 GSDs compete.  In this country, the Medallion Rottweiler Club in Grayslake, Illinois has held Sieger shows in the past, the last one occurring in 2000.

Sieger shows are family oriented and as far as we can tell, seem to address a breed’s versatile working abilities. That said, we applaud the notion of borrowing elements of these shows to get exhibitors and their dogs back in a show ring in this “time of COVID.”

***With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez, author of Love in the Time of Cholera

Image from US Sieger Shows