What a clever boy

I'm not too sure why, but some time ago we decided to determine Max's breed standard. We know we bought a pure bred Beauceron, in fact each of his grandparents are the highest possible standard, and as Jan has pleasure in pointing out, they have a far higher pedigree than me. By virtue of the fact that she talks more affectionately and more often to the dog than she does to me, I'd sort of figured that out already.

Anyway we decide to determine his Cotation which means that, on Easter Sunday, a day that in the good old days meant a lie in, and fun and games, we leave the house at 6.00 am and drive for 3 hours to a meeting of Club des Amis des Beauceron where he can be judged. This idiotic behaviour proves that we have now become "doggy", if not dodgy, people.

I'm not sure what the collective for a large group of Beaucerons is, but whatever it is, it was there. There you are sitting at home thinking that you have a unique and handsome specimen, only to find that there are lots of them around. Having said that, there are an awful lot of ugly ones as well. Pretty much like life really. In fact some of the owners would have great difficulty passing these tests, but that's another story.

He is tested on two counts, morphology and character. The judge for morphology (OK, I'll put you out of you misery, morphology is the form and structure of the dog) is none other than the President of the club. He passes with an excellent which we sort of guessed anyway.

Now if he is going to fail, it will be on character. He is still only 14 months old and still acts at times like a big daft dog. He is very effusive when he first meets people, and can be a bit of a handful at times. When you look at him you would think big, mature, scary dog but at 40 kilos he is nothing more than a big, heavy, very strong scatter brain who wants to sit on your lap or your head. Whichever is the most fun!

The test involves his general friendliness, his ability not to overeact when he hears a pistol shot (yes that's what they do) and how he reacts when attacked with a weapon. With regards the pistol shot, I suspect that we might be in trouble. I say this because one time when sitting in the car, in the footwell next to me, he jumped clean out and straight onto my lap, just because I opened his window for a bit of fresh air. Cool he is not!

Well blow me down, but he passes all this with flying colours. They had to redo the pistol shot bit because I jumped out of my skin and spooked the dog but notwithstanding that, he passed.

We now have a dog rated at Cotation 2, so if you want to buy a highly rated Beauceron, there is one I can recommend.