#started thinking about this because of the uti poll

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

the gaang, ranked in order of who got the best sex ed to the worst

1. katara. kanna taught her how to deliver a baby and also where babies come from and just generally gave her a thorough education. and if that wasn't enough, she then got trained as a healer. katara could teach sex ed, and she probably does.

2. suki. raised by a bunch of queer women on Bisexual Woman Island. she knows a Lot

3. aang. was taught the basics by the monks as a natural part of life, but monks don't have sex and he was 12 so he probably didn't get the full education

4. sokka. technically got the same level of education as katara but wasn't really paying attention bc he was still in his sexist phase. still knows WAY more than -

5. zuko. iroh tried to teach him but it was couched in metaphor and heteronormative so zuko barely understood it and wouldn't have found it useful even if he had. he knows some stuff from overhearing the sailors on his ship but that's not exactly an education. he knows to use a condom at the very most

6. toph. you KNOW the beifongs were like "our daughter is too delicate and fragile to learn about such things!" like zuko, toph probably overheard stuff (at earth rumble) but she's younger than him so she's had less time to learn. she's lucky she has katara and suki to be her older sisters. (i guess technically that means toph gets great sex ed but you know what i mean. before joining the gaang she had NOTHING)

[doberbutts]

Hi! Very sorry about the vague bitesports ask - I wasn’t actually aware that there were multiple types!

Could you start by explaining a bit more about what you and Fenris do for mondioring?

Oh, sure, but I think first you should acquaint yourself with the rulebook: https://www.fci.be/medias/UTI-REG-MON-en-4624.pdf

(This is a PDF file, it will download, that is intentional and not a virus I promise, I have literally this exact file from this exact link saved on both my phone and my laptop)

Your original questions were:

What is the overall goal of the sport/what is the dog specifically being trained to do? Are there competitions, and if so, how are they judged?

In regards to mondioring, mondioring is a competitive protection dog sport based off of french ring, which was based off of belgian ring, which was based off of the belgian border patrol program. However mondioring itself was always intended to be a sport, not a military or police program or something to determine breed-worthiness. It was developed as a fun handler's challenge instead of anything else.

As a side note, I think this is why mondio tends to have the most relaxed atmosphere as well as tends to draw the least amount of really intensely bigoted people of all the bitesports. I'm not saying they don't exist in mondio, in fact I can name a few names right now that are rather notorious for it. But it's very unlike IGP (the most popular bitesport within the US) where you can't go a week without tripping over a nazi, a sexual predator, or a domestic abuser... occasionally all of them in the same person... being outed and then immediately defended by the wider sport-going population. I also find it tends to be more friendly to women, racial minorities, disability, and marginalized genders and sexualities- which was reflected in a recent poll done by the USMRA that stated that while it's mostly half and half, it's technically women-led in the US with 51.6% of competitors identifying as women and the rest identifying as men.

(Which either means there was no nonbinary option on the poll or what nonbinary people took the poll were not comfortable identifying as such, which tbh is fair, bc as said bitesports tend to be a hellscape for anyone who's not cishet white and abled- I know I have two nb ppl in my club but they also id as nb women so that may also skew results if not polled correctly)

The goal of mondio is, put simply, good and correct work in increasingly challenging and ever-changing environments. Mondio differs from other sports because each trial is different. They are themed and each theme can completely change the picture. Unlike in sports like agility, or even sports like IGP and french ring, where the jumps always look roughly the same and the retrieves are always dumbbells and there's always a pause table and it's a specific pattern that maybe the individual method of going about the pattern changes from field to field, the total picture always looks roughly the same to the dog... in mondio, the exercises are always the same in the vaguest sense but the means of going about them are different.

For instance, we just had USMRA nationals, which was a pirates theme. That means that the jumps looked like pieces of ships sticking out of "water" (grass), the distractions to see if the dog would break its stay included the decoys having a sword fight, cannons and splashes of water went off constantly, the retrieves were things like toy treasure chests, glass bottles with paper inside, swords, and gold coins... The work that the dog has to do remains the same- you must stay, you must retrieve, you must jump, you must bite- but this becomes more a test of how well your dog has generalized these behaviors and how strong your dog's nerve are environmentally than of precision or perfection.

That is also why you can still place on the winner's podium even if you don't qualify on a passing score. This is recognized to be difficult, so those who don't DQ are still praised for trying. Failure has the attitude of "you gave it your best! now you know what to work on for your next try!"

It also means the judge is looking more for overall correctness rather than dinging you for every possible infraction (usually)

Finally, having done both IGP (with Creed) and mondio (with Creed and with Fenris), I'd say that mondio is less mentally stressful on the dog when it comes to protection itself. There is less focus on defense and aggression and more focus on prey and play. While some exists (face attack, defense of handler), the best way I've ever heard it put is that mondio is much more of a conversation between the decoy and the dog where they are sparring partners instead of mortal enemies.

Creed genuinely wanted to hurt the decoys who worked him, and got angry at the thought of being held back from doing so, and technically that is very correct for a doberman to displace such defensiveness and anger in their protection. Fenris does want to keep biting the decoy, but it is more because he finds this to be a very fun and deeply pleasurable thing to do rather than any feelings of actually wanting to cause harm. I also have been very careful not to work him on decoys that will bring this out of him, even though I do think it is correct for the breed to be like that, because his breeder assures me that when the time is right he will with the defense he needs. I have no need for a civil dog, and what little protection in my day-to-day I've required he's more than satisfied, so to me as long as he passes his temperament tests as an adult and is competitive in sport, I don't really need him to be another Creed.