1st AWC quali - Warsaw

First of our qualis is behind us. We have only two weekends this year, which adds some more preassure... the first weekend was not very succesful for most of us, apart from Evo, who did great with three clean runs and one run with a refusal. This gives him enough points already to qualify, so he has pretty much secured his spot already. The rest of us still need to fight for it though. Brava is in really strange pre-heat mood, she really wasn't herself this weekend and did really stupid things like missing obstacles for no apparent reason etc. So two dis, one clean run and one really nice run with a refusal on the LAST jump which somehow seems to be our fate on Alice Bohacova's courses... some sort of Alice curse (but we're going to run some more of her courses soon, so I will fight and win with this eventually!). I'm really happy with Brego though. I realise he's not running his full speed yet and even not as fast as in training, but he really listens well and is pretty consistent with contact, weaves etc. I'm pretty once he gets more muscles and more confidence he will be even faster. He had another two clean runs in LA2, both on the podium, so he is officially LA3 now :) and that just four months since he started competing :)). Flaszek was just the best, actually finishing all his runs and he would be first in agility and jumping combined on Friday. He didn't even noticed when there was a football match on the next field with crackers banging ;). 

The place, organization and prizes were really good :) There was an adjoining park and I really appreciate it when I can go for a normal walk with my dogs between their runs. I think it's really like the most important thing we can do for their physical health but also I feel it helps them mentally to chill out in between the runs. 

The atmosphere was also pretty good apart from the fact that some people were pretty depressed about not doing as well as they hoped... at some point we had several motivational talks with some handlers willing to quit from the next qualis and one really weird conversation when someone told us we're lucky some other (quite good actually, but no luck in this competition) handler was not going to the second quali... and we were like "WTF, why would we be happy about it? First of all, there are four places on the team and we want the best possible dogs on the team. Secondly, the better competitors there are the better your runs are, as you need to really try to get an advantage". 

And well, what we (me in particular) need to do now is to keep positive attitude and try our best in our second quali which would be in the end of May. 

Below you'll find some of our videos:

The curse of the last jump...

And Evo's winning run :)

Brego's clean jumping open and exam in LA2:

And finally our brave Flaszek <3