Extreme Braveheart
We spent wonderful time in Denmark and Sweden, with a quick but equally nice stop in Berlin :). I'm really in love in Scandinavia and my retirement dream is to spend winters in Slovenia and summers in Sweden or Norway :). Anyway, it started with an invitation for me to have a lecture on running contacts during Guld Agility competition in Kalmar. That was a fantastic opportunity, so of course I gladly accepted and then I got some invitations for seminars on the way. We started our trip with visiting Sylvia and Frank in Berlin, where we spent a lovely evening with a bit of agility traning and pizza after. It was good to see that Evo and Brava's dad Sky is doing great at over 10 years old and young Impi improving so much :).
The next day we headed to Denmark to Kolding, where I had seminar during the weekend. The place was awesome with lots of space for walks, great club house where we had meals and talks and of course nice agility field :). The great part was that there were almost only Pyrsheps on the seminar (plus a really fast mudi and two bc's) and "our kids" (that is BB, Brava's daughter and Avram, Evo's son) amongst them. BB is really great, looks a bit like Kaira in miniature, is very very energetic and lively, incredibly cute and getting better and better in agility as well :). I was happy to see her obstacle focus improving a lot during a couple of last months and boy, she is fast <3. Avram is at the moment experiencing troubled teenage years, so he is quite a naughty boy - but has lots of drive and is afraid of nothing, so he will be ok in a year or two ;). On Saturday evening Daniel with family and Neo paid us a visit so I had a chance to see another Brava's baby. I like Neo so much - he is great with the kids, has tons of drive and will to please at the same time, really cool dog.
Some pictures from Kolding:
From Denmark we headed to Sweden to beautiful Oland, where I had another pyrshep seminar - great occasion to meet some FB friends in real life :). Again - some absolutely lovely dogs, delicious food and great atmoshere. Just after we arrived we had a little adventure ;) - we had lunch and then I headed to the course, but Brego didn't follow me. I was surprised since normally he is never far from my side, so I started calling him and he didn't come. I thought maybe he went to the bathroom with me and then I shut him there, but no... I was calling and then I heard him barking somewhere... Turned out he was under the terrace - no idea how he got there, because he had to crawl under whole house to get there. We think maybe some bits of food fell there. Anyway, he couldn't get out, so Roman had to destroy a perfectly good terrace a bit. Brego jumped out like a jack in the box and was really happy :D. Silly boy :).
And all the pyrsheps from the seminar :).
After the seminar, we had 1,5 free days and thanks to courtesy of the club that hosted us, we could spent it on beautiful Oland. We found just a perfect place: a sandy beach for dogs with crystal clear water (The Baltic Sea! Really!), where we all (but especially Flaszek and Brego) had a great time swimming. I actually managed to get sun burnt in Sweden, he he.
Then it was time for Guld Agility. We arrived in Kalmar on Wednesday, set up our trailer at the campsite in the little island and then strolled to the stadium where the competition was going to be. There were lots of people there, we inspected all 9 (sic!) rings and then thought: "Let's set up a tent here", so I sat on the grass and waited while Roman went for the tent and the crates. Suddenly I realized that the atmosphere was getting somehow thick around me and I couldn't get why people are looking a bit hostile at me. So I asked somebody and it turned out that it is not allowed to set the tents before 5 pm (that was in the info in Swedish that we got for our e-mails... we were promised the English version but never got it, so we had no clue, hahaha) and before that you're not allowed in the tent area either, so everybody was standing a couple of meters further and staring in the chosen patch of grass. And I sat on the part that someone was staring at for an hour or so :). I apoligized for not knowing local customs :D and then we learn that you could actually set a tent a bit further away,, but under the trees in the shadow, so we did that and later watched great battle for tent space :D. It was really sort of weird and funny.
Anyone, the lack of info in English was symptomatic and the organizers also had some problems with the server, so we only found the starting lists and numbers in the morning of each day. Some of the obstacles were also not nice, like really wobbly A-frames (seriously, under large dogs it looked almost like the video with the goats), but otherwise I really enjoyed the competition. The organizers invited awesome judges, like Gabi Steppan, Sascha Grunder, Kees Stoel, Veronika Herendy, Zeljko Gora and Stefanie Semkat (I didn't know her before, but really enjoyed her courses), so the courses were in general really challenging yet fluent. The stadium was just by the water, so even though it was quite hot, we could always let the dogs swim before and after runs. Flaszek really loved it and he was faster than ever, so Roman sometimes couldn't catch up with him and they were eliminated like that in at least two runs, LOL. Brego was doing great - we had one fantastic run with rc (that was kinda funny, since when I was at the startline, the speaker said something like "And this is Olga Kwiecień, who is having a lecture on running contact on Friday which you are all welcome to attend"... no pressure, LOL), one great run with 2o2o and one run with 3rd time out of almost 200 LA3 dog (yesssss! my little figher <3), unfortunetely he missed the dw contact in this one. He also had really nice jumping run and in his clean runs was always placed within the best 10% of competitors so I'm really pleased with him. Brava and Evo had lots of great medium dogs to compete with, so it was not easy to get on the podium :) However, both of them managed to do it and both qualified to the final on Sunday (only top 3 dogs from each run qualified, and since there were more than 150 medium dogs in A3 class that was not so easy...). The final was a bit funny - first 19 dogs run agility course and 6 best qualified for semifinal, which was also agility run. From this run only 2 passed to jumping final.
Before the final run we had another J3 run in which both Evo and Brava seemed to be really tired, Brava was really slow in the weave poles and I was even afraid she would pop out. She was clean but it was not our best run, so my plan for the final was to push her a bit more, be always in front and cheer a lot. Well, I learnt my lesson - NEVER ASSUME YOUR DOG WILL BE SLOWER THAN NORMALLY :P. I was trying to help her with the weaves so I messed it up and then of course she was not slow, but her normal crazy self, so she got so much in front on me that she got eliminated by taking the jump after the dogwalk instead of turning (but I think my timing was lame there). Oh well. Evo also run great and then was 3rd in the next agility run, so he almost made it to the final final... Anyway, we're both really proud of all our dogs, they did great and we had lots of fun. Since we were running with 4 dogs on like 6 different rings, we don't have many videos, but here are some of them:
Brava jumping 3 (course by Gabi Steppan)
After the final it became really hot, so we decided to skip the rest of the runs for that day and went to the sea side again :). And then we did a bit of sightseeing in beautiful Kalmar.
After that it was just vacation - Anne-Mette and Daniel invited us to stay at their place for a couple of days and we just enjoyed walks in the forest, barbecue and piwo as well as visits to Tivoli and Legoland :). Lisbeth and BB also joined us for one evening, so we chatted long in the night. I am truly happy about "my" first puppies, they grew out to be fantastic dogs. When making a litter I wanted dogs that would also be great family dogs, reasonably easy to live with (of course bearing in mind that they are particularly active and require lots of physical and mental activity) apart from having good potential for sports - and I'm really happy to see that they are like that, enjoying really special bond with their owners and families :).
Many many thanks to everybody who gave us their hospitality and company - Sylvia Fahsel and Frank Burkhardt, Lisbeth Jensen, Anne-Mette Klink Christoffersen and Daniel Elling Eichler, Anna-Lena Nilson, Birgitta Hermansson, Veronika Thoresson, Sanna Karlsson and other Guld Agility organizers and of course all the participants of my seminars as well.