First of
all, I think there should be new FCI rule that EO has to be organized next to a
swimming pool 馃槉. Actually the whole place in Salice
Terme was perfect: the rings were even and with good grass, there were lots of
trees around them, so one could wait in shadow for their turn, there was a
small river nearby to cool the dogs – and the swimming pool for humans as well,
and then lots of restaurants nearby to hang out in the evenings. My next
request would be that whenever there is some big agility event, the Italians
should take care of the food and especially bring the lemon ice cream.
The
swimming pool and the food were sort of enough to make this EO good, even
though of course there were some organizational fuck-ups, like for instance
initially they didn’t think it would be necessary to provide any toilets for
the campers’ camp (they said it’s
campers… so people have it… but didn’t think that a/ even if you do have a
toilet in your camper, you still need to empty is somewhere b/ most people are
really not so keen on using them in above 30 degrees temperatures, considering
they are sleeping right next to it in a space of a few square meters).
Eventually we got some portable toilets, but then no one thought it was necessary to
clean them regularly :P so they became UNUSABLE pretty soon. The other sanitary
facilities were not much better I would say…
There were
some problems which occur in pretty much every EO I’ve ever attended like some
mistakes in the results, problems with changing your running order if you ran
with more than one dog and so on, but nothing really serious, so I actually
think contrary to what lots of people feared, the organizers did a great job
(although after France last year pretty much everything would have been better
:P). I also really liked the courses and mostly the judging as well. And the
speaker was the best ever, I don’t think I will ever be able to get rid of my
new Italian accent when English speaking (Get out of the ringE, pleaSE!).
I’m pretty
happy with my runs, even though Brava seemed to have a bit of bad luck with an
odd knocked bar and two really weird refusals. We managed to qualify for both
team and individual finals (from 5th place in jumping, so pretty
cool). Brego was also really good, this time his handler was not and twice I
forgot to use any command, causing us elimination. I’m really proud of Brava’s
team final run and quite happy with myself for it. The team finals look a bit
overbearing and I had my moment of panic about whether I would be able to even
remember the sequence among so many obstacles and for a moment doubted if I can
leave Brava at the startline when the other dog would be running, but then I realized,
well, it’s actually no different than any other run, except the timing is a bit
more tight (you need to start immediately after the previous dog finishes and
the judge whistles, because the time is still going). So I just led out as I
would do in any other run and waited patiently for the judge to whistle,
everything worked perfectly and I think it was actually my best run in this EO.
I’m not a big fun of the team finals formula, but it was sure fun to run it for
the first time ever – maybe we’ll do it better as a team next time, if we ever
get the chance.
In the
individual medium final Brava was the only dog that turned so tightly on the
jump number 3 that she missed the long jump after, so we got a refusal and lost
tons of time, then managed to somehow continue with pretty decent second part
of the course. But I had another reason for joy this year as Zookie and Laura
finished third place, winning another podium in EO final year after year. They are a
great team and Zookie is maturing and getting faster and more consistent (she also won
agility team run in the individual ranking and won a medal in individual
jumping) – I’m really proud of them <3.
Roman and
Evo had three clean runs and pretty decent times, so it looks like Evo is
getting back in shape and actually runs better and better on every competition.
Of course,
meeting lots of friends from different countries is another awesome thing about
EO and it was great to see our friends from Norway, Spain, Luxembourg, Austria,
Great Britain and Slovenia and spend some time with them. We’re on our way for
short vacation in Slovenia and then B.A.S.E.
– pyrshep competition in Germany, where we’ll meet some more of the best
people in the world.
Speaking of
which – I used to think about agility people as some sort of family – of course
not everybody loves everybody, but so far, agility competitions, even the huge
ones, were really safe and it was absolutely customary that people left their
possessions pretty much anywhere, cars were left open, dogs in crates
unattended and so on. Well, that weekend at least two cars were broken into and
one of Polish competitors was robbed, losing a backpack containing her wallet,
mobile phone, all the documents, car keys, dog’s passports… Can you imagine
being left in a foreign country without anything, without an option to go home
with your car (the other set of keys was left at closed home back in Poland, so
someone would have to break into it to get them and then ship it to Italy)? It
turned out someone was trying to withdraw the money from the credit card the
very same evening… Fortunately the next day at least the backpack with car keys
and dog’s documents was returned, which solved the biggest problem, but she
still needs to go to the embassy to get some kinds of temporary documents and
so on. That is just such a mean and evil thing to do to somebody and we suspect
it was not an entirely random crime, but that it was actually one of the “dog
people” that did it (especially that the dog’s documents were returned) and
that makes me so sad, like it’s some kind of end of an era…
And another
not so pleasant thing, I don’t really even know how to tackle it properly… and
of course it’s my subjective feeling, but it’s also something that didn’t start
of this EO, but much earlier.
I watched
Werner Goltz congratulating Laura Reinhalter, who “pushed him out of the podium”
as he was third and ended on fourth place after her run and I saw that he was
genuinely happy for her success and for the best teams to win and I thought
that was fantastic and this is the true sportsmanship and something we should
look up to. But I missed a little bit of that in our Polish team. We had some
successes this year – for the first time ever we qualified for the team finals
in all three height categories (we didn’t do particularly well in either of
them, but I really think the team final is such a peculiar run that it’s kinda
difficult to rock it the first time you do it), we had three medium dogs in the
individual finals (Iwona Kalisz and Pepe qualified from 13th place in agility
run, Magda Doma艅ska with Mora from 10th place in jumping and me with Brava
from the 5th) and we had “best of the country” dogs in small (Basia
Cz艂onkowska with 艁ata) and large (Magda Zi贸艂kowska with Mawr) categories that
both ran very nice clean runs in the finals (and Magda ended up on 10th place in large, which I think is awesome result). So I would say there was something
to celebrate and to be proud of. Yes, we did have really good dogs especially
in large category that didn’t qualify for the finals and I can understand the
disappointment of knowing you have a great dog and than not getting a chance to
fight for the highest podium, but still… It’s not even sometimes you win,
sometimes you learn, it’s just sometimes you don’t win and that’s it, we all
have bad days, bad runs or sometimes a bit of bad luck. At the same time
someone else might be having a run of their life, that bit of luck in just the
ideal moment, and we should be there to celebrate it with them and congratulate
them. I don’t think we had a team at this EO, I think we had a bunch of
individuals with their own plans and agendas. We weren't there for each other. Some of us didn't even come for the closing ceremony and I don't mean the people who actually turned up and then had to run save their tents / campers as the storm was coming. Something is not right and I think we should all work to change it.
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