Extreme Braveheart: EO 2019

Ok, so a year has passed since my last post 😮. Time sure flies, lots of things have changed, including the fact that all of a sudden we have a new dog - Evo's son and brother of Zelda. His name is Puck, which we changed to Pucek somehow and he's awesome and I'll try to write more about him soon.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts after EO 2019.

Well, one thing is obvious and lots of people have said it already - something has to change. EO has become an extreme competition for everybody involved and as much as I love big events (I do), I think we are dangerously close to risking people and dogs' lives with the current formula of EO. Noone can deny the climate change anymore, end of July is extremely hot and dry year after year after year, and this time it was over 40C during day and over 30C during the night. It was just horrible - even though the organisers were AWESOME and changed the schedule completely to make it safer, it was still too hot to sleep, rest, walk or do anything. Fortunately we were able to go to the lake on Friday afternoon, which I think allowed us to survive at all. I can imagine how horrible it must be also for the judges / helpers and no wonder finding good judges for this event becomes more and more difficult as it must be a challenge to get anyone in their right mind to agree to this.

So first of all I think EO's date has to change - my idea would be end of August, so at least the nights should be cooler, people would still have holidays and it wouldn't interfere with qualis everywhere or AWC.

Secondly, I tend to agree that maybe it should be a bit smaller.... maybe quit the team part (ok, this is a bit of bias on my part and I know lots of people would disagree, but I'm not really fond of the team final formula with huge ring and four dogs running four different courses on this crazy layout... it's super difficult to follow for once and perhaps also not the best way to prepare mentally and physically for the run) or maybe limit it to 24 teams per country... but an event lasting 5 days, if you include the vet control and training, is really taking the toll on everybody, in financial, physical and mental aspect.

And actually one good change could be the formula of trainings. Normally it's some alloted number of minutes per country and even though there was always enough time, I've always hated it. It was always really hectic, really loud and really nervous. If you had more than one dog it got ever crazier and it was almost impossible to warm up, reward and cool down properly (which we REALLY should be doing). This year they just decided to open the training rings from 5am till 11am (which was later changed to 10am since it was already quite hot). Everybody could come whenever they wanted and have one go at the training course, although the helpers were nice enough to let you correct the mistake or repeat one obstacle as long as you didn't drill it over and over. For me it was perfect - I came with Brava first, later I could cool her down, walk her, and then I took Mojo. It was calmer, more relaxed, just freaking better in every way and I think pretty much everybody who wanted, had a go and it lasted much shorter also.

I know introducing those changes must take a while, but it would be really great if the FCI dealt with that rather than insisting on judges using the flat tunnel or forbidding the use of safe bar for the double jump. And I really hope it happens before we have some fatality.

Otherwise, well. As I mentioned before, the organising crew was SUPERB. Really friendly, really helpful, really going out of their way to make everybody safe in the extreme heat and working really hard. Generally the progress of the competition was very smooth, some things of course were difficult because of the last of the moment changes in schedule, but all in all I think they did a great job.

I was quite disappointed with most of the courses, especially the final courses, which IMHO were either stupid (like the contact approaches in the small individual final or the turn on the spread jump) or really boring (both the medium and large final courses). There was also a fair amount of really weird judging decisions, but let's just blame it on the weather. It must be extremely hard to stay focused for so many hours, with so many dogs on the same setup, till midnight one day and from the crack of dawn on the other, in burning heat.

The surface was simply not maintained properly, the sand was too soft and too deep in places, most dogs, especially the smaller ones, were struggling to accellerate and even to take off appropriately. Mojo felt really slow and I still think she was actually at advantage being on the large end of small category and super muscled mini pitbull. There was also huge difference in surface between the first dogs to run the course and the last ones...

The facilities, food etc were more than ok :) (like really, for once there was enough showers!!!).

And when it comes to our dogs... well, I'm impressed and grateful they agreed to run in those conditions, moreover, they did it with all their usual enthusiasm and really really tried as hard as they could. We have the greatest dogs on the planet, I'm super proud of them and of our runs, even the ones with mistakes. Brava finished all courses - three clean, one with weave entry mistake and the final run with a bar - she managed to qualify for the final even, which I think at her age, after a long break and among such awesome competition is a real achievement. I'm really really grateful I could run the EO final with her one last time, it felt really special. I realised when walking to the start that she has been at EO EIGHT times, and seven times she got into the final, and two times she was on the podium... it's just an incredible, one in a billion dog and I feel so privileged to have her as my teammate 💚💙❤️💛💜🧡🖤.

Mojo was 6th in agility individual small, qualifying to the final and had 5th time there (and we lost TONS of time because of my handling mistake after the weaves, so it could have been even better) - she was amazing and I found the right amount of crazy in two of our best runs (individual agility and final).

Brego, Evo and Zelda were running with Roman - for Brego it was not the right kind of surface really, but they had some great runs, Evo decided he's too old to bother with contacts anymore (and when he jumps them, he does it with style), but otherwise was crazy, fast and loud as in good old times. Zelda is waiting for imaginary puppies and also we didn't exactly do her a favour when we decided to spend last couple of weeks before EO in Scandinavia with temperatures around 18C, she doesn't cope too well with the heat at best of times and now it was even more difficult for her. She still was quite ok for her first EO and we're are looking forward to the future :).

Some videos of Brava:

Jumping individual: