Today is the day almost everybody I know on FB writes "back from B.A.C.K." posts so I'm gonna join the crowd for once ;).
There is lots of things I loved about this competition, which I will list below, but I'm pretty sure from now on if I ever have agility nightmares it will be about 5 minutes long coursewalkings with yellow numbers on white background, standing on a yellowish sand in dimly lit hall at 8 o'clock in the morning.
I mean, seriously. 5 out of my 6 runs with Brego were on the ring with those numbers, 3 were early in the morning, I was in the first coursewalking group with no chance to watch the judge measuring the course or others coursewalk first and I lost like 2 minutes each time just trying to locate the numbers. I'm normally quite good at coursewalking, but this time it really felt as I had no time to think and test different solutions and then I was running as no. 9 which also gave me no time to watch the others and well, I made some stupid handling choices as a result, so I had just one clean run with Brego out of six, which is kinda disappointing, since he was awesome as usual.
The things I loved though:
- the venue, as always, particularly because I could spend hours walking my dogs (yes, still obsessed with #longwalkshappydogs idea). I walked like 50 km in three days and even took some photos,
- some of the courses, which gave me lots of training ideas and made me super happy about our choice of judges for Silesian Open ;),
- salmiac vodka from Finland,
- salmiac vodka from Finland,
- watching some great runs from others,
- meeting friends with special mention to watching the finals with Carmen and Laura (you were great company :D),
- most of my runs, hahaha. Results wise it's not so impressive, since I didn't even qualify to the finals (combination of bad luck when Mojo knocked the wall in otherwise awesome agility run and stupid handler in jumping where I got totally lost on the course), but in general I'm super happy with my dogs and their skills (might consider introducing another verbal for the wall though, since knocking it seems to happen to Mojo now and then and we don't really train it often enough),
- Mojo won jumping 3 on Friday, getting us pretty cool prize, that is an sport dog evaluation with Dogs4Motion. I decided to take Pucek instead, since a/ Mojo tends to get really stressed by things like that, b/ I was worrying about Pucek's coordination and structure a bit (it got much better since he is with us, but I still wanted some tips). It was really good and thorough and actually seems like everything is fine and we're on right track with the things I've been doing with him, but still got some more exercises to work on.
- Mojo won jumping 3 on Friday, getting us pretty cool prize, that is an sport dog evaluation with Dogs4Motion. I decided to take Pucek instead, since a/ Mojo tends to get really stressed by things like that, b/ I was worrying about Pucek's coordination and structure a bit (it got much better since he is with us, but I still wanted some tips). It was really good and thorough and actually seems like everything is fine and we're on right track with the things I've been doing with him, but still got some more exercises to work on.
- the "sometimes you win, sometimes you learn" aspect of the competition. This time it was more about learning than winning, but that usually pushes me to do better, so let it be :D.
Another thing that I didn't like so much and you might hate me for that, was the fact that children automatically qualify to the final... First of all, with some notable exceptions, I'm not particularly fond of very small children (I don't mean teenagers) competing in agility in the first place (long story, but MOST of them really can't handle properly and then get frustrated about losing pretty easily and then get angry at the dog etc.). Secondly, I really think - again with some notable exceptions, as Sun Zenner's run in the final was amazing and really gave me goosebumps - that MOST children are not ready to handle the attention and the pressure connected with running the finals and generally are not even ready to run at this level (I mean, if they were, they could just qualify according to the same rules as everybody else). So in the end we watched some performances... well, that I'd rather not watch, particularly in the finals. I don't think it's fair for both the dogs and the children and maybe it would be better idea to just give them special prize for their other runs to encourage them if you want to do so.
Anyway, mostly I'm full of plans and ideas and that's a good thing in the beginning of the year I guess.
Anyway, mostly I'm full of plans and ideas and that's a good thing in the beginning of the year I guess.
