Vilhelmsborg & Gåsahoppet in Sweden

Vilhelmsborg

Two weeks ago I was at a DCH agility competition. I usually only sign up for competitions in the Danish Kennel Club auspices but this competition was the first qualifying event for the selection of the team to EO. I had not been well the week prior to the competition and I really felt like staying at home. Saturday my head felt like it was a frozen snotty brain and I had a headache. My timing on the courses was indeed bad and I wasn’t inspired at all by the courses as they were not at all challenging 🙁 Well, I know I should disregard this and focus on my handling.. but I actually thought the J3 course was the J1, which I was to run with Vini. The last run of the day was A3 and this was a fine challenging course – and here Sookie had a great run and really great running contacts 😀

On Sunday I was feeling better and when seeing the J-Open class I was prepared for another non-challenging course (fyi, it was won in just 22 seconds). One bar down but an okay run – then running by the finish line I stumbled over a bar from a horse jump – and sprained my ankle 🙁 No more runs this day and leaving with a heavily swollen ankle – not happy 🙁

In retrospect, I should have stayed home and I don’t think I will sign up for a DCH competition again – it’s too boring..

Gåsahoppet in Sweden

Nils Holgersson

Nils Holgersson

I have been looking so much forward to this competition at the Nils Holgersson arena (always fun when there is a story behind the name :-))
I was hoping my ankle would be much better so I could run at this competition. As I wasn’t sure I asked my friend Channie to run with Sookie – and they did really well 🙂 Sookie is not easy to run with – she is a speedy little dog who needs to know well in advance where she is to go next (otherwise she makes her own course ;-)). Courses were really fun and challenging – there were four judges: two Swedish, a Slovenian and a Croatian – wherefore courses were different from what we in Denmark is used to.

I taped my ankle and tried running with Sookie myself. I could run but not at all with the same speed as usual – not the best basis as Sookie thought she should compensate for my lack of speed by running even faster 😉 We did okay, at the times where I couldn’t run I changed the course so Sookie didn’t notice – that of course ended in a numerous number of eliminations but Sookie was happy 😀 Vini ran the Open classes and she did well. She was at times barking at me as she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t running like I used to.

But one thing that was really bad was that I almost in every run forget to say the “weave” command – no idea why. And that made the dogs unsure whether to weave or not.

I will certainly participate in next years competition as it was a really great competition – everything was just great: turf (artificial grass), rubberized contacts, challenging courses, nice officials and great surroundings for walking our dogs.

Only thing counting down was that Vini fell through the ice on the pond and was still a bit wet when we arrived home. When I was unpacking Vini tiptoed upstairs and I found this bog-smelling wet dog sleeping in my bed 😉