It’s been a while since my last post but apparently time flies.
For a couple of weeks ago I went to Slovenia to attend Silvia Trkman’s Lolabuland Camp. I went to the camp last year and I learned so much – and therefore I had great expectations to this camp – and I didn’t get disappointed as all expectations were met 🙂
This year the focus was only on handling. We were 12 people from various countries – Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Germany, Denmark (me) and AUSTRALIA!! It was just so great to meet all these agility freaks from around the world – and I didn’t feel so crazy anymore driving 1500 km to join a camp when Camilla and Wendy came all the way from Australia 😉
Participants at the Lolabuland Camp - photo by Maja Rokavec
I was running Sookie for the entire week. Vini had two sessions – and she did very well.. she wasn’t as focused the first time (she was a bit tired and wanted to roll on some dead worms – that was more appealing than doing agility ;-)). Second time she was very focused and performed very well – actually Vini did so well that Silvia thought it was time for new challenges 😀 She has only learned to do wraps around the wings and run through tunnels but yet she can do some advanced courses 🙂 Amazing how focusing on wraps can make such a difference compared to sending the dogs forward through wings to a placed toy 😮
I wanted to compile a video of Sookie running the courses but I had placed the videocamera on a tripod and zoomed out to view the entire course – and then Sookie looks like a little ant running on a micro course and it’s hard to see what we are doing when video is decreased to size required for uploading to youtube.
It took a few sessions before I got used to Sookie’s speed – she is running way faster on turf compared to the “soil” in the riding hall. Sookie did really well – but yet some areas need to improve. The courses were very different from those we are introduced to here in Denmark and I indeed found some gaps in our training…
Silvia always makes different courses on the same setup of obstacles. Reason being that the dog need to follow the handler’s signals/commands and not be thinking: “ahh, I know this part, I’ve done it several times before” and hereby ignoring the handler 🙂 I usually train various courses on the same setup so that wasn’t my “challenge” – it was getting Sookie to turn tight and pass by obstacles. Especially the latter resulted in some off courses 😉
It’s great being at a camp and get so much valuable feedback. Even though I’ve been doing agility for many years now I can still learn a lot more. Especially I like the inputs on how to prepare a dog/puppy for agility and all the trouble shooting parts. Yes, I plan to go to the camp next year as well 😀
Vini - photo: Gudrun Boey
Sookie - photo: Maja Rokavec
Sookie - photo: Maja Rokavec
Sookie - photo: Maja Rokavec
Sookie - photo: Maja Rokavec
Sookie - photo: Maja Rokavec
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