Ok, a little change for my dear readers. The English version on my blog will be continued HERE. In the upper bar you have menu with categories, choose English. 

Last qualification for Agility World Championship 2011 is over. It took place in Chorzów, in a beautiful park - really perfect place. The weather was nice, the company was excellent, we had lots of spectators, which is also very good, the atmosphere was great and despite the fact that in was a VERY IMPORTANT COMPETITION it was quite relaxed in a positive sense. All in all, we really had a great time.

As due to family reasons I was not able to participate in our second qualification in Łódź, I didn't count on much. But it so happened that actually I still had a chance.

Saturday started well, I had clean agility open and jumping open with both Sunday and Brava, who had best times in both of them. Eri really tried hard and did her best, but had some nasty knocked bars, I think because of my handling, I somehow stood in her way more than once. She was 3rd in jumping open though.

Brava's runs:

Eri open jumping:

Sunday started with open jumping, which had a long straigh line and then a hurdle jumped from the wrong side. Going to the start with Sunday I still had no clear idea how I was going to handle that so I told her she needed to save my ass, and she did:

Then at least two people told me I should do a blind cross before the long jump, but since they were both men measuring 1,9 or something with looong legs, it was easy for them to say it ;). That was not typical of me, but I decided I can't possibly get there on time and tried to run it same way as I had done with Sunday. Well, I was a bit late and she jumped the hurdle from the wrong side. Very pretty disqualification :). With Eri I had a dis somewhere earlier (my handling mistake) so I decided to give this blind cross a try and actually it worked pretty well, so I guess I should have done it with Brava too. 

In open agility I had quite a nice run with Eri apart from the fact that I was late with one command and she clearly assumed we're going toward the finish line and then wanted to go for her ball that was outside the ring. I called her back, but it cost us time. With Brava I picked the safer option and stopped her on the contact and we had a clean run!

With Sunday the very beginning was a bit rough, because she headed for the weave poles even more than Brava. I called her back, but it the line was crappy. And then I could just see she's not going to stop at the contact, so I started to slow down to slow her down and then I was out of position for the next combination (AND she didn't stop on the contact). So she got eliminated. And at this point I knew she didn't qualify for team for AWC...

I hoped perhaps she qualified for individual, but also not, because some pyrsheps ;) set really high time standards and she didn't have enought points for time.

BUT Brava fullfills the criteria for qualifying for individual runs! Yippe!

There was also another great thing at this competition. Vigo competed with my friend Katka and they both did a great job together :). They won MA1 runs with clean score so 1st leg towards A2! Way to go :). 

Ok, so our frisbee debut is behind us. It was pretty good actually, despite my shortcomings. Eri's freestyle was 4th in starters and she got special prize for best debut :). Brava's freestyle was 15th because of poor execution, which was obviously my fault. Moreover, I really sucked in her toss and fetch so we probably got even lower in classification. Despite that, we had great fun and we made good impression on judges and spectators. The girls were motivated and fast so all in all I'm really happy with them. 

I've got videos and some beautiful photos - enjoy!

28th of May we (Eri, Brava and I) make our debut in frisbee competition. So we practice (well, probably I should have started more like 6 months ago not 3 weeks..., especially that I don't want to tire my dogs out). I've discovered that learning and executing one freestyle routine absolutely erases any clues about the other routine whatsoever. I really do hope that I manage to overcome that before Saturday :). Remembering agility courses is piece of cake compared to that. Also, practicing your freestyle routine without a dog looks even more stupid than walking the course ;). 

Apart from that Vigo is getting ready for his agility debut with other handler. My friend needs a dog to compete with and I have troubles controlling my anxiety when running with Vigo, so we decided to give it a shot. First training was so promising that she entered him into competition. Second training was a bit worse, but it was like gazzillion degrees in the shadow, so that's the reason I guess ;). 

And apart from that, well, the usual sfuff. Bicycle, swimming, playing:

Aaargh, the day is just too short.

Since I came back, I managed to be on 2 competitions, one in Bydgoszczy and one in Opava.

In Bydgoszcz, both Brava and Sunday won open in their categories, Eri was 3rd and Brava progressed to MA3 exactly one year after her agility debut :). It was very lucky weekend for us. 

Yesterday in Opava Brava still ran in MA2 - last time, I didn't want to change her class. She won MA2 run with speed 5,3 m/sec., she also won open jumping with speed over 5 m/sec. 

Sunday was a bit crazy yesterday, in one run I couldn't control her at all, she just didn't listen, didn't turn and it was pretty messy. Next run, she disliked weave poles all of a sudden (they were crap though, as the dog has to run on the supporting metal). And then she won open jumping small. So for her it wasn't very succesful competition, but my goal was mainly to practice a little contacts on the competition, because she started to jump them recently. Her contacts were good, so my goal was achieved ;) and the jumping was just a bonus. 

Apart from that, we have a new pyrshep in Poland. He's 1 year old male FLAGRANT DELIRE de Loubajac, really very sweet dog, though somehow lacking socialisation. But I think he would be okay in a while, he's really got good bounceback :). 

I'm going away without my dogs - so next update will be after I come back - that is probably in the beginning of May.

Take care and Happy Easter to all of you :).

So there's another little movie, this time with Eri from our practice session:

I admit these movies are not very fascinating, so I don't bother you with all four of my dogs. I record it first of all because I really see the value of recording my sessions, secondly to remember what I did and third, because I hope to see some progress :) As you can see, Eri is not exactly the champion of fast downs ;) (unlike the pyrsheps who love the down... Brava can't sit on the other hand ;)).

Anyway, I just wanted to add little something about having mentors and taking what you consider good from them.

Even if you really admire someone, even if you really crave same results they're having, always consider whether what they say is okay with you and whether you think it's good for you and for your dog.

Susan Garrett really wants you to use head halter. To be honest, I'd rather put my dog into prong collar as the closest analogy to head halter is this ring they put through bulls' noses. Fortunately, I've been able to get so far using only flat collar and flyball harness and I hope it stays this way. So until something proves me wrong or I see absolute necessity to use head halter, I won't follow Susan on this one.

Susan-who-is-always-right encourages strongly to make notes after each training session that is to keep a training journal and also to video the sessions. As for training journay - yay, that means I get a new fancy notebook (ok, I love buying notebooks, fancy pens and such and dog's stuff). I do keep notes and writing them makes me organise my thought and sometimes come up with some solution to a problem, but I don't know if this training journal will prove useful in the future, whether I will go back and read those notes or not. As for videos - yes, Susan is right (surprise, surprise!) - especially if you work alone and don't have anyone to point your mistakes.

Though beware, watching these can be painful and your pride may suffer (1st: is my bottom really that big?... and why the hell am I pushing my hand in the dog's nose in the hand touches game, where the dog is supposed to push his nose into my hand, not the other way round... and why am I rewarding him moving his feet when he's supposed to sit still, huh? You get what you reward, mind you).

Anyway, here's a little video of the games we're playing right now. This time starring Vigo:

Some time ago I came to a conclusion that life, or at least my life is a constant search of balance. Balance between:

- solitude (I really love the English language which distunguishes between being alone and being lonely) and socializing to get and give all that people can offer each other;

- not caring about the opinions of others and listening to and learning from those wiser than you;

- planning and spontaneity;

- mental and emotional development;

- the list can go on and on and it can even be applied to agility like sending and independence versus tight turns and following cues or handler focus vs. obstacle focus.

And really, whole my life I feel that while one scale is going up, the other is going up so then I change my priorities and care about the neglected thing more etc (well, we do have limited resources such as time).

So it's kinda funny that just when I engage in all this "Susan Garrett is always right" and a training philosophy which is all about planning, controlling reinforcement, structure, one thing leading to another etc, Silvia Trkman, who is another person whom I greatly admire, publishes an article like this which is all about spontaneity, intuition and how hard work, consistency and disciplines are not essential for agility ;).

Other funny thing is, that although in many ways very different training philosophies (well, not so contradictory in terms of avoiding positive punishment, using positive reinforcement and having fun all the time) were developed by two outstanding agility handlers and trainers, who both are extremely succesful.

I had a very wise geography teacher in primary school, someone who had great influence on my attitude towards life in general, and one of the things he taught us was "take what you think is good". If you find some way of doing things which is working and appeals to you, use it until you find something better.

Sometimes it might not be easy to decide which opinion to listen to.

Unfortunately dogs don't speak, so we're left with guessing what they like and what is the best way to treat them (surely, almost everybody would admit that hitting an animal is plain cruel, no doubt about that, but you'll meet people who will tell you that throwing a ball for your dog is really a terrible thing as it causes so much stress and anxiety, agility is also bad (too much excitement), competitions are the worst of all, because it's only for your pleasure at the cost of that poor abused animals, and you may just keep your children in one of those crates :P).

So what we are left to is constant search of balance, using all intuition, wisdom, knowledge and common sense that we can :).

On Friday I went to Warsaw (horribly long way, no highways and traffic jams) with my friend Irena and with 4 dogs between us ;) for an agility seminar with Jenny Damm. It was definitely worth it :). On Friday we had some theory and then it was time to put it in practice, which meant sweat, running like hell, turning BEFORE the dog jumped and then some more running like hell :). Which actually made me realize I got a bit lazy, especially with Eri and my running like hell actually both helped her get faster and helped Brava turn better :).

I generally liked Jenny's approach, very dynamic handling, lots of attention given to proper timing so that the dog knows exactly where she or he is going next before he jumps.

Things to remember:

- to work on lines first imagine perfect line as of little mouse's line (so don't worry "My big dog would land there") and then position yourself on that line,

- it's your job to handle the dog and it's dog's job to jump, so you should give the dog responsibility for that. You can't worry about your dog's knocking bars (or sth. like that) and run at your best. And when you worry about something, you are not helping your dog anyway,

- upper part of your body shows the present (what the dog should do right now), lower part of the body shows future (where the dog is going next).

All in all, it was a very nice weekend in good company :).

And I've got really nice shot of Brava on the dogwalk (and yes, she landed in time for the contact ;)):