Because of its size
and complexity the Croatian Sheepdog Working Championship deservers our special attention. I hope that
the event, which brings together the Croatian sheepdog owners
and admirers and where we can show off our dogs knowledge and
beauty, will become traditional.
It's
our main and most popular activity. I started to compete in agility in
the year 2004 with Živa and Alenka
started to compete in the end of the year 2005 also with
Živa. Živa has already honorably
retired from the competitions and now holds a position of a head
cheerleader. At the moment we compete with two Croatian sheepdogs
Grom and
Siva.
With agility you should
start young and enjoy it throughout your life into the golden years :-)
- video featuring Nuša (6 years) and Živa (9 years):
Competitions,
successes and failures (some of the more memorable ones at least) -
Results
First we used Frisbee mostly
for the recreational purposes and Grom and Siva quickly learned to love
a new kind of recreation. Alenka and I didn't thought much about Frisbee
competitions until we attended a seminar with Jean McCollister and Manca
Mikec in May 2009. We still mostly use Frisbee for recreation, bur we
also participate at some dogfrisbee competitions competing in different
disciplines (time trial, minidistance,
medley relay, dog dartbee). More about different
disciplines you can find
HERE and
HERE (for medley
relay).
Is a
new canine event in Slovenia officially recognized since 2007. In RO the
dog and the handler had to perform different linked up exercises on the
course previously set up by the judge. There are motion exercises that
include heeling with direction changes, speed changes, different figures
around the traffic cones and performance of different obstacles (jumps,
a see-saw, a table, a tunnel, weave poles).
Stationary exercises include the changes of the dogs body position in
different sequences, staying in the place, adjusting the dogs position
to the handlers position, handling at the distance and similar.
I
started to do RO with Grom for the similar reasons as everything else,
to try something new. It turned out that RO exercises (specially RO IV)
are really useful for warming up at the agility competitions. I also
managed to test our performance at the RO competitions.
I started with classical
obedience (as we call it) a little bit to show the club colleagues how
well can an agility dog does the obedience exercises, but mainly because
I enjoy doing different things with my dogs (and Grom is always ready to
work).
The basic obedience
exam for the companion dogs with behavioral test (BH test)
includes exercises at the training area (on-leash and off-leash
heeling, sit in motion, down in motion with a recall and long
down), testing the behavior of the dog in different situations
in an urban environment and a written exam for the dog's owner.
