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20.11. - 22.11. 2009 Zagreb, 1st Croatian Sheepdog Working Championship
So it's over our championship. Siva was entered in agility and Grom was entered in agility, obedience and conformation show. I let Alen convince me to enter Grom in obedience just before the entries closed. Because I had almost no time to train before that we were only left with a little less than a month to train the retrieve and the send away. We worked hard and even I managed to learn how to throw a dumbell although in a process I was an amusement to myself and to anybody watching me.
We set out for Zagreb on Friday when the real competition already started for some but our roll was only to watch and to cheer.
The Finnish competitor made the biggest impression at herding - she started as first and was done before some of us realized that the competition already started. While some worked the others posed for the TV camera...
The idea to stay overnight in Zagreb proved as a smart one already on Friday. So we could take a nice walk with the dogs at the river Sava bank and had a beer and a nice dinner in a nice company afterwards.
On Saturday the competition started for us too. First in the morning some obedience training than the agility and after that the jumping. Grom obviously wasn't in his best form in the morning as we made it thorough agility without serious difficulties, but with two dropped jump bars we still placed among last. Alenka and Siva did pretty well but unfortunately they had some problems with the weave poles. Well by the time the jumping started the Black Monster cheered up and the result was pretty chaotic run which off course ended with disqualification. Siva again had problems with the weave poles or better to say she had problems with the spectators and a photographer that were just to close to the weave poles to her taste. This second day of the championship was also very nice even if it wasn't very successful for us and it ended just as nice with an excellent dinner in an excellent company.
On the last day of the championship Grom and I had quite tight schedule. First was the obedience. There was a lot of nervousness and barking but we did all exercises, most of them correct enough, that I could be content. Well our performance just showed our work in the last few months. Because most of the training was focused at the two exercises that were new to us, the basic heeling got worse. We have proof that Grom can do the heeling without barking and jumping in front of my feet :-), but I guess that at this moment and in this form we couldn't do without it. Retrieving went quite well. Although at a retrieve on flat Grom had to think about what do I mean with a command "fetch" and than he had some doubts whether to pick up a dumbell and bring it back to me. But then we got quite better at retrieve over the hurdle and over the A-frame. Specially when I managed to achieve almost impossible with throwing the dumbell over the A-frame so nicely that it didn't rolled under the fence surrounding a ring. The send away didn't go all so bad either. Although Grom got quite carried away to one corner where it was the least audience and in which direction the A-frame stood.
Well the judge thought about our work even much better than I did and with 96 points he placed us on a 3rd place :-).
Next was a final agility run. I had a previous day placing list in my head instead of the start list and at my big surprise I only found out that I was the first to start when they called me to the start line. Surprises like that always ended up in disaster and this one wasn't any different. To all the foolishness that my Black Monster is capable of doing on agility course he added a trip to fetch a toy somewhere in the middle of our run...
But Alenka and Siva did really great this time and their run without penalty points got them to the first place of the Sunday's agility. With that result they even ranked quite high in overall sum of all three runs from both days.
In all three great days only a conformation show was a bit of a disappointment to me. There was only one dog in the competition with Grom and that one was a "better" dog in the end. And I found out that my otherwise proportional dog has somewhat shorter neck... and that he's not a champion (that last one wasn't in description, but was said anyway)...
And in the end... It was unforgettable. The organization, the gifts at the entrance, competitions, prices and most of all the dogs and their people - because all of that the trip to Zagreb was really worth it. We will certainly come again. Big thanks to the Organizers!
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© ŠEN 2011 |
