EO 2008 Day 3: Individual Runs with video

What time were we up on Saturday? 4:30 am! 'Nuff said bout that!

So Saturday was the individual runs. The way it worked was strange. Basically you were competing against your own team-mates as it was the top three dogs from each country and each height that went thru to the finals on Saturday night. My morning wasn't going so well when we were eliminated on our first run. Doh! Bad handler.

The small jumping course was really great except for one thing. There is new combination in the FCI rules that I did not know about. Basically it is the old A-B-C jumping sequence but it is in a straight line with minimum pacing. If I had known I would have trained it! Actually it wouldn't be so bad if it had not come after a long stretch of a fast run to a spread and then to the sequence which was three jumps in a row with ONLY TWO METRES in between them. Hex can do grids and bounce jumps but I have never asked her to do them from a fast run or from a spread jump. Poor little things; all the dogs really tried to clear the jumps but you could see they just had no idea it was coming up.

I saw dog after dog hit the jumps really badly. I saw one little sheltie ram the second bar with his face and hit the ground crying. I have since heard that he possibly broke his jaw. How sad is that? If the dogs actually got through the sequence it was not pretty as they had to really contort their spines to clear the jumps.

Now to make matters even worse; we were the first group in. So all the other groups after seeing the problems all went to the practice jumps and set up the sequence and practiced! Darn!

All that doesn't excuse my poor handling where I watched her go over the off course jump. But I am going to blame that on the fact that she knocked that 3rd bar in the sequence and it threw me a little. Yeah that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!

Here's the video. I am very brave to post my bloopers! The announcer was evil and played funny music once you were eliminated! Not so funny when you are running; but really funny to watch! I have included Henry's jumping run so that you can see another dog try and negotiate the A-B-C sequence. Henry is a clean and careful jumper usually but even he had trouble. Arghhhh if only we had known to train this! Our fault probably!



Luckily for me (but not for my team-mates) we had alot of eliminations in that jumping round. This put us all at level pegging for the agility round; it would be this round that decided who went through to the final. I really felt like I pushed Hex on this agility round; although when watching the video I still don't look like I am running! Her see-saw was called as a fly-off as she left it too early. It was a very fair call and totally my fault. Partly I was thrown slightly as I didn't expect her to come out of that long FCI tunnel so fast and thought I had more time for my front cross. Had I realized that I would have stayed on the other side of the see-saw. Also I was pushing for time and mis-timed my "go" and told her to "go" before the see saw was down. I also blame her slightly; as she was a bit naughty leaving it in mid-air! I really loved this course and tried to walk it telling myself that there was nothing in it that we could not do. "We can do this; we have trained this" is my new mantra when walking a course. Between that and "I am so psyched; I love to compete" (ala Jane Savoie) we were all set!

Here is her run. Her time would have been good enough for 3rd place in this run.



So with only one double clear (Sharon and Ruby) in our team; the field was open. One other team-mate (Wendy and Scout) put in a clear in agility. The rest of us had faults in the agility so basically Hex got through as having the fastest 5 fault in the team. That put Sharon and Ruby, Wendy and Scout and Me and Hex through to the evening final. They had a strange way of setting up the running order though! Basically you ran in reverse order of your time on the agility round only. So if you had a fast time in the agility round (no matter how many faults) you ran towards the end of the running order in the finals. This put Hex and I running right towards the end of the final. A great spot to be in; so we would know what we had to do.

Here are the two other British smalls to make it to the final! Well done guys on getting to the finals especially Ruby for putting in two clears to get there.

Scout



Ruby



Gosh you would think I was away for weeks and I still have more to write. To be continued....

EO Day 2: Practice and Opening Ceremony

So the EO trip continues on the second day. Friday was meant to be the practice day and the opening ceremony.



Dennis took his car to the venue to start setting up the tent. There was alot of confusion as to where exactly the British team was to set up. According to management we had an "shaded" area set aside for us. Not being very trusting; Lisa, Dennis and I decided to bring Tony's beer gazebo with us...just in case.

This turned out to be a good idea as what our team ended up with was 2 pop-up ez-up tents for 30 dogs and handlers and grooms! A little crowded it would be and luckily the Welsh contingent thought as we did and brought another tent. So between us we had 4 pop-up gazebos for 30 dogs and handlers and grooms and management!

Here was our little set up. Considering how much it rained; it was a god-send that we had this! Dennis had the tent set up by the time we arrived in the coach. We were very glad that this was just the practice day as it took us 2.5 hours to find the venue!!!!! Yes, I said two and one-half hours! The movies Dumb and Dumber and Road trip all come time mind......



And Dennis liked this part of the venue. Bratwurst cooked on the grill! I think he survived the entire weekend on Bratwurst and beer.



Again there was a little confusion at first as no one had ever experienced the EO before. Immediately we were told to get into queues for our books (KC books and pets passports) to be checked. There was even a little panicking as some people were worried they would be measured. Luckily this didn't happen and they just took the measurements in the books.

It was weird having them take the books as we do not do that in the UK. But I remembered this from when we have competed abroad (Germany and Denmark) before. The dogs all were scanned for their microchips and these were compared to the books. The 3rd queue was the good one where we each got a free EO polo-shirt. Yes, I like FREE!

I think being so late did not help us in the practice arena as all we were allowed was 25 minutes. I think that was all the space that was available that late but am not sure. Either way, 25 minutes for 30 dog/handler teams was not enough. I do not need to work my dog for 25minutes but do need a chance to work her properly. All we got were 2 tries on jumping/weave sequence (set up by Andy) while the large dogs worked on the contacts section with ALL the contacts. By the time we swapped over; the smalls and mediums started on the contact portion and we were not able to get thru all the dogs. Just as I was about to go (last dog!) I was blocked by a big guy in the next group as we were now in "their" time slot. Fair enough on their part; but a real shame for us! I think I yelled at Greg to do something about this big guy in my way but he just yelled back run past him! haha So I did but my time on the contacts were not quite relaxed!

Here are some candid shots from around the practice ring.

Sonia being a great groom and keeping Hex quiet and relaxed for me. There is only one way to keep Hex quiet while agility is going on: hold her on her back in your lap. Yes I admit: I AM A BAD DOG TRAINER! and I should have a dog that can be quiet while agility is going on. Oh well, just shoot me! HaHa She won a bronze individual medal so I guess we aren't too shabby after all!



Well massage is the big new thing lately. Everyone is doing it now! Sometimes I do it just to fit in. Other times I forget; I am a bad dog trainer....hahaha I will soon try and get more serious.







Finally the opening ceremony. We all paraded in with our dogs on their new matching Snuggle Pet harnesses and leads and I think we all looked pretty darn good! I was very proud to be walking with the team again and this time with my little cutie Hex.




We looked good but not as good as the supporters! They were awesome. Small in number but not small in enthusiasm.




Finally we tried to get a photo of EVERYONE in front of the Snugglepet Booth to thank them for their donations of leads and harnesses for all the dogs. This was hard as you can imagine. Yet again the British have NO idea how to pose for photos! Good try though!

3 of the funniest comments of the EO weekend

Of course there were some pretty funny moments during the weekend. Here are my three favorite comments:

• From a fellow competitor: "Next year's EO is in the Netherlands. I heard the same coach company is already booked. They have reserved a hotel in Kent" :-)
• From a supporter after getting up at 4:30 to have breakfast after eating their dinner the night before at around midnight. As he sat down and looked at the breakfast buffet: "I am not hungry; I just ate."
• From our esteemed ass't manager as he watched Suzanne slip and fall in the mud during the small team jumping and still direct her dog into the correct end of the tunnel. "What a Lazy cow taking a nap out there!"

And the saddest photo of the weekend! Poor guy crashed the tyre during the practice session and Dennis actually got a photo of it! Our dogs are not used to frame tyres; so this was really difficult for alot of the British dogs. Ouch; this is certainly a reason for wanting soft tyres or breakaway tyres!

Why does no one learn? EO 2008 con't with RANT

I am really proud to be able to represent my "adopted" country and really grateful to have someone (the Kennel Club) fund my trip abroad with my dog. How lucky am I? So I do not want any of my blog to sound ungrateful or too moaney (is that a word?)

At the end of the day; I just want to run my dog and run well; potentially bringing home a medal and showing the world just how good the British Agility dogs are! We are very very lucky to have a Kennel Club that supports agility as our KC does. They put alot of money into these international competitions and they do not HAVE to do this. This year they even listened to the agility world and supported a competition that is open to ALL dogs (pedigree or not). So for this I am so very grateful. Thank you to the KC!

Unfortunately the organization of this trip was really the biggest issue. If you look back at our trip to the World Champs in Norway last year; you will see a theme developing. This trip continued along the same lines: Long days in coaches, hotels way too far from the venue and coach drivers who are inept and downright dangerous.

How can anyone expect a team (dog/handler) to perform at their best when they have to eat dinner everynight at 11 pm, get up every morning at 4:30 am and drive for 1.5-2 hours to even get to the venue? Then compete all day and drive back another 1.5 hours back to a hotel? Do this for 3 days in a row and see how you feel! This adds to the stress everyone already feels; the pressure to try and do well is stress enough. The travel should be made easy and comfortable; not stressful and long!

This coach company was the same coach company that took us to Norway. They are the same coach company that booked a hotel 1 hour from the venue in Norway. The organizers KNEW that this was not acceptable last year; why was the same thing repeated this year?? Actually it was even worse as the darn coach drivers could not seem to find anything; the venue or the hotel day after day! AND they had sat nav!

OK the Biggest rant coming up!

I will finish by describing the final straw for me. On our drive back on Monday to Calais I switched seats with Helen so that I could stretch my legs out for a few minutes. She was sitting in the first row of seats by herself. While I was sitting there I could now see out the front window and could see the driver as well. Gradually I noticed the driver talking alot with his fellow off-duty driver (who was sitting next to him). Shockingly the off-duty driver kept showing the driver (who was driving a freaking bus!) some paperwork and the driver kept taking his eyes off the road to read it. To make the matter worse; he then took the paperwork and placed it on his steering wheel to read....was that bad enough? No he still had trouble reading it; so he took the time to take out his reading glasses and continue to read the paper!!! He was not just glancing at the paper; he was reading and studying it! WHILE DRIVING A FREAKING BUS WITH ME IN IT!

After my brain started working, I pointed this out to the "tour organizer" who was also sitting in the front seat on the other side. He proceeded to look down at the driver, shrug his shoulders and say "this trip is just not going well" and then sat back down without saying a word! At that point I jumped up and yelled at the driver "Could you please NOT read while driving!" and then I went back to my former seat and put my seat belt on! I did not want to end up thru the front window. I think I might have said something else like f***ing h*** but I cannot remember!

Am I just crazy or does anyone else see a problem here?

EO 2008: the trip to Germany day 1

I tried to get some photos of my own without Dennis; they are pretty amateur but hey they help me remember! This is Hex waiting at the Ferry port on her newly sewn Union Jack dog bed. Lisa made the dog beds as we wanted the dogs to be patriotic also.

I thought I better start writing about our adventures before I forget. Time heals all wounds and all that! I will start by saying this trip was very interesting; take that as you want. You would think I would have learned from Norway; but I actually thought this trip would be easier. It was only in Germany; in theory only 4 hours from the French Ferry port of Calais. A piece of cake journey, right? Hmmmmm....

Initially we got a fright and were told that we all had to get on the coach in Daventry at some un-godly hour on Thursday morning. Holy toledo; Daventry is 3 hours NORTH of me and we should be headed 1.5 hours south to the Dover Ferry port. That just did not make sense! Why would we want to add 6 hours of travel time on the departure day and 6 hours on the arrival day? After much emails back and forth; finally the week before we were told we could meet in Dover. Phew! Why are the little things so stressful sometimes?

For future reference for fellow competitors; there is a lovely multistory car park at Dover where you can leave the car for around 6 pounds per day. That is much cheaper than paying for 2 tanks of petrol to get back and forth to Daventry.

I picked up Andy at his house and off we went to Dover. I felt really sad for Andy as he was not sure he should be leaving Nancy alone as she had just lost her special dog Abbey. Nancy bravely convinced Andy to go; but I know she was on his mind the entire trip.

There were 2 coaches taking us to Germany.This is what coach #1 looked like. Do these look like medal-winning handlers to you? Some of those guys had already been on the coach for 3 hours; I was glad we got on in Dover!



We had 15 dogs in each coach. The seats are removed on one side of the back of the coach and replaced with dog crates. I guess it is a good way to travel with many dogs but it is not great for the dogs who are cooped up in small crates. Also it is quite a palava trying to get the dogs out of the crates each time we stop.



So everyone onto the bus and across on the ferry to France. Once we are in France; the journey by car would have been just about 4 hours. By coach it was more like 7 hours. Dennis and Sonia had left in our car on a much earlier ferry and were in the hotel before our coach even landed in France! They had a much nicer journey than we did. And ,according to Dennis, Sonia was a great traveller and just fell asleep immediately as soon as she got into the car. She must have been very trusting of Dennis' driving ability!

So the drive to the hotel was not exactly smooth. The coach manager was relying only on an address in the sat nav. I guess he didn't feel the need to check before hand or maybe have a map...just-in-case... So, of course, we got lost! Back and forth up streets trying to find the hotel. I cannot remember how long we were lost but it felt forever especially knowing that Dennis got there with no problems. This was soon to be seen as typical for this coach company. We got lost ALOT.

Once we got into the hotel; we quickly walked the dogs and unpacked and then headed out into town. Luckily Dennis had already done a walk around the town so he knew where some restaurants were. I am so glad we went out that night to eat out of the hotel as it turned out to be the ONLY night we were able to do this. We found what looked like a typical German restaurant and went in with 13 people and scared the waitress to death! I do not think she was expecting 13 English speaking very-hungry and tired customers on a Thursday night.



The funniest thing that night was all of us pouring over the German menus and trying to figure out what everything was! Of course, no one remembered to bring a german phrase book and only 3 people had any semblance of an idea about German! I was afraid I was going to end up eating cow brains or something! Plus we had two vegetarians who were worried they would get meat. We started to muddle through and just as we were about to order...the waitress says "Oh Do you want an ENGLISH menu?" HAHAHAHAHA

I ended up eating schnitzel which was yum yum and Dennis had sauerbrauten! Food like mom used to make!

Video of Hex in the Small Final at EO 2008

Here is a video of Hex's final run. If you want to see the course diagram, the courses are on the official EO site. Here is the link to the small final course diagram.



Ahhh isn't she so cute! Below here she is with her trophy.

European Open Agility 2008

How proud am I? Two Obay shelties on the podium for the small championships at the European Open Agility 2008! Hex and I came THIRD and Suzanne and Unique came FIRST!

What a trip we had. I need days to recover and have lot to write about but for now am just enjoying sleeping late today!

Thanks so everyone who watched the dogs for us this weekend (Tony, Karen and Tim and Marion) and thanks to Nancy for lending us Andy for the weekend! He was a star. And Dennis and Sonia who were fantastic grooms! I was lucky to have TWO grooms and I think both are exhausted beyond belief!

World Dog Show Stockholm 2008

This post is going to have to be fairly short! I cannot believe I haven't had a chance to sit down and write about the World Dog show that we went to last week. I am starting to get nervous about leaving for Germany and the European Open Agility in two days so can only think about that right now!

Dennis and I flew to Stockholm Sweden last weekend to see the World Dog Show 2008. It was a nice chance to just get away for a weekend without dogs but yet to be with dogs! hahaha. Mostly we went to see Johanna compete with Soda and Spooky in Freestyle and with Hob-b in breed.

Sweden is very expensive but we got a great deal on flights and car rental. And Johanna (of course) knew someone in Stockholm where we could stay. The family we stayed with was very hospitable and it was really nice staying in a "real" swedish home!

The World dog show itself was a little disappointing to me. It was no where as posh as Crufts and the standard of dogs showing there was not as great (in my eyes). I did not really see any dogs that I FLIPPED for. I was hoping to see something that looked special or had something that caught my eye for future breeding programs. But, alas, no I will be sticking with my own plans for now!

Here is Dennis sitting next to the Best in Show car! Did the Best in Show actually win it?? I don't know! Everything, of course, was blue and yellow (the swedish flag colours). Why is Dennis dressed like that? Ask Johanna!



Hob-b showed like a little trooper. She did not get anywhere in the placings and received a "Very good" ribbon. Out of nearly 40 bitches he only gave 7 excellent ribbons. He actually gave quite a few "blue" ribbons which are a lower grade than excellent (pink) and very good (red). And even gave a few "yellows". The grading goes like this: excellent (pink), very good (red), good (blue) and then yellow. I forget what yellow means but basically it is not a good ribbon to receive!

Here is a blurry photo of her! Isn't she just adorable!



The shopping at the World Dog show was no where as good as I expected either. Bummer as I was so ready to spend spend spend! After Johanna showed Hob-b and we checked out the shopping; there was not much to do other than watch the Freestyle (dog dancing). There was some really good teams there and some pretty poor teams. It was mostly Swedish teams; so not really a great "international" compeition. Johanna and two other Danes were the only other country represented I think. Johanna, of course, was great! It was so nice to finally meet Soda. She is, well...a border collie! And not a Pikkupaimenen border collie so I am a bit biased against her! haha But I liked her anyway although I would rather have Wizz (the lovely Pikkupaimenen BC) live with me anyday! Soda is so young but she looked really good out in the main ring. And she still looked like a puppy out there which I liked; she was not a polished machine at only 15 months; she was still bouncy and a bit silly as a 15 month old border collie should be!

I have no photos of Johanna other than her waiting in the queue to get into the venue. Did we wait in the queue with the hundreds of other people? No of course not, Johanna had her own devious plans to get in quickly! But if I told you I would have to kill you!



All in all, I remember why I do not like breed showing! Kind of boring, lots of grooming just to stand around looking like you don't care in the ring. Having someone tell you your dog is too small, too big ect ect. Ya know...I don't care! haha!

How is this for doggie transportation and grooming table all-in-one?



We did do some sightseeing and went into Stockholm for 2 days. The old town was lovely and we did a tour on a horse and carriage which was nice. It gave a nice overview of the city. I still prefer more rural holidays; but for a short city break it was nice. We learned lots about Sweden and need to come back again.

Funny signs were displayed in one plaza. They were signs from around the world and made Dennis laugh.



This was actually the fire extinguisher on the boat ride we took. I have no idea what "skum" means in swedish but am sure Johanna will tell me!



And finally the obligatory photo of me standing like a dork in some pretty square in some city somewhere!



Actually it is a square in Stockholm but it looks like it could be anywhere in Europe doesn't it?