My princesses

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Sava Sara Brakada, AKA Xsara was born on 06-27-2004. She was raised in Kennel Brakada spending the first two months of her life on beautiful countryside Gorenjska (Slovenia) with her siblings and parents. As soon as she came to Ljubljana we started a puppy class, followed by an obedience class. She passed her B-bh exam with 96 points (instructor Agility EO winner Polona Bonač). We now continue with Rally-Obedience under Polona's supervision. Our biggest passion however is Agility. We started our first Agility class in October 2005 (club Agility Ilirija, instructor Silvia Trkman, two times agility world champion). When Silvia stopped teaching agility classes, we switched to Daša Zakotnik. We regularly participate in Agility trials in Slovenia and sometimes abroad. Xsara also loves to learn new dog tricks, you can see some of them in our videos. Her other passions include long walks, big meals and playing with dogs, specially her pyr shep sister Tani, her crazy agility pals and her sister Sena.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

First Place!


Xsara earned another sandwich on yesterday's competition. With two clean runs and good times she placed 1st. I was particularly happy because this means we accomplished the last requirement to proceed to the next competing level. We will run on 2nd level on the first outdoors trial. To cheer us there were our breeder Neva, Xsara's sister Sena with her Aša and baby Gaja and, of course our Gašper. We were also happy to see some snow but there wasn't much of it. The day passed ever so quickly.


7 comments:

Jean said...

Hi! Just discovered your blog by following the link from the agility forum. Congratulations to you and Xsara on your recent win(s). I wish my Lyra would run up and down the gugalnica like the dog in your picture!

See you in Prestranek?

Xsara and Tani said...

How do you train the gugalnica? Do you finish every combination on it and reward Lyra for going up? Xsara used to hate ohlapni tunel and Silvia told me to train like that.
We will definitely see you in Prestranek. Thank you very much for your comment and congradulations, I hope you will write us again.

Jean said...

We've been working on it with Polona (but unfortunately not much lately because illness, weather, etc. have kept us from coming more regularly). I run Lyra up it as fast as I can get her to go while Polona holds the end so it doesn't move/drop. When she gets to the right point we click and treat, lower the plank (increasingly quickly), click and treat again as she holds the position, then release her. We do it again and again and again, over and over.

She doesn't balk at see-saws that she's familiar with--the one in Lj and at our home club of Ajdovscina. In fact in Ajd she often runs up it voluntarily. But when she meets an unfamiliar one on a course at a competition--trouble.

Xsara and Tani said...

How old is she? Maybe she will just get used to them! How long have you been competing with her?

Jean said...

Lyra will be 4 in June. This will be our third season competing, but we didn't go to many competitions the first year because we were away during the summer. And we started well before she was ready--neither one of us knew much about the sport. She had a good season last year (2nd in the national championship in A1/J2) but we've plateaued or even regressed since then instead of improving. But I think it's just a temporary phase, and once we get on outdoor courses again we'll regain our groove. See-saw, slalom and speed are what we need to keep working on.

Jean said...

Oops, meant to write A1/J1 (not J2)

Xsara and Tani said...

We'll keep our finger crossed that she suddenly starts to love the gugalnica :-) we work mostly on the speed but also on the zones. She never had problems with them until we started competing, then she just decided that she would not do them any more. But lately she's been doing them fine - the mystery of beagles I guess!