My princesses

My photo
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.

Friday, July 25, 2008

No, I don't have a new dog. Since I haven't recieved Xsara's EO pictures yet, I'm posting a photo from Portoroz with Dasa's poodle Katka. We are on our way to the seaside again and will return in two weeks. In the meantime I'm posting a video of Xsara playing with our new smart toy. This is her third encounter with Nina Ottosson's Dog Turbo. I have to say that I absolutely love this puzzle!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Portoroz and EO 2008

We have just returned from EO and Xsara is sooooo happy to sleep in our bed. Camping was a fun adventure but with all the rain, mud and very cold temperatures we are extremely happy to be home.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any great results to brag with. Xsara bumped in a double jump after a flat tunnel in our first run, and limped after the last jump. Most courses included A-B-C combinations which are rarely seen in Slovenia (we've never had it in any of our courses before), so many competitors from Slovenia had problems with this, including the most experienced ones. In team trials we had a nice jumping run, but in the afternoon when we had the second run it was already so muddy that I couldn't run in my snickers at all. To put it another way: I'm really not proud of myself right now, but I do try to appreciate every new experience including this one, and I hope we will do better on our next big trial. We also discovered that Xsara likes frisbee (specially if there are any border collies watching her), so we will try it out and see how it goes.

Before EO we had a competition in Portoroz and didn't do too badly there (2nd place). I will post some pictures of both trials tomorrow, right now I just want to hug my dog until she starts snoring and rub her tummy until I fall asleep as well.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

News, News, News

We've been very busy in the past few days, but unfortunately not in the way that we like being busy. Xsara got sick. She was throwing up, refused to eat and was walking around the house like she was scared of everything. Of course I took her to the vet. He said she must have eaten something bad and gave her antibiotics, something to prevent her from vomiting, something for the diarrhea, rehydration powder and some probiotic liquid to equilibrate intestinal flora. He also instructed to put her on an easy digestive diet, so I'm cooking her favourite horse-meat-risotto every day. Luckily I got a Summer job that allows me to work from my computer anywhere I am, so I can be with her 24/7. She's feeling a lot better now, her appetite is back to normal and her playfulness as well. We have the last check-up appointment with the vet today and if she is OK we will go to the seaside for a couple of days - but I'll still keep her on the diet, just to make sure.

I also have a good news: I was informed that we won a photo contest by Red Dingo. I really love their products and as I had many nice pictures of Xsara wearing her RD collar, I mailed them. They will publish the photos in the next few days - and we will get to choose the reward by ourselves.

We had a trial on Saturday, when we still didn't know that she was sick. She was a little slower than usually, but I figured maybe she was hot and kept her in a cool place. She was still 2nd :) I have to say that the "reward on the rope" to improve tunnels (as the Finnish judge suggested) isn't working well for us. Guess what happens when there is no reward in the tunnel?! She entered the tunnel and almost got out, than turned back and went looking for the toy. We got one refusal and lost a lot of time, so I'm not using this method any more. I will still try with the "outrun me to the food" thing and let you know if it's working out.

If Xsara will be completely OK by Saturday, we will go to the trial in Portoroz. Portoroz is by the sea and it's very hot there, so this is a night trial. There are always many tourists so they organize some fun shows for them - there will also be frisbee and dog dancing shows, working dogs and more fun stuff. I will try to take some pictures and post them when we come back from the sea (we will be spending almost a week near Portoroz)!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Isn't She Lovely

I have some new pictures of Xsara in action, thanks to our Iztok and Andraz again. We are so lucky to have two photographers among agility enthusiasts in Slovenia, so we always have many beautiful pictures of our dogs on trials. Isn't that the coolest thing ever?!



Also I was asked to write a post about working dogs for Halo Pets. Since I really loved the topic that they proposed, I agreed. They also published some pictures and a video of Xsara :)