Christmas Trial in Postojna

Yesterday's trial was kind of amusing since the courses were very difficult. There were many competitors but only a few dogs qualified. In our cathegory only two dogs qualified in the first run (Xsara was one of them) but both had off-courses in the second run. So in the end - nobody qualified. Other cathegories had similar problems, only a few teams managed to get through both courses. But it was fun to see all of our friends again and spend a day with them. It even started snowing again. We only have a sample of snow for now, but Xsara loves it anyway. It's great to see her having so much fun!

Right Legs Up!

We did it! Inspired by Silvia's two legged tricks we started learning them as well. It took us a couple of weeks to learn "right legs up", but we did it!


We can move on to the last one now, which is "diagonal legs up". We want to do it before the winter is over :)

The Big Decision

After three years of research, pro-con lists and discussions I finally decided to have Xsara spayed. Yesterday I talked to our vet and seems like January is the month (she's in heat now so we have to wait). It's one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make but I came to the conclusion it's best for her. If any of you have experiences in this field, it would be great if you would share them with us. Preferably happy stories but all information is welcome!

Another thing I wanted to say: as most of you know, the new DWB calendar is out! All DWB calendars are awesome, but I think this year they really outdid themselves. It includes many different dogs, most of them are our dear friends (and they were very sweet to think of us as well). To view the pages and order it simply click the following image:

It's for a good cause since ALL of the profit goes to doggy rescue!

Training Hounds

Can hounds be trained? You obviously know what my opinion is :) But many people believe they are too stubborn. I get a lot of mail from people all over the world who want to train their beagles but are told by trainers that it can't be done. It makes me very mad. Sure they can be trained, have patience! Since Xsara is my first dog I can't compare working with a beagle to other breeds but now that we know each other it's easy to work with her. It used to be hard in the beginning but we had talented people who helped us. We still had to do all of the actual work ourselves, but it was easier. So, my opinion is:

they can be trained, they are amazingly smart animals, you just need a different approach.

They won't work unless they want to so you need to convince them this is what they want. You need to reward them a lot and it's better if you don't do a lot of repetition because they get bored.

Otherwise not many news to report. Xsara is in heat again, she is unusually lazy during this period and doesn't have as much appetite as otherwise. I try to maintain the same level of activity with her but it's hard because she needs to be on leash on our walks. And she wants to cuddle all the time, which is really sweet.

Teaching Tricks

We are getting a lot of questions about teaching tricks, so I posted some indications in Xsara's Forum. If your dog knows any fun tricks, you can share them with us, we would love to read about them.
One of the most difficult things we had to learn (besides the destroying-things-is-NOT-good lesson) was how to play. Some dogs always love to play, you just show them a ball or start tugging and that's it. Xsara is not that kind. I had to intentionally teach her how to play (I used the food tube because she likes food). She's crazy about her yellow toy now and training is a lot easier this way. However some dogs might never get toy crazy and that's fine, they just need another type of motivation. But I guess the more ways you can get your dog's attention, the better.

Puppy Disaster

People always assume Xsara was an obedient puppy because she knows so many tricks now. To tell you the truth - she wasn't! She was destroying my things, listened to me only when she wanted to and she was making me crazy sometimes. The only reason why this behavior changed is TRAINING. She is teaching me so much about dogs, difficult dogs will do that to you. To show you what I mean, I created this funny album with some of her best artworks (I didn't make photos of all of them, mainly because at one point I stopped finding it funny). You can view it clicking on this button:

Seeing this photos anyone will agree I simply have to work with her if I want to live with her, and I love every second of our training. I really believe she needs this - she was bred for work and since I can't go hunting with her, the least I can do is work with her in a different way. And working with her is the best thing in my life. When I can see how she finally understood a new trick or finish a nice run with her, that's just the best feeling ever. It's as close to perfection as one can get!

First Snow

First of all: we got our first blog award thanks to our new friend Momo. She says: "this award is presented to a successful blogger, one who can “be the blog” - making it their own, staying with it, interacting with the readers, and just plain having fun." Thank you so much, Momo! We want to pass it onto Jazz and Dixie, Randi, Pacco, and Million Dollar.

This morning we got our first snow of the year in Ljubljana. I'm not crazy about snow but Xsara loves it so much that I'm still happy when I see it outside. The snow is not visible on this picture from our morning walk, but it started snowing a lot more just now so it will definitely be more obvious on the next pictures. Since we couldn't go to Belgium we will at least manage to give Xsara a nice long walk in the snow.

Good, Bad And In Between

Good news and bad news.
The good news is Xsara is one of the calendar girls for Slovenian Agility Calendar. You can view the entire calendar and order it on Agility Portal. I think that Andraz Cerar and Iztok Noc have done an amazing job, again! The calendar is just beautiful.
The bad news is we had to cancel the agility trial in Belgium (Kortrijk Euro Dog Show) because two of the girls we were supposed to go with got sick and have very high fever. We were really looking forward to it but health comes first. If the weather is nice we will use the weekend to go somewhere else instead.

Another thing I want to share - I just loved the tip of the month by Maureen deHaan in the latest issue of Clean Run: "When things go really bad and frustrating during a training session, stop and hug your dog. You can't hug your dog and be mad at the same time." Very nicely put and so very true - don't you agree?

So Much To Do

We are working on a lot of things at the moment. First of all we are trying to improve our turns using Silvia Trkman's famous Cik&Cap method. You can read all about it on her very cool and educational website which can be found clicking here. We're still in the inital part of it because I don't want to rush her. I want her to be 100% sure what I want from her before I start including it in our agility training. I don't want her to be confused about anything - plus it wouldn't really help our training since the main goal is to improve times and you can't do that if the dog is unsure.
Other than that we are working on changing position from distance for our RO class. It's going very well - she can now go from lay down to sit, from sit to lay down and from sit to stand from about 10m to 15m away from me, which is quite good for two days of training it.
Of course we are also working on some new tricks but I'm not giving out anything - it will all be in Xsara's new video which I will hopefully manage to make very soon.
For those who haven't noticed I also posted Slovenian agility regulations in Xsara's Forum. Check it out if you are interested. That's it for today - have fun by

Crazy Agility People

I remember the first time I thought we were becomming obsessed with agility. We had been training for a couple of months and my trainer Silvia Trkman told me I could come again on Saturday. "But Saturday is Christmas Eve ...". She gave me a very confused look: "That's OK, you can come next week then". And all I could think was - I would rather be here than anywhere else. I mean, I was gonna take Xsara for a walk anyway, what difference does it make. We usually go out of town for New Year but not Christmas, I'm never having people over for dinner since everybody knows I can't cook, and most of all "what else would I rather do on my day off"? I guess that Christmas Eve I officially became

The crazy agility person - and proud of it!

This Saturday we had no trials - the season is over and Winter Cup hasn't started yet. We're going to do some trials abroad and train a little more until this break lasts. Fortunately we have a lot to work on!

Thanks to Sandra for this photo.