Puppy Tricks Part 1

We only filmed a couple of tricks on Sunday, but I made a short video anyway, so that you can see our little girl in action. She knows some more triks and is learning new things every day, so part 2 will arrive shortly :)

A Quick Update

A quick update while the girls sleep :) They have become very good friends, they play together, cuddle together, eat together, Xsara really looks after her and I think she's very happy to have somebody to play with 24/7. Tani is crazy about Xsara, she constantly gives her little kisses and is very happy when Xsara kisses her back. I expected there to be more jealousity, so I'm very happy to see them be such great sisters to one another.

As pyrenean shepherds need so much socialisation, I pretty much take Tani with me everywhere I go. I have a little doggy backpack (similar to a sherpa crate) so I just put her in and off we go. She is very brave, loves people and animals and is incredibly nosy :) She is still a little afraid of trucks and buses, but not too scared around them at all. Every time Tani and I come back home, Xsara will first check if I brought Tani back and be clearly happy to see her, only then will she greet me as well :)

I'm also happy to report that Xsara is back to training and, naturally, we take Tani with us when we train. Yesterday we tried sending her through the tunnel for the first time and then we ran around the wings of jumps with bars on the ground. With Xsara, we're working on her being more independent on the course. I think it looks quite promissing, I'm very happy with yesterday's training, really. Her weaves entries are very good and her contacts are also more and more independent. She is very happy to be running again, that's for sure!

We took the girls to the seaside a couple of times as the weather finally improved for the weekend. There is already Spring on the coast so we had such a wonderful time. Unfortunately, I think Tani will probably not be crazy about swimming, so I will have two dogs and none of them will swim with me, urgh! I'm also teaching them tricks full time. Tani already knows "cik" (go around an object and turn left), "go on" and "get in the bowl". With Xsara I was a little busy practicing a routine for a tricks show we participated in (at the opening of a new pet store), but am planning on teaching her some new tricks as well.

Now they are awake again so I'm taking them for a loooong walk! Will write again as soon as I have more time! Thank you all for your comments and welcome wishes for Tani, we really appreciate it :)

We're Back!

Happy New Year everyone! We're back from the seaside where we spent one week around New Year. We had a great time, as always. Long walks, a lot of sunny weather, no TV or computers, just bonding, playing and relaxing. It was really great and we are already looking forward to go back!




On the morning after New Year, Xsara got a visit from Dedek Mraz. He brought her a Wubba and more natural treats (100% freeze-dried bison meat). She also got a new tugging leash, because she's obsessed with tug games lately. She really likes all of the presents. She is even more playful than usually, so I think that home prepared food really suits her. We might get another really big Christmas present, but it's to soon to talk about. I have my fingers crossed!

A couple of days before going to the sea, we went back to training for the first time in months. It was great! Xsara was very happy to be back, she jumped out of the car and started running around like crazy, making circles around her friends Bode and Gayo and herself. Once I managed to kind of calm her down, we ran a couple of very short sequences (a couple of contacts - all of which were great, and some turns and tunnels). I rewarded her a lot, mostly with tugging and a ball, but also with food. We didn't stay long and when we finished we went back home right away, with no waiting for everyone else (thanks to Daša who allowed us to do so). I was very happy with how it went. We're going back to training today and in the following days I will go there by myself once and run with Bode again. I don't want to run with him in front of Xsara because it could get her nervous, but I really want to run with him and Manca offered so ... :)

Anyway, here are some pictures from our vacation:

You Can't Always Get What You Want

But if you try sometimes you get what you need. That's how the song goes and those are the best words to describe our first trial in A3/J3.

It was raining on the morning of the trial and the slippery road caused our car to slide out of a curve and we had a car crash. Luckily, nobody got hurt, as I was going very very slowly. Xsara didn't even notice it, she was safe in her crate. The only damage was on our car. We thought that there was no chance we could still make it to the trial, as we couldn't drive there any more. But luckily, agility people are probably the nicest people on Earth.

We called Dasa who was already putting up the tent beside the show-ring and she immediately suggested that she comes to pick us up. I also called my parents and they offered to take care of my car, so we left the car with my mom and went to the trial with Dasa. With a morning like this, I was so grateful that we were fine for the entire day, and I really wasn't nervous about running in A3/J3 any more.

We came to the trial just in time to catch the course viewing. The course was very tricky (tunnel under the A-frame and the A-frame was in the combination twice!). Quite a task for our leading contacts. But strangely, most of her contacts were done better than I anticipated, even though the judge gave us penalty points on the first A-frame. Otherwise our run was nice and we made it through the course with no faults on time. The second course was even more tricky and I'm not proud of myself, but I decided to play it safely. So on two tricky spots I lost quite some time, but got no faults. This time we got a couple of points on time because of my safe strategy, but otherwise I think we had a very nice run. Anyway, with two diecent runs WE PLACED 3rd! An amazing result considering that Slovenia has a very strong Medium team. I never expected we could place so high, so I was super proud. We may not be the fastest team around, but Xsara is a very reliable dog, and I respect her for that. However next time, I'm not going safe any more, I will just run and if I send her to a wrong obstacle, so be it. Here is the video of our Jumping run, thanks to Petrca:



Also another news - we started doing theraball exercises and she loves it. She jumped on the ball right away and on the first day she was already comfortable doing some easy tricks on the ball. That's another thing I love about her, the excitement she puts into everything she does. She is such a cool dog, so full of life and vital energy, and so loving and sweet at the same time. I just can't stop thinking how happy I am that she is fine, as she is sleeping in my lap. I'm taking her for an extra long walk when she wakes up - because today we celebrate life!

I Am Smad!

It's official - people are crazy! I riecently found a German blog in which some of the readers were discussing Xsara's videos. My knowledge of German language is next to nothing, but I think one of the readers accused me of having Xsara under high doping mixture containing cocaine, cocoa and toothpaste! I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my life, anybody who knows me will tell you I'm even careful about giving her vitamins because I think her high quality dry food contains enough of them. And I certainly don't give her any sort of doping. I can't believe people can be so cruel, I don't even know this person! I love Xsara and I would never do anything to hurt her, if I thought agility or tricks were hurting her, I would stop doing them right away.
This accusation really made me sad and mad (smad?), because I am putting so much energy and work in Xsara's training. So I wrote an article about working with low motivated dogs. It can be found on Xsara's Forum. I will be adding more tips to the article and you can add things to if you have any ideas.

A Weird Trial

The trial was almost a week ago but I've been in Italy this week and I just came back. I don't know how to describe this trial adventure, words like weird and unusual come to my mind. The first surprise was waiting for us before we even reached the event: we ran out of gas! I've never ran out of gas before, but I guess there's a first time for everything.
The other unusual thing was the list of competitors. Less than 100 dogs partecipated in the trial, partly because there was an instructor's seminar on the same day and partly because the trial was very far away. I think I've never attended a trial with so few competitors. Since we finished both runs very quickly, we (the crazy agility enthusiasts) decided to run another course for fun. The judge was willing to do it and he quickly made up another course, which was very sweet of him.
It was good for us to pratise on the carpet since we almost always run on the grass. Xsara didn't like the floor at all, which resulted in some mistakes, mostly refusals (very unusual for her). Since there were so few competitors we were still 2nd, but to be honest we didn't actually run well.
However the training on Monday was just incredible. On the grass she could find weaves entrances from the most impossible angles, she was running like crazy so that it was hard to keep up with her, no knocked bars, no refusals, no missed contacts, all fast and clean runs with very difficult courses. I think that training session made me fall in love with the sport all over again, I just can't wait to go back!

It's Snow

We finally got our first REAL snow in Ljubljana, some of it actually stayed on the ground. It started snowing right on Christmas day, which was pretty. But the first agility-training-in-the-snow this year was even nicer! Since we can't film the skating video in the snow, I'm posting one of our runs today - and to prove you that we can run a little faster :) It was very slippery so I couldn't run as fast as Xsara, but I did my best.



We are going to the seaside for the New Year and we will stay there for a week. I will make the skating video there since they have no snow there.

A New Challenge

Coming up soon: learning how to sk8 :)

I bought a skateboard today and we'll see how it goes, but I think she'll love it - she saw it for the first time and she just stepped on it like a pro! This time I decided to film every step of our progress and make a short video about teaching this trick. Should be interesting!

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 :)

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!

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.

Our First RO Trial

The first Rally-Obedience trial went surprisingly well. We lost most pts on the table since I wasn't confident Xsara would do it from 10 metres and I went closer. We also lost pts on other agility obstacles - the jump was the 1st exercise and Xsara thought this was an agi trial and wanted to run over it. Later on there was the exercise where the dog must heel while you are making circles. On every right turn the dog had the entrance into the tunnel right in front of the muzzle. My agi doggy wanted to go in so bad - she didn't but she kept looking in that direction. Other exercises went well - we gained 65/75 pts and finished on 8th place out of 21 dogs (but only 3pts after the dog that placed 2nd which is probably what we lost on the table). Meaning we passed the RO-I exam and are now allowed to compete. We both definitely prefer agility but it would be fun to do RO trials every now and then.

Xsara Is The National Champion

Xsara is National Champion of Slovenia in her class (A2/J2 M)!

Saturday was the final of National Championship. I was feeling very sick that day and I was handling her horribly. We had two off-courses, but we had enough advantage from previous trials to win the Championship anyway (only one dog could have beaten us for one point if she won but she also had off-course). Anyway, I still can't believe it, I am so proud of Xsara. She really is an amazing beagle and we are lucky enough to have amazing trainers in our club (Silvia Trkman, Polona Bonač and Daša Zakotnik). We still have a lot to work on but seems like we're on the right track.

A Trial And A Seminar With Gwyn Roberts

On Saturday's trial in Ljubljana we had the assistant of the selector of British team Gwyn Roberts as the judge. The courses on first level were easy, but very different from ours on A2/J2 and A3/J3 levels. The rules inEngland are a little different - larger distance between the obstacles, other course dimensions and so on. Anyway, Xsara did well, she was a little faster this time but missed another contact and even dropped a bar (weird). We were still 2nd because many teams were disqualified. On sunday the judge held a seminar but Xsara was still very tired and couldn't perform best. I let her sleep after the seminar.

A Trial in Ljutomer

We spent a beautiful day in Ljutomer yesterday. The trial went on so fast, even though it was also team competition again. We came back to Ljubljana before the dark. Xsara had two clean runs and 3rd place, meaning she accomplished the last requirement for A3/J3, but we're not going there yet. We have to work on improving our times. Last year it was a lot worse if it was too hot, specially when she was in heat. But I know she is capable of running a lot faster. She always runs behind me and I have to teach her to go ahead. I also think she's been making bigger turns lately. But I'm very happy that she's running and enjoying trials, that's what really counts for me!