Telepathic Little Dog

Our weekends are still full of trials and fun little trips. I'm happy with Xsara's runs this year - even though she doesn't run clean all the time, she is starting to be more independent on course, and I really hope she continues to do so.



We are also working on some new tricks, and she absolutely loves learning new things. She is a very very smart little dog. She is quite different from Tani who will try a thousand things with a new object and keep trying until she hears the click. Xsara will sit and think, and somehow figure out what I want her to do with it right away. I never know how she does it, maybe we're so bonded that she can telepathically feel what I want her to do. But she never needs more than a couple of tries to figure out what the trick is.

Here are some new pictures of my smart little girl, taken on our hiking trip yesterday:

A Little Bit Of Everything

I've become totally horrible with updates on this blog!! We had very bad weather for a week and couldn't train outisde, but it's been lovely for the past few weeks and now we're mostly outside.

We had a 4Fun trial a couple of weeks ago and Xsara won the open cathegory, making me very proud. Then yesterday we had a trial in Austria. Our first run was pretty bad because I forgot the course (it happens) so we got a refusal and knocked the long jump, but the second run (agility) was great, all contacts were super and even though the course was very difficult we were 2nd, so overall we finished on 5th place (but only missed 2nd place for 1 point). Not bad at all, specially since we haven't competed in so long. We have a lot of trials in the next weeks as well, plus some rally-obedience trials and a herding test for Tani, so we're super busy. Here are some pictures from Austria:



... we also filmed some of Tani's new tricks:


... and went to the seaside again:



Why am I a workaholic when it comes to my dogs? Because of this look in their eyes! When it comes to learning new things, they both get green sparkly eyes and wag their tails passionately - and I'm crazy about that :)


Tani and Xsara are doing great, they are still very good friends and I have no problems taking them everywhere with me. I thought I would have more problems getting Tani used to competitions (a lot of dogs, people and sounds), but she was totally fine and acted like a pro :) Xsara is constantly regaining muscles as Tani keeps her very busy, so she is in a very good shape now (but they are currently both on hyper calories diet). Will post again as soon as I have more time! Thanks to everyone for your comments, I always appreciate them.

Puppy Tricks (part 2)

Here is part 2 of Tani's puppy tricks, filmed during our trip to the seaside on Sunday.



You can see how nicely Xsara and Tani play together, for those who were asking how they get along. They are very good friends, only 2 toys are absolutely off limit for Tani and Xsara won't let her near them (nobody touches the green ball but Xsara and I). Tani has some very beagle-like characteristics (not distrustful of strangers at all, everybody is her best friend and gets tons of kisses if notices how wonderful she is). Xsara is even more playful than before, I think she really likes having company. So all is good :) Hope to make some new videos soon (we really need to do a new tricks video for Xsara as well)!

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 :)

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!

Three's Company

Yes, I am now officially working with three different dogs - that's right: three! I had the first agility class with Sena on Thursday and I also convinced Daša to lend me one of her border collies, Kate, for Rally-Obedience. Working with a BC is very weird for me, specially because she's so big compared to Xsara and I have to use my body language a lot more with her. She also needs very clear and determined handling; if she is not absolutely sure what I want her to do, she gets nervous (while Xsara would do it anyway if she was in her position). I think working with Kate will be very helpful to me and that Xsara will also benefit from what I learn with another dog. In addition, Kate is an extremely cool dog, so I really enjoy spending time with her.

Working with another beagle is a real treat and I have to say that Sena surprised me a lot. I didn't really expect her to follow me so nicely in our first training, but she was amazing. We started with obstacles introduction and she tried to avoid jumps at first, but she would already do a set of three jumps and a tunnel by the end of the class. We also started introducing her to the weaves. I thought she would try to escape and go sniffing around since she was in a new place (our course is in the woods, by the way!) without her people, but when she saw Xsara was also there, she really enjoyed being with us. Xsara wasn't really jealous, but she did want to play with me while I was working with Sena so she cried a little - and she was super proud when it was her turn to run with me. Sena will be staying with us for one week from May 12th on :)

I don't know if my working with other dogs is the reason why Xsara is performing so nicely lately, but she is amazing. She just learned a new trick and is now able to wrap herself in a blanket like a cute furry pancake. And she performed so well in yesterday's trial, that she even surprised me. The courses were very difficult and the times were so fast that even most of the fastest dogs got points on time. Our first run was clean, even though the contacts were rough enough to satisfy any fakir and dogs couldn't wait to get off them. The second course was even more difficult, and I made it extra hard by including two additional front-crosses in our run. It was very silly of me, but I am still happy with our performance. Despite my mistakes and one bar down (again, my bad - made the front cross too quickly), we were first in our cathegory and had quite satisfactory times in both runs. Here are the videos:

Agility


Jumping

Veni, Vidi ... Succeedy

The first trial since January went incredibly well. Both our runs were clean and fast enough to bring us the first place in A2/J2 cathegory. The course was very muddy and slippery so I almost fell a couple of times, but I was happy with my handling - I think my directions were clear even on the tricky spots and Xsara was able to understand them on time. I have the video of our first run but it's very poor quality. I hope I will get a higher quality version and post it this week, otherwise I will just post the one I have. Anyway, I am very happy with how the trial went and with Xsara's performance - in addition the weathermen were wrong again and we had almost no rain all day, it was actually sunny most of the time. All in all, this was probably one of my favorite trials so far.

The day ended with another exciting news. We will get to doggy-sit Xsara's sister Sena this week (and in May, too). Her people even said I can try taking her to agility and if she will work with me maybe compete with her, too. Now, that would really be fun!

I'm also posting a photo of a new trick - this is not the "secret" trick I was talking about before, but I think it looks pretty cool. I haven't named it yet, but I will probably call it "get in the bowl" if I don't get any better ideas (I always add the verbal cue in the last step of teaching a trick). The "secret" trick is taking a little longer because we have a lot of other work now (with advanced RO class, agility and regular ground-work), but it's coming, I promise!

Holidays Are Over ...

... and so is our snow. I'm not snow-crazy but Xsara loves it very much, so it's nice to have it - for a couple of days at least. We also made another trip to the sea (I know, I'm obsessed), so we actually had both: the pleasures of snow and sea in one weekend.

Unfortunately the weather was kind of depressing most of the time, so I spent an entire day planning our summer holidays in Tuscany. Long walks among beautiful hills, vineyards and fields full of sunflowers are just what we need (well, who doesn't, right?). I can't wait :)

We are working on a new trick. I'm not revealing what it is, I'm just telling you it's something awesome and also kind of complicated. We are making great progress with it, so I'm really happy about it. Xsara likes it, too - she gets so excited and I just love to watch her learn new stuff.

We also started to jog. For the first couple of days Xsara seemed to be the perfect jogging partner. Being a true beagle however, she soon discovered that I wasn't keen on making stops and she decided to take advantage of this. She would slow down, let me go on, and when I would be far enough she would roll in something delicious or even try to eat it. The whole jogging thing would then turn into me chasing her around the fields, which she thought was way more fun. I don't want to jog with her on leash because it took me years to convince her to run at least one step ahead of me in agility. So now we jog with a ball in my hand. It's not even jogging any more, it's more like sprinting as fast as we can and in a certain moment I say "go on", throw the ball ahead and then reward her if she outruns me to the ball (she always does). It's fun but I would still like to jog, too. If you have any ideas, I'm opened to suggestions.

We have no trials for two more weeks, so we are just doing our usual training. When the season starts we will have trials every weekend, and hopefully the weather will improve by then. Our biggest challenge this year is to get accepted to European Open 2008. Last year it was probably my favorite trial because we were camping there for the weekend and we got to see many excellent handlers in action - even a couple of very good beagles, which is always a wonderful experience for both of us.

Little Things Make A Big Difference

We didn't go to the trial, but we had a great weekend nevertheless - at least until Sunday afternoon when I had to go to work. On Saturday we went to the seaside. It was cloudy, but a little warmer than here. I really love the sea and luckily Slovenia is so small that it only takes you one hour to get from Ljubljana (in the center of Slovenia) to any border, including the coast.

While we were there, we also stopped in Italy to buy some pills against heartworm which cannot be bought in Slovenia (even though the mosquitoes on our side of the coast are just as much infected as the Italian ones). Unfortunately we didn't have the time to go to Miramare this time, but we will probably go there next week.

Miramare is a castle in Italy, just by the sea, and there is a wonderful park around the castle. They were both built by order of the Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg in 19th century. The park had no vegetation in the beginning so the Archduke filled it with exotic plants. Today it is a natural reserve and it is just incredibly beautiful.

Sunday was the day for charity. Before I had to go to work we attended a charity event for Repkov sklad (Little Tail's Fund), which helps to provide money for veterinary expenses for rescues, strays and animals with owners who simply cannot afford to pay for a lifesaving operation. They also provide food and temporary residence for these animals. They are doing an incredible job and Xsara and I donate them practically all of the food we win on competitions.

The event was a race, but not a competitive one so you could walk slowly if you wanted to. They also had a presentation of canine disciplines and one of the organizers asked me to demonstrate some tricks. We actually never performed tricks in public before - we do it for friends and as a warm-up routine before runs, but not like that. I was happy to do it but Xsara was still a little uneasy because there were so many unknown dogs. She did well, she only refused to do the handstand and she needed a little more encouragement, but the tricks that she did were very nice.

Events like this one always make me remember how lucky we are. Big thanks to those who are helping the less fortunate dogs and making their dreams of a happy home come true!

Beagle Doggy Tricks Part 3

It stopped raining today, so we managed to film the third part of Xsara's tricks. I didn't include the "diagonal legs up" in this video, because she can't do it with distractions yet. She was in a pretty good mood so I'm quite happy with the result, but she can do some of the tricks even better. I hate being a perfectionist, but what can I do, it's just how I am. Anyway, I hope you like our video - I'm going to change the music next week, when I think of something more appropriate. Enjoy!

New Trick!

Ta-daaaa! I proudly represent: diagonal legs up! And winter is not over yet so we win :) For now she can hold them up for a couple of seconds, but I'm sure she'll soon be able to do it longer.

We wanted to film the third part of tricks today but it's raining so we had to postpone it. But I bought a new camera today so the quality of the next video should be better.

Jazz and Dixie, Patience and Eddie, Peaches and Bella all gave us this wonderful award:

Thank you so much! We would like to give it to Johann because his blog always makes us think.

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 :)

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.

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

Beagle Doggy Tricks part 2

We had no trials yesterday. It was kind of weird having so much free time. We decided to make a trip to the seaside and film the second part of Xsara's tricks. I thought it would be nice to do it before I go to Norway. So ... let me know what you think! We forgot to film some of the tricks so I guess we will have to include them the next time ...

Beagle Doggy Tricks Part 1

We finally filmed the first part of Xsara's tricks! She didn't give her best performance because it was very hot, but it's OK.


Oh, and we had a trial in Portorož on Saturday. This trial is a little different because it's in night-time since it gets too hot for the dogs during the day. The Italian judge put together interesting courses and Xsara overcame them very well resulting in her achieving the 1st place. The names of our this year's team members were also published during the event. Xsara and I are proud to congradulate them!

First Performance in A2/J2

Yesterday we had our first competition on A2/J2 medium level. We had both clean runs, which means no faults, we only gained a couple of seconds on time because I was having some difficulties remembering the course (the combination was very difficult). We still finished on 3rd place which was very unexpected. Xsara is a constant surprise to me. This week she also learned a new trick: she can now do figure eight between my legs backwards. I can't wait for our next obedience course because Xsara is really fun to work with!

New Year

Xsara spent the New Year on the beach. We were walking by the sea for the entire day. Although she loves snow, she also enjoys sunshine if it doesn't get too hot. And she is specially crazy about long walks that last for the entire day.

These days I am particularly proud of Xsara. She learned to jump in my arms while I'm standing up. When we started to train some experts told me it was probably impossible to teach this trick to a beagle. They were wrong!