Happy Halloween!

I don't normally dress Xsara up into costumes, but we found these adorable fairy wings at a children's store and couldn't help ourselves. So this year Xsara is a Food Fairy for Halloween.

Do you think she doesn't look scary? Well, she's horrifying ... to a hamburger :)

Happy Halloween!

New Action Pictures

Big thanks to Iztok and Andraž for these amazing pictures of Xsara, taken on the previous few trials!

Tomorrow I'm going to Djerba to enjoy some sunshine before winter. I think Xsara will love having Gas all for herself, while I know I will miss her like crazy! We will be back to blogging next week.

National Champion 2008

Yup, that's right! For the second year in the row, Xsara won the combined National Championship in Agility on A2/J2 Medium level. Even though we have been competing in A3/J3 for the past two trials and missed the first trial of the season due to her nail injury, we still had enough points from 9 out of 12 trials. I am super proud because the competition was a lot more difficult this year. It really gives us a nice closure for A2/J2 and now we can set new goals for the next season.




In the final trial of the season we also competed in A3/J3. In the first run we missed the teeter contact, and in jumping we were disqualified due to the wrong tunnel entry and had one knocked bar. Xsara wasn't in a great mood for running, she had an upset tummy the day before and is on a risotto diet. But looking at the videos I think we did some parts of the course quite well. Courses of this type are very difficult for us because the handler stands still and sends the dog around the same jumps, while Xsara performs her best when I run with her and pull her ahead with my movement. We need to gain speed in situations like this, so this will be our main working focus in the next weeks or months. I really hope that we will soon be able to bring the attitude she has in training to the trial field, because we do a lot better in training (well, most teams do). Here are the videos of our runs:

Agility

Jumping

We also had another Rally-Obedience trial last week. Xsara did very well, but she missed the entry into her favorite agility obstacle - the weaves! It was funny to see that many agility dogs had problems with agility obstacles in obedience, because they don't really expect to see them there. She got a very nice score considering we didn't get points for one exercise. We were 5th, but without this silly mistake she would probably have won.

We also have to tell you that we are now driving around safer in our new Hyundai Getz! Well, it's not completely new, it used to be my mom's, but she bought a new Getz this week (she is a huge fan, what can I say), and gave me a really good price for the "old" one (well, at 5 years she is not really "old" yet, but she's older that the new one). Pictures to follow!

Help Clint With Just A Click

Xsara and I were so touched by a post on River's Blog, that I decided to publish it here as well, I hope that's OK with River's people (otherwise please let me know). Anyway, there is a Shelter Challenge going on HERE and one of the organizations in the competition is For the Love of Dogs in Tennessee (TN). The rescue with most votes will get a cash prize. Winning this challenge would help them raise money for Clint's hip surgery, so they are asking for help. It doesn't cost a thing and the site doesn't even require a registration. All you need to do is to go to the site: $100,000 Shelter Challenge. Fill in the name For the love of Dogs and the state is Tennessee (choose TN). Then they ask you to type in the name of the animal in a picture. You can vote every day until December 14, every vote will be greatly appreciated. Clint thanks you!

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!

Too Much Work, Too Little Fun

I haven't posted anything new in a while because I had a lot of work, so Xsara was a little bored. Out of protest she learned how to climb on the kitchen counter, which was a disaster so I had to remove one shelve from the room. Sometimes she does something to remind me she's a beagle, and that I should never take her nice behaviour for granted.

We haven't had any trials since the Eukanuba finale, but there will be one on Saturday. This will be our first trial in A3/J3, so it's very exciting. Naturally we regularly take time for our usual trainings and I'm very pleased with our work in both, agility and RO. We also visited a couple of nice places last week: we went back to Kamniska Bistrica and towards Kokrsko sedlo (man, how I love that place!) and to Bloke, where we saw bear traces!

Also we want to express our congratulations to all Xsara's friends from the Slovenian World Team for nice runs in Helsinki!

Hiking, Eukanuba Finale And The Ball That Was M.I.A.

Last week we had to repair the obstacles in our club. It was still sunny outside and we wanted to finish all the work before it would start raining. Once we started to work we realised that the obstacles were in a worse shape than we had suspected, so we couldn't repair them in time. But we did manage to give them a very unique touch. Do you think this will make it easier for the dogs with contact problems? Hehe, probably not! So we will paint them as soon as the weather improves :)

As I heard the weather forecast, I decided to enjoy the last sunny day of the week hiking with Xsara. We didn't actually even have the entire day as it would start raining in the evening, so we went from the lake of Jezersko to Češka koča mountain hut (1543m). This time I decided to go alone with Xsara and I really enjoyed it. It was so beautiful!

First we saw the lake:

... there were also beautiful meadows with cows and horses:

... and, of course - the pretty pretty mountains! Xsara was posing like a professional doggy model, so here are some of our best shots:

On Saturday we had the finale of Eukanuba Cup - our last trial in A2/J2. It was raining for the entire day and it was very cold. The judge was Bernd Hueppe from Austria. I liked running his courses, but I thought they were a little dangerous for very fast dogs given the weather circumstances. Anyway, we were 3rd (again with very nice contacts) and in combined results for the Eukanuba Cup 2008 we were 2nd. Xsara got a nice doggy sleeping bag from the sponsor, but the best reward for her came on Sunday - after three months we managed to find her green ball and I think she's never letting it go again :)

RO-II exam: Passed!

We had more trials this weekend. First we had an agility trial here in Ljubljana. Unfortunately I made a handling error and got us eliminated, but was very happy with Xsara's contacts, which were my priority for this trial. I am planning on moving us to the highest Agility 3 Level this season, so contacts are very important right now. We don't have any pictures from this trial yet, so I'm posting a picture from the last week, kindly sent to me by Teja and Luna.

On Sunday we had a RO trial and for the first time competed in RO-II cathegory. In order to compete on a higher level, a team must complete the exam for this cathegory. I wasn't very happy with our performance because Xsara started sniffing on the start and I couldn't get her concentrated on me. But the judge saw potential in us and was very pleased with some of the exercises that she really did well. So we didn't just pass the exam but also finished on the 4th place. I was surprised to see that we could score so high even on our bad day :) Maybe I'm too self-critical.

After the trial we took Xsara for a long walk. I had to work in the evening so we didn't have a lot of time, but I really wanted to enjoy at least a little bit of mountains. So we went to Kokrsko sedlo, but as we didn't have the time to go to the top, we just walked for a couple of hours and then returned to the valley. Xsara loves hiking so much, it's so nice to watch her jump around like an agile little ibex. And the mountains are absolutely amazing this time of year, so we will definitely do more hiking in the next moths.

Pictures from Selca

Xsara:

Kate:

Tnahks to Andraz and Iztok again.

Trial in Selca 2008

We had another trial on Saturday and it was held in Xsara's birth town, Selca. Unfortunately our breeder couldn't come because she was on a dog expo on the other side of Slovenia. But we visited her a couple of days before the trial to see their new puppies. The 4 weeks old Z-litter is really adorable - 4 sweet girls and one boy.

Anyway, the trial went very well. We had two nice runs and won in our cathegory, so I was a super proud beagle mummy. Seems like Xsara has gained even some more speed lately, so all the training is really paying off for both of us. I know we are still not running our full speed, so I'm working on it and hopefully we will improve our times even more this season. I have to admit that training with other dogs is very helpful to both of us. So no, I'm not "on the dark side" as someone suggested, but I don't want to hold Xsara back so I have to train a lot more than she does.



Dasa was on the same dog expo as our breeder, so I ran with Kate again, as "the white dog". We started very well but I was so afraid that she would hit her shoulder into the flat tunnel entry (which was placed in a nasty 180° turn) that I didn't call her enough, causing her to enter into the wrong tunnel. After that mistake I got a little distracted and made another little handling error and forgot to run faster than I'm used to, but all in all I think it was still a diecent run.



Our next trial is on Saturday and it's also a team trial. Unfortunately one canine member of our team hurt her toe and another one is pregnant, so it seems like our team won't run. I wish both of them a very fast recovery!