"Be gentle to all and stern with yourself." - Saint Teresa of Avila

How do you keep your motivation when everything goes against you?

For the last few competitions, Leija and myself haven't been doing good in the courses. She basically doesn't seem to pay enough attention to what I am trying to guide her to do, or maybe her speed is to great to handle correctly.

I know deep down that her speed is above normal and that we have the opportunity to become a great team, but then it comes down to practise. How much time should I spend practising, when I to begin with struggle to find time for it already?

Is there any point in taking it at the level that I currently do, or should I just resign and stick to only compete close to home? Just take it as the fun it is or actually try to evolve and go somewhere with it ?

Tommy & Leija

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.” - Louis L'Amour

We finally can call Coros Iko for a Norwegian Show Champion :D  During the weekend, we were at the Norwegian Kennel Club show at Orre, Stavanger.

Started at 09.00 on Sunday 11.09 and we were the 2nd dog in the ring. Luckilly the judge liked Iko and placed him as 2nd best male, giving us the CAC and the rCACIB. This meant we finally received our NUCH-title :)

Coros Miracle was not the kind of dog that this judge liked, so she only received a "Very Good" this time.
Judge for this show was Carsten Birk from Denmark.

Atleast we had some sort of success this weekend, more to come at a later post :P

Tommy & Leija

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

Summer holidays are over :P My paternity leave is behind me! It is time to start anew on the fall of 2011!!

One of the things that I have been doing during the summer holiday, is see how many different ways I can get my precious Leija to "trigger", sort of speak. We have tried swimming, fotball, running, grasshopping, and weavepole rushes.... What results did I get??? Well, see for yourself:

During the summer, one thing that I am proud of mentioning, is that we have had an addition to our family born. We have been so happy to get another puppy from the excellent Kennel Coros in Finland. Our new family member will be Coros Niili, or as she will be called; "Li".

Our next show for "Iko" & "Leija" will be the Norwegian Kennel Clubs show in Orre, Stavanger, on the 10-11 September. The judge for Schipperke will be Carsten Birk from Denmark. During this competition, Iko will have his debut in the obedience ring and Leija will compete in both agility and jumping.

Hopefully we will be successful, but we mainly hope to have fun :)

Tommy & Leija

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." - Robert H. Goddard

After a weekend of alot of agility and challenges, I am left with one question in all of the confusion:

Is there hope?

Or am I doomed to wander the courses with no way forward and try to survive in the harsh jungle that is agility?

All I can do, is put my mind to it, get the crazy dog that is Leija, and maybe, just maybe she will obtain the calmness of age and allow us to advance eventually

Tommy & Leija

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Sir Winston Churchill

After a weekend filled with travelling, food, good company and lots of people, we sat down on sunday evening (8th May) with a sensation of "what was the point?".

Since we had already signed up for the NKK Kristiansand show 7-8th May and also received a invitation to my cousin's confirmation (Komfirmasjon), we decided to not sign up on the agility competition on saturday 07th May. After some good food and nice company, we got on the road to Kristiansand late saturday evening. The boys where angels on the trip, being quiet, sleeping a bit and enjoying the trip together with me and Elisabeth.

The show started 09:00 on Sunday, with briefing on the jumping course on the agility. Judge was Morten Holmen and he had made a relative manageable course with a few traps and lots of running. Due to me having pneumonia, Elisabeth was the "lucky" handler for this run..

 Leija was C-R-A-Z-Y during the agility, not doing much else then running around, looney as she is.. Agility run didn't go much better. I was going to do that run and was totally stressed out after the show-part of the weekend.

During the show, we didn't do all to good. Critiques are listed below. Judge was Rony Doedijns from Holland.

Coros Iko: "Very nice, Vnice size, typical head profile, nice eye, very good pigment, maybe head could have bit more length, excell body + angul, very good coat quality + colour, easy mover, very well presented" - Exc, 1, CK, 4th best male.

Coros Miracle: "Bigger bitch, corr prop, stumpy tail, corr head profile, dark but round eye, good bite but not full dentition, could do w more forechest, nice coat quality, prefer firmer topline, move from behind not parallell, missing drive + power + reach on move" - VG

Maybe next time will prove to be more successfull for us in Team Ikoria :)

Tommy & Leija

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun-Tzu

After the hype from this weekends has settled, I would like to direct a big congratulation to Einar Bredo Fossum and Fidel Ruby on Fire. They are a newly constructed team as Ruby's owner and Einar's girlfriend is pregnant and is soon to give birth.

Einar is a very calm and good handler and when you put that together with a dog that will adapt easily to ones handling, you get a very good team to compete.

Proof is in the doing, as you can see below:

Tommy & Leija

"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way." - Aritotles

After some thought, and not figuring out how to put Google Translate, plus realising that I do have a few english speaking readers, I have decided to write in english. Atleast to the point where I can figure out this stupid Internet!!

Since last time we've had Easter holidays and a rather quiet period in regards to agility. At least I have been able to train alot of weaves at home in the garden and when we've been out and about, I've tried to be good at takin alot of pictures. Below is some pictures from our Easter holiday and a few other "goldshots":

From the agility competition that we had during the last weekend, 30 April - 01 May, we had a GREAT experience. Ended up with two completed runs, two good disqualifiers and two not so good runs. All in all, my goal achievements for the weekend, ended up 200% above my set goal. Below you will see my the runs that we caught on tape, and hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I did watching them again.

Have a great week and enjoy our spark of success. We are so happy to be able to share it with you...

Tommy & Leija