So, this coming weekend will be our first competition in almost a full calender-year. We've spent alot of time this winter to train the basics, focus on teamplay and contact and connection together as a team. Hopefully this has evolved into something that we can use for our first competition... Atleast that is my hope!!
We will "debut" in Agility 1 Small and Jumping 1 Small on saturday 06.04 for judge Regin Reinhardt from Denmark.
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." - Colin Powell
This coming week will be spent preparing and fine tuning our cooperation together, before we travel to Voss on Friday with the Chiquitas (Isabelle & Maia with Bella & Zita). It's going to be a fun trip with loads of new challenges, mostly positive I hope :=)
Yesterday we had our first focused training of the week together with Roy/Bella, Isabelle/Bella, Maia/Dewey & Kahrma, Ine/Enja & Cecilie/Ozzy.
I sat the course and it was, for me, a challenging speed course of 15 obstacles.
- We did a forward change between 2-3, got a very good entrance to weaves, but I need to remember maybe slow down Leija before pushing her into the weaves.
- Forward change before 5, and then a Jaako-turn on 7.
- Back change on 10, and a pull towards 5 on 11, and then a back change between 13-15, which gave me a very good finish and better "time" from 10-13.
Main focus for remainder of the week; wheel, flat tunnel and weaves.
I finish this post of with a quote from one of the most famous people in the world;
"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." - Alexander Graham Bell
People have been hammering me to start blogging again in regards to the training that Leija and myself are doing. I keep a thorough track of every training session, all competitions both unofficial and official in my own personal diary.
I will use some time in the next few days to update stuff around the blog, like picture, template and probably some color choices for the entire site, but hopefully I can also spend some time in actual posts as well.
I will try my best to post my own thoughts, feedback from others and also there might be some in depths video analysis from myself and feedback from my trainers :)
I can not guarantee anything in regards to posting frequency, but now I have my book to keep track and people to push me to post online aswell :)
I'll say it the way Plato says it;
"The beginning is the most important part of the work."
We have now just turned into mid-november 2011 and my competing season has finished. Our last competition was in Åsen on 15-16 October.
During this competition, I was so lucky to get a few well-earned words of wisdom from my lovelly wife, and a few knocks at the back of the head from some good friends. It is always good to have people pushing you in the competitive scene ;) Below is a video-compilation of our runs in October:
As you can see from the video, we had our good day and our bad day :( The bad one was on saturday, where we didn't complete a single run or, in my mind, not a good experience.
On sunday however, things started to go alot better, with our first finished run of the weekend. Unfortunately Leija reacted to one of the course helpers, which in turn resulted in alot of time spent in getting here to finish the weaves correctly. At that time my motivation drops to the floor and I loose some interest.
Without going too much into details regarding this competition, I can whole heartidly say that I was happy by the end of the weekend with the results I obtained. As long as I had fun doing, I will rate that as a success!
But I would also look to evaluate my entire season as a whole:
- As this was our first competitive season as a team, I didn't have the highest expectations results wise.
We started in 25 individual runs this season and ended up finishing 5 of them. Of these five, one of the runs that I am most happy with, is the Jump 1 run from Arendal 01 May this year. Movie of this run is nr 3 on the clip:
This run really shows me the potential in Leija and myself as a team, but also showed me what some of my key areas of improvement were. Sharper turns, better contact and better weaves!
Like I mentioned above, my expectations for this season wasn't all that big. My main goal was to have fun, but also to try to run as efficient and calm as possible. Minor goals was of course to finish a course, hopefully a clean run, but it was not a major goal. One of the down-sides of not getting full contact with a fast dog like Leija, reflects in the average time & faults of the finished courses in 2011; of the 5 runs, we had a average running speed of 2,56 m/s. Average faults is 10,216 per run!
Atleast we finished five runs :D
Highlights of the 2011-Season:
- My definatelly best highlight for the season, would be the training session with Seppo Savikko, a finnish and internationally renowned agility trainer and also team captain for the finnish national team in 2007-2008 and also in 2012-2013. I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow the agility dog belonging to our breeder, Johanna Stolt, during this session and I can not show my gratitude more for that :) :) :)
What I found amazing, was that just the smallest tips and advise on how to improve the turning-issue and getting Leija to focus more on turning rather than running straight ahead, helped so much in the degree that we actually managed to finish two runs two after the session in the October movie.
- Second highlight was the jump 1 run in Arendal, which you can see above. This showed me the coming potential of Leija and myself as a agility-unit.
Goals for the 2012-Season:
- My main goal for this season will be to continue to have fun. Work on the joy of doing what we are doing and try to get more into the celebrating good runs and ignoring the bad runs.
- Try to qualify for class 2 in both agility and jumping ( 3 clean runs in each branch )
- Get a average of 3,2mtr per second in running speed across all parcours run.
- Have atleast one training session with Seppo Savikko and one session with another trainer.
Hopefully these goals will be achievable within the year, and I will be sure to adjust them half way :) Maybe I can even put down some more :)
Wish us luck
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our friends.
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 ?
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
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 :)
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
