Springtime's Biggest Adventure - AOH - 20-21.04.2013

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work. - Colin Powell



After two weekends of great results, a booming self-confidence and HUGE expectations to the first run of the weekend, Leija pulls out the sign of all signs; "Lower your expectations and have fun"!!!!

She shows me with her entire bodylanguage and behaviour that she thinks I am to serious, and I refuse to take the signs. I've got my head on the "clean-run" goal and I am dead-stuck on it. No one can convince me otherwise... We will win this course and show everyone that we have improved alot.

Honestly, in retrospect, I see all the signs and I see all the mistakes I do in the run..

First of all;

- I start her with my body totally the wrong way, "forcing" her to get a refusal! Did I do that in the course-walk? NOT AT ALL!!!!!

- Between 6 -7 I was planning to do a front-cross change, but got a back-cross change instead, which gives Leija the excellent line towards the A-Frame that is on the outside of the course. I of course react wrong to that, getting really frustrated and I show this very clearly to Leija.

- I use the wrong hands and body position to guide her into the weaves, showing Leija that she can do the weaves from whatever entrance she wants. I do the same when I make her start again, but she luckily for me goes in correct.

- I go too far out after weaves to generate a turn, due to the fact that I was trying to safe-it in the weaves, deliberately not going "lefty" on weaves..

- Because of this, she just runs into the tunnel where she is not supposed to be.

- Result; Disqualified

After a few hours contemplating my actions, getting my head out of my ass, and relaxing with Leija, we tried again in the agility-class. I started the warm-up period a little bit to early with Leija, thus burning some of her energy before the run. However, I also see that Leija is skeptical on going full speed in this run, and I think this is because of my reactions earlier in the day. I see that very easily in the movie, where her speed picks up greatly at the end of the run, when we just run for fun :)

One key note to bring from this competition and one of the main focal points for our training in the time forward to our next competition, is zee-zaw practise. Some how there is some sort of phantom-syndrome going in Leija, which I have no clue how got there. She practically refuses to go over the zee-zaw and it's difficult to pull her across. We have our biggest time-loss on this stuff.

However, we got some good results from this run. The movie I haven't got yet, but I will add this to this post as soon as I get it.

The result list from this weekend then looks like this:



We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort. - Jesse Owens

Tommy & Leija

Stavangerstevnet - 13-14.04.2013

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress." - Barack Obama

The second competition of the season... How to capture the feeling I have about how things are going at the moment with Leija and me???

We had another great weekend in the agility ring. This time it was back at our home club, Sør-Rogaland Brukshundklubb, and it was the Swiss judge Bea Tanner who was in charge of the courses.

On Saturday we started with Agility, and the course was a fun, fast-flowing running course which presented a few challenges that I feel we handled in a good way. Video of the run is below:

Second course of the day was a very fun jumping course that we definately NAILED!!!! We basically beat everyone.. And what a great feeling that was. And finally I'm starting to relax in the course, and stop caring if I disqualify or if it turns out in a different way than I planned in the course walk. Video can be seen below:

On Sunday we had the same schedule as Saturday. In the first run, Agility 1, we disqualified because a stupid handler mistake after 5 obstacles, but I am super happy about the psycho speed that Leija is showing. I know that she is becoming more and more secure in her running and speed, because I am more calm and relaxed. I spend more time before every run working with Leija, and I make sure I spend time reqarding Leija after every run, regardless results. Of course things can be improved on, but I will focus on the positives, as that is what makes me want to practise harder :)

Unfortunately we haven't received the videos for our runs on Sunday, but the results and courses can be found below:

Agility 1:

Jumping 1:

Our list of runs complete with results are listed below:

Thanks for the read,

Tommy & Leija

Vossastevnet 06-07.04.2013

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." - Henry Ford



Now our first official competition is over. How did it end, you might ask?!? Well, let me illustrate with a picture:

The competition for myself and my self-confidence was a major success. After almost a year of no competitions, rehabilitation and meticulous training, we started in our first real competition. This happened in Voss, a place mostly known for their excellent skiing facilities and strange food habits. (Basically they eat a full sheeps head)..

The trip to Voss started on friday 05.04 as Team Speedfreaks picked up "The Chiquitas", that being Team Isabelle/Bella & Team Maia/Zita. We got on the way, had a pitstop in Stord to get the alcohol purchased, before we continued our way to Voss. The weather was really great and we had a great trip. We even got to see what happens when someone eats a donut which tastes like pear, then you mix it with ice tea, laugh and then magic will happen :p hahah...

The competition was judged by the Danish judge, Regin Reinhardt. In my opinion this was a judge who produced very interesting and fun judges, with good lines and excellent speed for the dogs. It was a good judge for Leija and me, and I really, really liked his courses.

First run of the day was Agility 1, and it started very good on saturday for me and Leija that ended with a thrid place finish and 15.00 fault points, but 10sec below the standard time due to some propblems with the zee-zaw. Movie is below:

Second run was Jump 1, and we finished better than the first run.

On Sunday we started in the opposite way, with Jumping first and then Agility after:



We disqualified on this run, 100% handler error and showing her the wrong way to run.

Luckily I was able to reset myself and get my mind set on the proper channel again, giving us an ok run for the agility, even though Leija got the "ghost" symptom on zee-zaw and dog-walk:

The total "scorelist" for us this weekend can be seen below:

That's all from 'Team Speedfreaks' for now. Talk again soon :)

Tommy & Leija

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." - Arthur Ashe

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

Tommy & Leija

"Begin today. Declare out loud to the universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy" - Sarah Ban Breathnach

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."

Tommy & Leija

"Patience is the companion of wisdom" - Saint Augustine

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.

Tommy & Leija

"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