News

• 25.1.2010

Snow, snow, snow… I hate snow. Ok, I don’t really hate snow, but it is really annoying. Especially when you are finally felling good enough to actually run and your agility abstinential crisis reached its rock bottom. In the absence of any serious training, we are spending time just fooling around and enjoying snow as much as we can. Adjustable just might be our middle name.

Even though it has been more than 6 months since we have seriously trained anything, I couldn’t resist the temptation and entered my dogs to an indoors agility competition in Hungary and we enjoyed every second of it. And to my big surprise, Kiša even managed to make her first exam for A3. Interesting enough, she was the most obedient of my dogs. Maybe she has outgrown her “allovertheplace” phase. Little Šja forgot all about her name, and Šaj thought jumping is a waste of time when you can just run, but nevertheless, I was very pleased with our performance.

January is also the time to make all sorts of plans. So we made one. If everything goes according to plans, I will have a full house this time next year. Check the right corner of this page for details…

• Happy 2010

• We are back…

… with new and improved homepage. I must say it was kind of difficult for me to abandon the old one, because it was beautiful and unique, but this one is much easier to maintain and upgrade. So hopefully, I will be a bit more regular with updates. However, it is not completely new, most of the texts are still the same, but I added a new section called training, where you can read more about our training, my classes, seminars and my training philosophy in general.

So, we had a busy season with some nice successes, but still overall 2009 is just not going to be the year to remember. Here are some of our biggest ups and downs:

The highlight of this year was for sure 1. Croatian Sheepdog Working Championship which took place on 20.,21., and 22. November in Zagreb. From the moment I heard it is going to happen, I was anticipating it with great excitement.  Having a possibility to compete in so many disciplines at the same weekend + to see a big number of Croatian Sheepdogs at once was simply the best thing I could imagine. And when it finally happened, it overcame my expectations by far. First of all I was pleasantly surprised by the level of concern for us  competitors. Everything from accommodation, welcome diner and some beautiful gifts was just great and gave the event a special note. Technical crew that was in charge for the competition itself did their job flawlessly, so you only had do think about your performance. But 1.CS Working Championship was way more than just a competition. It was a tribute to the Croatian Sheepdog as a breed. It was a display of a enthusiasm, stamina, speed, intelligence and courage of a little black dog that can do it all. It was a great and educational gathering for all fans, and a really nice promotion of the breed. And last but not least, I see this championship also as a tribute to Cita (Drava Certisa), little dog that charmed Europe,  brought Croatian Sheepdog under spot lights and gave me the best doggie on the whole wide world – Šaj.

I felt truly honored to participate, and I sincerely hope this Championship will be the beginning of a nice tradition that will contribute to promotion and breeding of this wonderful breed in the future.

Both Šaj and Kiša were very successful in Zagreb. Šaj won agility, BOB at special dog show and she was 2nd overall. Kiša was the only dog that competed in all 6 disciplines and was 3rd overall.

Click here to read more about our performance at this competition.

In beginning of summer Kiša passed IPO1. It was a huge deal for me, because this sport was what got me interested in dog training in the first place. Protection training is still my favourite (well, probably because I don’t have to do much, just stay back and watch my dog kick ass… , and I enjoy obedience training as well. I cannot say the same for tracking though, but you know what they say – what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Or at least better trainer.

Anyway, Kiša and I were really working hard the whole year for this, and it paid off. She got 98 for protection, 96 for obedience and 83 for tracking, which is not a surprise, considering Kiša had a moron on the other side of a leash. I was a nervous wreck and did everything to make her job more difficult than it already is.
We did it anyhow, so we are now marching for IPO2, hopefully with more tracking training and therefore less stress.

Passing this exam was my primal goal for Kiša this year, so our agility training was suffering a bit. She is still quite inexperienced and chaotic, but she managed to progress to A2. I had to re-train the contacts in the process, so now she has both running and 2on2off.  So far it works nice, although I am still not completely satisfied with her 2on2off. Video and description about this training process coming soon!

Šaj ran her first season in A3, and despite the fact that we don’t have any special result to brag with, I am more than happy with us. With her “I am not going anywhere without you” attitude, she has made me a far better handler. I am much faster and way more efficient than I used to be. And I just love running with her. We just have to figure out how to convince all the bars to stay on and then we have it all…
Thanks to Alen, she is also a representative for Croatian sheepdog in a new World Atlas of Dog Breeds. (http://www.amazon.com/World-Atlas-Breeds-Dominique-Vito/dp/0793806569/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_a)

Little Šja is doing great as always. She won individual agility run at European open, and I was really happy about it. I think that was actually the first time she has won one individual run at EO (not counting the finals in Italy), and because of the number of dogs competing, it is a really big result for me. In the finals things were perfect to the point… where I made a mistake of my career. I wanted to get a perfect turn after the dog-walk and I was worrying about it so much, that I accidentally did a front-cross where I was not supposed to, and send my dog to the wrong tunnel entry. I didn’t really plan to publish a video, because it is still pain full to watch it, but I did anyway. So whenever you feel like shit, take a look at it, and you will feel much better. I promise.

She also qualified for AWC 2009 in Dornbirn, Austria.

Oh, last but not least – she had a new hair cut. The idea first came into my head after an interesting conversation with some agility friends. One of them was claiming that a shaved dog can run 2 seconds faster per course than a harry one. I disagree, and I was thinking about shaving one of my dogs to prove him wrong, but that reason was just not good enough… But then little Šja got badly bitten by another dog, and the vet shaved her whole neck to take care of her wounds. She looked quite funny, so I decided to shave her completely. Of course that didn’t make her 2 seconds faster, but I guess she was a bit less hot during the summer.

She is now back to her old harry look, don`t worry…

Oh, and I almost forget to present Mr. Gomez. It is a mystery to me how he found my pond, but here he is and we like him… I hope he found a place to sleep during the winter so that we will be able to enjoy his company again next spring.

But then there are the bad things…

Even though Toby was fully checked last December and everything seemed to be ok, he is not ok now. His hind legs collapse from time to time so apparently he has problems with his back. Apart from that, he became totally deaf. I guess that was the point where I realised that he is really getting old.  But as you can see, even that doesn’t stop him from being goofy…

My dear Hani lost her battle with cancer. I miss her…

And in the end I got quite seriously ill.  For that reason we missed this years agility world championship as well as pretty much the whole autumn.  Staying in bed for such a long period of time was no fun at all, but at least I finally had time to finish my homepage. 

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