So summer is over and so many news to share. We spent more than a month travelling Europe: Seville (Spain) - Leon (Spain) - the Pyrenees (France) - Torino (European Open, Italy) - Slovenia (home sweet home <3) - Germany (BASE - international competition for pyrenean shepherds only) - Cantabria (Spain) - Euskadi (Spain). We did a little bit and a lot of everything: swimming, hiking, agility, meeting family and friends, resting and cuddling... T
hose were perfect holidays, I enjoyed every single day to the fullest. And although we had so much fun on any of these places, I just have to say a few more words about BASE, just because it was the first time I attended such a competition. It was probably one of the most beautiful, if not the most, competition I have ever been to. So many pyrsheps, so many new and old friends, perfect venue, surface and surroundings, great judges and what really matters the most - everybody just seemed so happy, so friendly, it was pure fun. The judges were Rolli Schiltz and Sandra Korber.
Roo is A2 now. Finally! It was a long way with him and we still need a lot of experience and training to make a good team, but so far I am really happy with his running contacts and improvement in general! We need to work on his obstacle focus and weaves some more, those are pretty good on training, but still having lots of problems on trials. He is super fast though and always ready to play, run, jump or just cuddle. He is absolutely obsessed with me and spends all day watching me and somehow always manages to find a way to put his head in may lap.
MikMik is a little super star. She has long ago gathered all points for A3, but I am keeping her in A2 as my goal for now is to work on her self confidence on trials. I see improvement, but it is step by step, sometimes 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, but I do think we are on the right track. Her biggest issues are the dogwalk and weaves and sometimes speed in general. She is pretty consistent for her young age and fairly easy to handle on the course, she does have moments when she is just brilliant and runs as fast as she can. I hope with time there will be mo
re and more moments like this.
And Ben... Now not so good news. Although he is still the happiest little clown on earth and still really having fun on agility and barking I noticed something was not right this summer. His times were getting a bit slower than normally, now that didn't really worry me that much, afterall he is 9, 5 years old, BUT... Then I noticed on training that he was really confused when I threw the ball for him. Not once. It was throw after throw that he just didn't see the direction of where that ball was flying to. Very odd. MikMik and Roo had absolutely no problems. It was a bit dark though. Then on next competition again I noticed he was slower and... he was preparing a little bit before taking off the jumps. Then I realized that maybe it is not his age, maybe it is not OK, maybe his sight has deteriorated. It only happens when it is a little dark, but his eyes will be checked asap. If I am right and if I see he is having problems on jumps and other parts of the course, then he will be retired from agility. And that sure makes me very sad. Of course there are other things we can do, but I will sure miss running with him, he is my very first dog, he is a part of me, he is so important to me. But hope dies last and I am still hoping his eyes are ok and that it was just my imagination.
For now just a video of Roo and his nice runs from this summer, I still have to edit and publish the videos of MikMik and Ben.