World Championship 2010
Yeap, we're back! VERY happy with the results this year! Feels a kind of fancy to have two dogs at the very top of the sport. It means more to me to be fourth with two dogs as first with one and chaotic with the other. I'm really proud on how consistently well we did with both La and Bu. Other than one bar by Bu and one off course by La, caused by me, running too slow, all the runs were as clean as it gets. I'm also especially proud of Bu for setting best time in TWO runs!!! Feels especially fancy to have already a second dog who can set the best time on WC! 🙂
Bu, team jumping&agility, best time from all in both of the two runs:
Also, all our contacts were perfect and so were all the contacts by other dogs, trained by my method (Sja&Polona and Lu&Urska from Slovenian Team, Cloe&Masha from Italian Team, Solar&Daisy from US Team, Gera&Mishka from Slovakia Team and then some more I guess, I'm not keeping track of everybody anymore...). And, for all, thinking a dog must have a start line in agility, watch the three girls who won small agility team - all three starting "from hand" as we call it. Can you guess they're "ours"? I'm very happy also for Matej&Witch (you can see them in my Cik&Cap Video) for winning agility team run and their 10th combination place and of course for Daisy&Solar for their 2nd place in agility individual run (yeap, running contacts rock!) and 5th overall. So many things to be happy about!
I also loved the organization, it was much more relaxed as the years before, much less rules and very nice place, many of fields for walking the dogs, enough parking for parking close enough to keep the dogs in cars, great surface to run on, only obstacles could be better (we most certainly vote for rubber contacts over what we had to run on this year!). Even judges did pretty good job, especially the Swedish one. German one did some strange decisions, like not faulting the dog for entering (and clearly moving) off-course tunnel... The courses were somewhat easier as we hoped for, as we do best on more complicated ones. We haven't seen so easy courses in a very long time, especially medium courses were very easy, really too easy for that level. It promotes dogs who shouldn't be in medium in a first place even more. It is really sad that we're seeing more and more dogs, too big for medium, running in medium every year. If we don't count the dogs, too big for medium, La would actually be 2nd... Not really fair, but hey, that's politics. Going back to agility, here are the links to our runs:
As you can see, all Bu's runs looked like a commercial for Cik&Cap Turns:). She was stressing more and more though, she hated the microchip check after every run and ran slower and slower towards the end, especially in the last run (agility individual). It's amazing she had best time in two runs and her 4th overall place is for sure something to remember too, best result for Slovenia in large and great result for my scared, no-drive BC. I think she did awesome in all of her 4 runs.
La was not really at her best as she got beaten by dogs that she beats for 1 or 2 seconds when feeling well. Watching the pictures, I can see she is not jumping normally, so I guess that means agility break for her, I hope she is back to normal then to be all fit for next year:). Considering her age and height, she did great, still being faster as many much younger and much taller dogs as she is. I'm sure she will prove that once again next year, looking forward to coming back to Lievin, where she won her first World Championships back in 2003.
None of the dogs in the top 4 look that big to me. I have a dog who is exactly 17 inches and he looks taller than even Dizzy on video. I don’t think it’s fair to judge these dogs unless you yourself have measured the dog. The structure of a dog can really create different illusions when it comes to height and the only way to be truly sure is to get your hands on the actual dog. Until then, I think that calling someone out for having a borderline dog is quite rude, it’s not like they can help it if their dog is almost over the cut off. Is anyone really skilled enough to tell the difference between 16.9 inches and 17.5 just by eye alone? I think not. Also, if you were the one with a dog that was just a sliver under 17, would you run in the large class just to be politically correct? No. Would you appreciate people talking negatively about your dog or you? No. This isn’t directed at any of you in particular, as I’ve seen the same type of comments posted in many different places. Innocent until *proven guilty please!
*proven =/= judging height by eyesight alone
I know a person who was there when those dogs were measured. 🙂 I also know they were send out to throw the dogs some balls and then come back with tired dogs so they could measure them lower…
Since this is kinda related to the allegation in hand…
We have a smallish kelpie in our club and we decided to measure her just for experiments sake.
If she was standing with good posture, she was approximately 46 cm high.
However, standing relaxed, carrying her head low and otherwise squirming a bit, she would be measured to be approximately 42.5 cm high, using the very same measuring tape.
Which is the correct height of the dog?
I would say that the higher value is the correct one, but way too often dogs are allowed to slip through measurement in agility if they are able to slouch sufficiently.
BTW. The kelpie in question was measured to be medium.
Well done, Silvia, La anad Bu. You are an inspiration!!!
What a great WC for the 3 of you!
It’s always a whole lot of fun to see you run, and I always have to smile when the only thing to hear is ” La La La”. That’s so cute and funny!
And best wishes to La, hope she’s getting better!