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News 02.05.2010 - International Agility Competition in Hillerød Our family went to Hillerød during the weekend the 1st and 2nd of May. This was the first International Agility competition, which are hosted by the Danish Kennel Club. We had rented a cottage at Hillerød Camping, which is within walking distance, really nice - especially the part about not having to sleep in a tent with the entire family... Saturday the Danish Sheltie Club gave out the award "Agility Sheltie 2009", in small it was Jesper with Emsi and in medium it was Jesper Carstensen with Indi who won. Agility Sheltie of the Year is awarded based on the results in open agility class at Kennel Club events, qualification to "Dog of the Year Finals" and Danish Championships, and the result at the Danish Championships. Emsi had been very consistent throughout the year and winning the Danish Championships was the final result that secured her the title "Agility Sheltie of the Year - 2009". Emsi started the competitions very well and won agility open and came in 6th in jumping open, which was good enough for a combined 1st place in the two open classes. Emsi also cleaned agility class 3 and won the class and thereby the CACIAG (International Agility Certificate) - this was a first for her - so now she "only" needs two more abroad to become an international agility champion . I think that will demand a higher level of activity outside the borders of Denmark... GoGo was unfortunately a bit unstable, she seemed to notice the width of the center rail of the slalom, which was somewhat wider that what she is used to (actually Emsi noticed and reacted to the same thing the weekend before in Albertslund, however, she quickly recovered). GoGo also jumped down from the seasaw, fortunately she took it without any problems the second time around. During most of the day we had a lot of showers, luckily it wasn't raining all the time. In the evening we had been invited to Jane and Hans Ole, who own Emsi's puppy Exit and Emsi's brother from the same litter, Elliot. It was a really nice evening where we of cause talked a lot about dogs. It went really well with the dogs (like last time). However, Emsi couldn't really decide whether she wanted to play with Exit (she went into a play bow several times) or if she wanted to kill him! Sunday the sun was shining all of the day, which was really nice - not least because it meant that the tent would dry up before we had to take it down. Emsi only cleaned agility open and came in 3rd. I jumping class 3 was went past the last two gates in the weaves, something caught her attention and she turned her head away from the weaves. Unfortunately enough for her to miss the last two gates. The error was corrected and the rest of the course worked beautifully. GoGo got a refusal in jumping open, in an otherwise really nice run. She made a refusal on the long jump, which was placed towards the edge of the course (and you had to make a 180 degree turn afterwards). Afterwards several people said that a big border collie puppy had been standing at the edge of ring, jumping up and down. But if that really was the reason GoGo made the refusal is impossible to say. Emsi (Shetla's Emsi At Equinox) - Agility Sheltie of the Year 2009 . Emsi i agility klasse 3, 1. plads, CACIAG. Notice how Emsi goes for the jump next to the dog walk - but hesitates, just as if she thinks "that isn't the dog walk". Then she goes for the dog walk instead. 28.04.2010 - Agility in Albertslund Vestegnens Hundeskole were the hosts at the Kennel Club agility competition the 24th and 25th of April. Emsi and Jesper made the trip to Zealand on their own and spent the nights camping with tent - pretty cold when the temperature goes below zero during the night! . However, with emsi curled up in the sleeping bag and a warm blanket on top we kept warm - good thing Emsi isn't a border collie . This was the first competition with qualification for the national team and it was even with "double up" on class competitions, which meant the we had 2 x agility class 3 and 2 x jumping class 3 on Saturday and one of each on Sunday (all class 3, until the end of July, counts towards qualification, you simply select the 5 best results in agility and jumping). Additionally the open classes on Sunday were qualification for the National Championships. Qualifying to the national championships is also a criteria for the national team. Saturday Emsi "managed" to not clean any of the three jumping courses, however, she did win agility open, one agility class 3 and came in second in the other agility class 3. The first agility class 3 was above the "national team qualification speed" of 4.3 m/s, which meant she earned the maximum 15 points, the second place was below 4.3 m/s which meant that it only earned her 8 points. The national team qualification points are; 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 points, awarded to the first 7 dogs (regardless of whether they aspire for the national team or not). 15 and 12 points are only awarded for a clean run and "national team time faults" are awarded if the dog doesn't run below a fictious "standard" course time calculated with speeds of 4.3 m/s for agility and 4.6 m/s in jumping. Sunday brought more success in jumping than Saturday had done. Emsi won jumping open and also agility open. Hereby she qualified for the National Championships (actually only with regards to the National Team, as Emsi is pre-qualified to the National Championships, being the reigning Danish Champion). Lastly; she won jumping class 3 just below the "national team course time". To be precise; she did the course with just 2/100 of a second to spare! Which meant she put another 15 points (maximum) in the bank. . 06.04.2010 - Sports Achievements 2009 Helena, Jesper C. and Jesper K. was honoured by our municipality (Rebild kommune) for the results achieved in 2009. Each spring our municipality honours athletes for their results from the previous year. The results must (for instance) be; Jysk mester (Jutlandic Champion, i.e. championship for the western part of Denmark), 1st, 2nd, or 3rd at Nordic Championships or Danish Championships, participation at European Championships, World Championships or The Olympic Games. Our local club DcH Støvring was represented by three dog handlers this year. Helena Lund Thomsen with Jubii for placing 1st at the Danish Championships 2009, obedience class 3 (Danish Kennel Club). Jesper Carstensen (left in the picture) for 2 x Jutlandic Champion in DcH 2009 in agility small with Louie and medium with Indi, and finally Danish Champion 2009 in agility small team with Louie. Jesper Kjær (right in the picture) with Emsi for placing 1st at the Danish Championships 2009 in agility small and for participation at the World Championships 2009 in Austria in agility (6th place individually). A total of 61 athletes from Rebild kommune was honoured. Everybody received a fine personalised glassplate decorated with the name of the athlete and the sport. 15-03-2010 - Indoor DcH-competition at Vilhelmsborg The 13th and 14th of March DcH Risskov hosted the largest indoor agility event in Denmark. The event is held at Vilhelmsborg which primarily is a center for horse show jumping. Saturday jumping open and agility open was qualification for the Danish Championships. All four open classes (Saturday + Sunday) was also qualification for a jumping finals which was the closing event Sunday. Emsi started really well by winning both open classes. To qualify to the Danish Championships you need two clean qualifying runs in open jumping and open agility. GoGo also cleaned the agility open, unfortunately with a bit of time faults and she crossed the finish line as no. 7. In jumping open GoGo was eliminated three obstacles from the finish line due to sloppy handling. In jumping class 3 Emsi kept the pace and cleaned the course (1st place), unfortunately GoGo was eliminated. In agility class 2 GoGo went up the A-frame instead of entering the tunnel which was laid out beneath the A-frame. In agility class 3 Emsi had another clean run and a 1st place - four in a row! Sunday was the same schedule as Saturday, plus of course the jumping finals. In jumping open Emsi ended up in 7th place. She stopped completely in gate two of the weaves, which resulted in me temporarily forgetting the course after the weaves - that resulted in a lot of wasted time... In agility open Emsi had a clean run and took 1st place again. Emsi was eliminated in jumping class 3. I "picked her up" from a tunnel exit and wanted to send her to the back of the next hurdle, however, I drew back a bit too soon and Emsi too the hurdle from the wrong side. Agility class 3 was yet another clean run and a 1st place. In the finals Emsi and I cleaned the course and came in second after Anne-Mette Hemdrup with Tyson. GoGo was unfortunately eliminated in both jumping open and agility open, as well as jumping class 3. In agility class 2 GoGo ended up with 5 faults, due to a refusal on a tunnel, she went in but came back out again. Too bad, as it was otherwise a nice run and an unusual error from GoGo. 06.02.2010 - Collapse... We only trained once ion our barn in the new year - now our barn is history... On January 27th at about 7:30 pm tha roof of our barn gave in to the pressure from the snow, and took the walls down with it. We had been watching the news where they had told about another collaps, and we didn't think that we had that much snow on our roofs. Shortly thereafter we heard a loud crack, which we thought was snow sliding of the barn onto the roof of our house. But moments later there was another much louder crack and I went into the barn to have a look. I could hear the roof creaking, so I rushed back into the house and got the car keys and drove both cars out into the yard, as they are normally parked in the barn. I went around the barn to have a look and the layer of snow didn't seem that thick. However, as I came back in through the gate of the barn I saw that several beams were already halfway broken. I called one of our neighbors, who has an excavator. We would try to get some of the snow of of the roof. He never even got to our proporty before the roof caved in almost in slow motion. The roof more or less took down the entire barn, a couple of yards of the roof on our house and the top of the gable. The end result is that several of our agility obstacles are destroyed, damaged or still buried in the rubble, and their condition is still uncertain - and to top it all of; our insurance does cover it... The pictures speaks for themselves. Next project is now clearing up, when the snow is melted, to add insult to injury we had another 10-15 cm of snow the days after the collapse. At the same time we will try to clear out the fences and gates in our olod pigs stable in order to be able to do just a minimum of indoor training. 10.01.2010 - Winter in Denmark Denmark is covered with snow and has been so since before Christmas. It's really annoying - it's impossible to do any agility with all that snow! Seriously though, it's no so big a problem. Right now we are taking a Christmas / New Years break from agility training. Furthermore we don't train on our outdoor facilities during the winter anyway. During the winter we only train inside in our 2000 sq feet (200 m2) barn or at our local club DcH Støvring, when the weather permits. However, we are able to take som beautifull pictures of the all white landscape! And the dogs appear to have fun as well... I need to shovel snow along our fence now. Up until now the snow has been powder, but now there is a frozen crust which enables the dogs to wander across a snow dune and over the fence . Please note Buggy's "ice and snow tracktion paws" - toes wide spread and claws stretched to the maximum! News archive: 2009 2008