Tani ...

... was born in a litter of 4 puppies on December 25th 2008. She spent the first two months of her life in the Loubajac kennel in the French Pyrenees. Her mother is Pecquelette de Loubajac and her father Hob-Nob's Victor.

When she came to stay with me, we started Silvia Trkman's puppy school, followed by Sivia's tricks class and later on agility handling classes in LoLaBu training center. We do everything using only positive training techniques. We are very fond of Silvia and her dogs, specially the crazy little La who is Tani's 3/4 sister. We also attended handling classes with Daša Zakotnik and Polona Bonač.

Tani has many passions in her life. The biggest one is agility, of course, but she also loves playing with her beagle sister and BFF Xsara, hiding her toys in the most odd places, running through the fields and meadows, playing with sheep and eating.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Private Lesson in LoLaBu Land

Tani and I had a private lesson with Silvia this week. It was a lot of fun and she worked really well. Here is a video of some of the things we worked on:

Saturday, August 13, 2011

EO 2011

Once again, I'm kind of late with updates, but after EO we deserved a little vacation by the sea. Tani is a super swimmer and dock diver so it's always nice to take her to the beach. The only thing that one should be careful about - don't start throwing rocks into the water because if you do, she won't leave you alone! She gets this obsessed look in her eyes, starts shaking and if you don't react she starts barking directly into your ear until you have enough and throw another rock. Luckily, she doesn't try to fetch rocks, she just likes to see you throw them so I'm not worried about her breaking a tooth. I love to see her dive into water in full extension, she has the happiest look on her face as the water splashes around her. I really love to do anything with her, she always gives it all so she's a really great dog to work with.


Anyway, about EO. It started kind of badly for us, Tani's tummy was really upset when we arrived on Thursday, she had a very bad case of diarrhea and even threw up a couple of times. Luckily, we still had two more days before the competition would officialy start. It was a little chaotic because we had to cook for her and take her for walks very often, but luckily she seemed to be perfectly OK by Saturday morning when it was time for individual runs. Our first run was actually a little messy, but we got through the course with a very satisying time. We would be 12th and enter the finals if we didn't get that 5 penalties on the A-frame. I'm very confident on A-frame otherwise, so it was quite a shocker that she was a couple of cm too high, but what can you do :) Individual jumping would be quite OK as well, but she jumped one jump from the wrong direction.

Here is the video, thanks to Romek:


It was fun to cheer for all of our friends in the finals, although I admit I wished we could run them as well. But I was super proud of Tani anyway. And if I compare it to last year's EO when she was so nervous that she kept popping out of weaves and didn't even finish one course, this was a huge improvement! We were really happy to see our friend and one of Tani's first trainers Polona get 2nd in the finals, that was really awesome! And it was really nice to see so many pyrsheps in the same place :)


Tani and her step-sister Pepsi:


Tani and our new friend Socks:


On Sunday it was time for team runs. Again, no luck in jumping because I made a very bad handling choice and did a front cross in the wrong place, causing her to enter the wrong tunnel. But our agility run was clean and almost perfect, only one time she almost took a wrong jump but I managed to recall her from it. We lost a lot of time there, so it wasn't ideal, but plenty of reasons to be happy about.

The contact was really nice, for example (but a little difficult to catch on camera) - and the grin on her face is just perfect :)


Looking at the videos I have to laugh at our startline and how she starts to run in the air when she hears the judge whistle :)

Jumping:


Agility:


Anyway, all in all it was a fun experience, Tani made me really proud and I feel like we're on a good path. I really enjoy running with her and I think we're finally becoming a real team, not just trying to make it from point A to point B, but trying to do it nicely as well :) We have another week with lots of agility in front of us, then it's time for Corsica again. Agility is our great passion, but you can only enjoy swimming in the sea for a few short Summer months and agility is there all year long so ... :) Thanks to Iztok Noč, Olga Kwiecień-Maniewska, Christl Faltner, Maja Rokavec and Carles Fortuny for the photos!