Tani (Désirée de Loubajac) is my young dog entering into the world of agility competitions. She is always in a good mood and full of brilliant ideas. She feels an infinite desire to spread her joy around so having her in my life is absolutely amazing.
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.
I have really pretty dogs. They are so cute that both of them are featured in two awesome calendars for 2012.
The first one is agility calendar by the one and only Maja Rokavec that is well known for her amazing photos of dogs in action. Tani is my little Miss June, which is a very appropriate month for her since she really is a little sunshine. You can order it on maja.rokavec@gmail.com.
The second one is "Best Dog Calendar" (again, very appropriate for her) by Iztok Noč, another awesome photographer from Slovenia. This calendar is about dogs doing all sort of sports and other funny things. It can be ordered on ntrbizan@gmail.com in English or Slovene language. In December you can enjoy Tani fetching a frisbee in pyrshep style - no gravity :)
The price for each calendar is 10 euros. And I think they make perfect Christmas gifts for dog lovers!
PS: I have another "Tani Calendar" made for me by a dear friend, but it's not for sale. There's only one copy, but I can assure you it's really beautiful. I'm really looking forward to having my walls decorated with all these fantastic photos for one entire year!
So, I guess everybody in agility world got to see Tani's fantastic 3/4 sister La AKA Simply the Best and her Silvia run on World Championships a couple of weeks ago. We were so happy to see them place 3rd, only missing 1st place for 0.1sec at 10 years of age! Wooooow :) And of course, we were also really happy for all of our other friends, specially Daša, Urška, Olga, Ashley, Thomas ... the list goes on and on! But all in all pyrsheps did really great on AWC this year!
Only a couple of days after AWC Tani and I went to a competition in Switzerland. This was the 10th country for Tani to compete in, but best of all, there was also Tani's sister Rayas with her owner Christine. We had a really nice time in Switzerland, although Tani broke a nail and had to be pulled out of the competition after the first run. But Christine was so nice to let me run with Rayas for one run instead, and she showed us some really nice places to go for a walk, so it still was a very special weekend.
Tani now has to weare the "cone of shame" because she keeps trying to lick the wound on her finger and it got all infected. So she's on antibiotics and some rest, luckily she can walk normally so she's not too bored. But she does feel a little sorry for herself so we cuddle a LOT! And that's nice too.
We are back from Corsica and we enjoyed it even more than last year. It's a magical island, that's for sure! Here is a video of Tani enjoying a variety of summer sports there and some of the best photos from our vacation.
Of course, the only thing that was missing was agility. We can last 10 days without it, there was so much to do we couldn't find the time even to set the two jumps we brought with us. But when we returned, we knew exactly what was the first thing to do. Last week we had a competition in Duplica, Tani had quite a nice agility run (with one almost refusal) placing 3rd after her sister La and EO winner Šja. Unfortunately we were disqualified in jumping. Yesterday we had a competiton in Ljubljana but I had a horrible migrain aura and everything I saw was very bright and white so it was hard for me to stand on my legs, let alone run. Tani did quite OK with me being such poor help - with 2 chaotic runs we finished on 3rd place and earned our first medal in A3. She is doing so well on training lately that I am incredibly proud of her, I think with a little more practise we are going to be just fine :)
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:
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!
Uf, I'm waaaay too behind with Tani's blog, but with this beautiful weather I always have the same problem - I want to enjoy Summer outside and spend as little time behind my computer as possible.
So, Tani is now in A3, she is doing great, she is still crazy, fast and LOUD :) She enjoys every moment and I really love that about her. It's impossible to stay serious with a dog like her, and as a very wise person told me once - you shouldn't try to!
As some of my readers know, I really enjoy swimming with my dogs, but her obsession with water is ... well, sometimes a little bit over the top :) I love to watch her jump from docks and rocks and dive, swim and fetch sticks from water, but if there is no water where we go for a walk, she'll try to find some mud to throw herself into that. Better than nothing, she probably thinks but, oh well. I admit I have to laugh at her, she has the happiest face ever when she does it so I just let her be :)
June was a really exciting month for us. First we went to a big competition in Geel (Belgium), where we also attended some seminars and learned many new things that we're now trying out. She had one clean run in Open, but not a very nice one because I almost sent her into a refusal. She was still 2nd. Only a couple of days after we returned from Belgium (1200km in one direction), we went to another trip. We visited Tani's breeder Catherine and her wonderful dogs in the Pyrenees (another 1600km in one direction). Now we're back at home and ready for new summer adventures ahead of us!
This is Tani with her mommy Pequelette, thanks to Gregor Raičevič and Maja Rokavec for the photos!
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