Winter Training

Although we have extremely low temperatures and we're freezing way below 0°C, we still regularly train and go for long walks. Of course, I make sure Tani is properly warmed up when it's so cold outside, but she would go nuts if we had more than an occasional lazy day once in a while. She really enjoys our training sessions with her dear friend Kaili and her Maruša. Here is a video of one of our very cold winter trainings :)

And Now To Some New Videos :)

Tani and I are taking Silvia's Long Distance Handling class this winter. At first, I was a little reluctant to take the class, I really love to train at Silvia's place in person and the thought of "only" being able to enjoy the fun long distance didn't make me too happy. Boy, was I wrong! Of course, I still love LoLaBu Land in person and I definitely can't wait to go back there in the Spring, but I just couldn't believe how much one can learn by taping their training sessions, watching them slow-mo and then letting an expert like Silvia comment on them! I'm really amazed by our progress and I strongly recommend this class to anybody who wants to speed up their dog, improve their dog's obstacle commitment and work on their own handling. I'm sure you'll love it as much as we do! Here are all the info you need to join: CLICK and some of our videos taken for this class:

Some Old Videos

We spent wonderful holidays with friends and 12 dogs in the house, 2 of which were puppies. We had some time to organize old videos so I'm posting them here, they're over one year old and even though I improved my handling a little bit since then, we had some nice runs back then as well.

This was a very eventful run - first she fell speeding up over the dogwalk and then we had a little intruder on course, but Tani doesn't really care about anything, she just wants to run and I really love that about her!



Another nice run from the same competition, a disqualification but with a really nice DW contact:

And a team jumping run - clean and REALLY loud, so you might want to put your computer on mute before you watch this:

Happy Birthday, Tani!

Merry Christmas to all our readers, and of course, happy 3rd Birthday to the star of this blog, my perfect girl Tani. To those who don't know it, having a dog like Tani was my biggest wish come true. That's why I named her Désirée, the Desired One. And of course, being the self-centered little girl that she is, she was born on the day when all of the World celebrates a birth :) How very Tani-like! :) :) :)

For her special day, she will get a tunnel run in our club by the sea, a long walk on  the beach, a doggy cake to share with Xsara and a bunch of toys that I'm sure she'll love. Happy Birthday also to her sisters Razz and Rayas and their brother Dreamy!

C'est la Vie

Winter is here and we're back to the coast, enjoying warmer temperatures than in Ljubljana. Tani really loves it here, but then again, she really loves to be anywhere as long as I'm there too :) We enjoy long walks in the vineyards or by the sea, we train and do a lot of tricks, the same as in Ljubljana, only with nicer climate. We miss our friends from Ljubljana, but have some friends here as well, and we visit each other when we can.

Anyway, tomorrow we will attend our first competition in two months and I'm really excited about it, but also a little nervous because I don't know what to expect. She's been doing really well in training and I really feel like we're running as a team now, but every now and then we still have days when we don't really connect which results in many mistakes. And of course, we had a day like this today, one day before the competition. I felt like she wasn't listening and only ran around like crazy without considering me at all, she probably thought my handling wasn't clear or something like that, I really don't ever think dogs would ever jerk us around, I'm sure they don't think this way, only people do. So whenever we have an off moment, I try to think what I did wrong or maybe not wrong but just differently than she's used to. And then I try to improve. Bad days happen for a reason, they're not here to make us mad or lower one's self-esteem. They happen so we can grow and learn and become better handlers and better people. I don't really enjoy them as much as I enjoy good days, but they're a part od life so ... c'est la vie :)

Tiny Little Black Nail

As I mentioned before, Tani injured her nail in Switzerland. Unfortunately she managed to lick the wound and it got badly infected. The nail broke and when it almost healed, she broke it again jumping on my bed - only this time she also pulled a big chunk of her finger off, together with the newly grown nail. The vet suggested amputation and assured me that it wouldn't affect her movement because it's the first finger above the paw and she doesn't really use it. But I felt weird about cutting it off, it just didn't seem right so I decided to wait. It's been very hard to keep her still, change her bandages every day and restrain her from agility, but I believe I made the right decision not to put her under anesthesia and just cut her if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

The nail is now growing back, the finger has already grown back as well and she is more than happy to be back in training. Of course, we're going to take it easy after such long break, and since the new nail is still very thin and fragile we defenitely don't want to injure it again. So we're only doing low jumps and tunnels for now, which gives me the perfect opportunity to work on some things that I always planned to do and never did, such as improving our distance work, obstacle vs. handler focus and trying to make her even faster than she already is. So we're inventing little games to make her run fast (for now only on flat ground where she can't bump into anything, and she has a shoe on while training) and I'm getting Silvia Trkman's new DVD on speed and conditioning which came in the perfect timing for us. I'm sure we'll both benefit from all of this :) I had a lot of time to think about how lucky I really am to be blessed with such wonderful dogs, so I think next time you see me in the ring, I'll be a lot more relaxed and present in the moment.



And well, last but not least, it's not really about Tani but I totally have to brag with my awesome puppy class and rally-obedience students who made me extremely proud on exams last week. It was really nice to see such great work and such a beautiful bond between them and their dogs. Congratulations and I hope you'll all keep clicking for many years to come :)

Calendars 2012

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!