So, in May we transvered to A3 level and started competing with the best Estonian agilityhandlers/dogs. Our first competition where we went was in Pärnu (Tahkuranna), 27th-28th of June; judge Svetlana Zolotnikova. It was two day event, but I only took part on one day in three courses. Unfortunately I don't have any videos from that competition, because noone filmed our runs. Maybe it's even better that way, so noone could see our mistakes : )
Anyway it didn't go so bad and we even would have won our first official A3 course run if I hadn't fell and Erk missed a tunnel (5 points, for refusal). I forgot to change my shoes and ran with smooth shoes and not with football shoes. Still we got 4th place and our time was fastest. Second run we got DSQ right at the beginning (3rd obstacle) and in third run we demolished the course (took 3 bars down) and were last with 15 points. Dispite that, our time was 3rd fastest. Overall I was a bit dissapointed that we didn't get on the podium, but I have to take in to account, that we are still beginners at this level.
Next time I couldn't manage to go to the competition, because I was at work and Helen took Erk to Saaremaa, where there was AgilityPaw 2015; judge Rene Blank. Our coach Stefi ran two courses with Erk: a jumping course and an agility course. As I understood, Erk was totally mad in the runs. In the first course he got 20 points and in the other DSQ. From that competion we have even videos. I would say that Erk was much faster and better with Stefi than with me.
Then there was our own club "Säde" competition in Lohkva on 18th of July; again judge was from Norway, Jan Egil Eide. I liked those courses very much even though we had minor mistakes and in one course DSQ.
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| Erk in action (part time flying dog) and sometimes he even gets over the longjump, like in this case. (photo by Martti Vaidla) |
Going forward with our agility journey I have to mention, that there are so many competitions that you just have no time to rest. Basically every weekend there's an agility event in some part of Estonia. Eventually you can't make it and need a break from all of this. After the "Säde" competition, we did that, and took a longer period off (about 2-3 weeks) from everything. So the next place where we competed on the 8th of August was our well known Jõulumäe Sports Center (Pärnu) with its excellent football field. It was very interesting to see how will we do after the vacation break. I thought that Erk will demolish the course, because he is so eager and wants to run and probably doesn't remember most of the orders that we have learned. Anyhow it wasn't so bad, just a bit of poor/sloppy leading and one over excited dog made all together one 3rd place on the podium. That was our first time in A3 when we got to the podium. Happy-happy-happy, but a bit dissapointed, that the mistake was probably in slalom and we lost quite a lot of time there. To sum it up, we ran 4 courses in Jõulumäe. In one agility course we got DSQ, in one we had 15 points and were last (still the time was 5th fastest), in third agility course where we got our podium place, we had 5 points (time was 3rd fastest). In jumping course that was actually the first run, we had also 5 points (don't remember what mistake we made)and overall 8th place, but Erk's time was still 3rd fastest. Unfortunately no videos from that competition. Of course I have to mention that the judge Minna Räsänen (FI) made very interesting first course (jumping course) with various bar heights from 50-60cm (or even to 65, don't remember anymore).
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| Waiting... or not..., Erk watches other dogs competing and slowly crawling closer to the field. He is just so eager to run. (Photo made by Rainer Olbri a.k.a."Metsakutsu" or Ülli Saar, don't exactly know. THANK YOU for the beautiful picture) |
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