11/22/2016

o/e seminar in Sydney 2016.




As soon as I came back from Europe, I went to Sydney for agility seminar road trip.
It is just next to Victoria -  but Australia is HUGE country :) going to next state actually takes 8-10 hours by car! so it was big road trip for me to get out of jet lag and tiredness from the long long overseas trip.  

And ofcause .. Niah and I are both not fit enough to do seminar this soon. 
But we did it.   We had about 5 days to jogging, and condition our self.
But it was not enough !! it was just raining really hard and back yard was too muddy to do any grid work or jumping. 
I obviously had too much delicious pasta in Italy and amazing tapas in Spain :)

The o/e seminar was great as previous year.   I love how Isabelle pushes student's comfort zone and make every new moves possible.  I did enjoy a lot with Isabelle, but
Jouni set up fast running course and somehow I was really stupid and 
I walk the course wrongly, I couldn't remember the course anymore and.. all I just want to say is I looked so stupid!!  Niah being cautious and not running, and me being lost... 
I don't even want to watch the video ever again.  (Thank you Penny for video taping those painful runs...) but it sure became bitter and sweet memory and I actually learn so so so much. 

Most important things I learn this time: 
1)  I need to put myself "Oh shoot, I need to RUN" situation.  
     I am leading his motivation at race. Do not give up, Do not make him slow. 
2) NO backward stepping.  Feet is always showing future pass. 
3) Be more aggressive with my command. (lol) Que clearly and fast.

ヨー ロッパから帰って慌ててo/eセミナーへシドニーまで行ったのですが、隣の州!といってもオーストラリアはやたら広くて、私の住むビクトリアからは車で9 時間程かかりました。旅行の疲れも時差ぼけもとれていなかったし、もちろん1ヶ月の旅行中、ディーンのパパの家の裏庭のペット状態だった琴とニアはなんに もエクササイズをしていなかったし、私もイタリア料理やタパスを食べ過ぎて動きが鈍い。。でもAWC観戦したばっかりだったから ヤル気だけはあったんだ けどね〜
でもやっぱりヤル気だけではダメでした。得にヨウニのスピーディなコースはもう、最悪。コース歩き間違えたし 覚えられないし、ニアはちんたら走るし、私も道に迷ってばかり。もうビデオも二度とみたくない。。でも色々と勉強になりました!

 今回イザベルから習ったとっても大切な3か条!

1)ヤバい 全速力ではしらないと!というような状況に自分をどんどん置いてとにかく
速く走る事。ニアのモチベーションは私次第。諦めずに走る事。
ニアのベストを出してあげられるのは私のみ。
2)後ろ歩きをしない事。Feet always facing to the future!!! 
3)   コマンドをもっとはっきりと強くアグレッシブに。

11/21/2016

Browing in the wind

Since we are back from one month of Europe adventure, we had no time to rest, 
Dean and I just needed to work hard all the time to catch up.

The most unfortunate reality is Koto is back in injured again. 
We were expected her to be totally back in shape after the one month of break. 
but she torn her back leg tendon again.  Not just little one - required little surgery with ACP injection. It has been very emotional couple of month, driving to the vet twice a week. 

She is nearly 9 years old. but still handful and still crazy. she really is amazing and fun girl but we just want her to be healthy and happily run everyday.  So much frustration. 
Agility high season and training started november, so many agility seminars and competitions...but Niah is still not perfectly in good shape.  
This made me to think about having one month of dream travel also risk our dog's health and happiness.  My dogs are not in good shape, Feels down and exhausted from frustration.  But  I will always keep my self positive and focus on great and happy things we are doing right now :) Because I love my dogs and I love my life in Australia.

Busy October and November passed like a wind.  


11/04/2016

Dolomite Hiking 3-4th day

2nd day became almost too long and we were extremely tired, We also learn the lesson that we need to keep up our walking tempo more faster. 

We've stopped almost every refugio for refreshment, and been taking photos every time the scenery changes (Yes! I have a typical Japanese soul) But at least I have amazing photograph that I can remember these magnificent moment, and I saw this absolutely beautiful moon from our accommodation's balcony.  
We stayed Munt de sennes refugio.  Staff was very nice, nice food, stunning location and we just needed to sleep there!!

3rd day - we needed to walk through the enormously large and quiet filed.  The field took us to the large stone/rocky mountain's valleys, we climb down the rocky mountain to get to our next destination, next to the lake. 

Walking down the lime stone, rocky track was very difficult and made me feel scared.  Small pebble are very slippery and I needed to concentrate on every steps.  
Being cautious made my walking speed so slow again, so again it took much longer than we aimed for but after 5 hours walk, we finally came down and had a homemade sausage and vegetable soup at the Refugio. 

Finally found the lake. Simply stunning and so rewarding. 
What a lucky cows, who lives here. 

 















10/24/2016

Dolomite 2nd day - Finally arrived - 6:00pm.



Walking walking walking..
and a bit lost...
We kept going up and down, magnificent scenery changes every 30min. 
and this solid rock track was not fun.  not easy. 


After the long long rock track climbing, this landscape welcomed us. 
Very quiet. 








Finally made it...
We nearly missed our dinner!!! 

what a long long day.  We start walking at 8am, then got to our 2nd Refugio at 6pm.

Dolomite Hiking 2nd Day

We stayed at Refugio Prato Piazza at 1st night.
The food, room, staff, everything was so, so...BUT the location was the best!!
absolutely love this area.  We got up early to start early walk - but after about 1 hour walk started, we finally realised that one of the track (no.2 Track) we wanted to go through is closed due to the land slide..

We lost about 1.5 hours to realise this.
Then - we took bus to drove down the mountain to get to another road.  This took about 1.5 hours.  so we end up lost our very important 3 hours of walking time in the morning.



 Hiking Start!

But.. our planned track was closed.  Very disappointing.
This is the landslide above the No.2 track.
We could hear the continuous rock sliding sounds... Lucky we realised and went back.

After loosing morning 3 hours, we tried to catch up to our plan, so just kept on climbing for about 2 hours. very steep and long climb, and we had a best little rest at refugio.  Surprisingly the food is incredibly delicious and not too expensive.



10/16/2016

Hiking in Dolomite Day 1.

As you might know, I really love Silvia Trkman and the reason why I own border collies is I was influenced by Silvia.  Back in 2006, I started watching Youtube videos for University study break and I learned dogs really give me the best relaxation :)
While I was at Uni, I had a goal -  "When I graduate from school and got a job, I will have a Border Collie"
I found Silvia's blog and looking at her hiking photos really made me happy!  Hiking at amazing European Alpes also became one of my another dream! We can't bring my dogs to Europe, but we did hike where Silvia was hiking with her dogs!  Dolomite in Italy!  
Here is a photos of Silvia's Dolomite hiking: 
http://www.lolabuland.com/2016/07/08/beautiful-dolomites/#

シルビアのファンでずっと彼女をフォローしているのはご存知かもしれませんが、実はボーダーを飼い始めたのもシルビアの影響を受けたからなのです。 2006年、まだオーストラリアに引っ越して来たばかりの当時、大学の試験や課題の勉強で疲れた時に、犬のビデオを見るとかなりリラックスが出来る事が解り、それから随分と色々なビデオを疲れた時に見ていたのですが、そこではまったのがシルビアのサイトと彼女が犬達とアジリティをしたり、ヨーロッパアルプスをハイキングしている写真達。 大学中、卒業して仕事が持てたらボーダーを飼う!という目標があったから、頑張れたのかもしれません。 
その目標のもう一つがヨーロッパのアルプスをハイキングする!でした。 随分と実現までに時間がかかりましたが、やっと ハイキングの夢が叶いました。

Day 1: September 12th Monday
This morning, sadly we said good bye to Gabi, her family and Bono and Big Apple, We left the most relaxed and beautiful town Klagenfurt :( 
People's life in Klagenfurt really inspired us.  We are very happy to found the life that we are going to aim for! Gabi and Robert, and her children and dogs, 
You are such a inspiration to us :)   

We drove along the Klagenfurt lake, then drove through numbers of old villages with beautiful architecture, there are so many old churches on top of the hill and it was so beautiful to see the historical buildings.  
We kept driving between the alps for about 3.5 hours, then finally got to the first Rifugio Prato Piazza.    We really wanted to stay next door Rifugio, but it was all booked.  

But no matter we couldn't stay where we wanted to stay, the location was absolutely magnificent!!! What a beautiful landscape.   The first thing I notice was silence. 
In Australia, we always hear birds sounds in the back ground -  but there was no sounds at all here.  Just you can hear those beautiful cow's bell from far distance and that is absolutely like an ambient music.   Melt our hearts. 

We did quick walk until the sunset to look around the area and had a early dinner, which was a little disappointing for Refugio's food, We went to sleep early to fill up our energy for our big day out! 

9/12 5日間も滞在させてもらったGabiとファミリーに泣く泣くお別れをして、めざすドロミテまでは約 3時半程のドライブ。ドライブの途中 数えきれない程 丘の上の教会や歴史のある街を見る事ができました。 そして山道をぐんぐんのぼって、やっと ドロミテ山脈へ到着。 初めて見る巨大な岩肌 と大自然に圧巻しました。 
第一印象は、とにかく静か。 人や車の音、鳥の声、風邪の音、全くの 無音状態。 
たまにとおくから落石の音が聞こえる。 
牛についたベルがチリンチリンと まるでアンビエントミュージックのように すごく心地よく 遠くで聞こえる。 
こんなに心地のいい静けさを経験したのは 産まれて始めてかもしれない。 

初日は夕日まで近所の山の景色をすこし探索、期待していた山小屋の夕食はそれほど美味しくなかったので、翌日のハイキングに向けてエネルギー補給のため早めに就寝しました。 









10/02/2016

Agility trial in Slovenia

September 10th Saturday, We visit Slovenian Agility competition with Gabi. 
The venue was located in the middle of beautiful Slovenian mountain valley.
Not only stunning location with layers and layers of mountains, there was also crystal clear mountain river stream and very well looked after community or shared garden right next to the competition. I assume all the vegetable has full of mountain mineral water, looks very healthy and full of nutrition :) Yum! 


We set up shade tent before the course set up :D Gabi is very organised!!
This never happened to me in my whole agility life. lol 







Not only the location, the organization and people were really lovely.  People brought beautiful cakes and sweets to collect donation to replace jumps.  Very good idea to get donation for updating equipment.  The cake were really tasty, the best quality sweets and yes, we donate a lot to swap with those best looking and delicious cakes!






Too many sweets photos :) 

Another surprise was I saw 2 police man hanging out at the competition with glass of beer! I'm not really sure they were working, but on police uniform.. so we thought they were at work :) Probably not much crime happening here!

It was comfortable temperature in the morning, but afternoon had quite strong sun. The organiser did made announcement to not leave your dogs in the car.  
I notice many people uses Silver sun reflection cloth over the car, and it reflect 70% of sun.  Nice product for Australian sun and I always wanted to buy this.  This is going to be my souvenir!

Anyways, back to agility. There was only one ring in this competition so most of people had only 2 runs in all one day. A1 (Novice) and A2 (Excellent) start in the morning, and compete in the morning only.  A3 starts in the afternoon, this means when you became A3, you can wake up at 10 or 11 am, then come to competition in the afternoon!! Or you can go home and relax in the afternoon when you are competing with A1 or A2 dogs.  How nice is this system?



I think having a one ring only - makes people very relax and watch other people's runs. You can really concentrate on your dog, never need to rush like here in Australia, always have so many runs in a day. I saw many handlers are helping another handler at course walk, giving some handling tips.




People are looking at competition result and time. 
The result is up on the board as soon as the competition finished. 

One of the jumping course in A2.
Courses were very nice.  I really liked A3 course! Challenging yet fast and flows well. 

After watched everyone's run all day, we felt we were so lucky to watched very high quality agility and very relaxed and happy dogs at this competition.  There are so many famous top handlers, I always watch those peoples run on youtube, but videos never captures their connection with the dogs so it was very exciting for me to watch how those people play and warm up/ cool down their dogs, and how they reward dogs!  

How cool to hang out with Puppy Diary star, Silvia's To and Monika's Sheltie Seven? 
Unfortunately To had a toe injury so we couldn't watch her run this day, but wow, she is pretty and super friendly ❤  








 I saw many shaved Border Collie and Shelties!! wow :D




Bi's amazing cik/cap ❤
Silvia practicing start stay with Le just before her run. 

As we are not even allowed to tug with dogs in the ring or even after the run, Slovenian dogs excitement/ speed or happiness is completely different level to Australian competition.  It is the most stupid rules we have and truly old fashion, I believe this rule came from obedience competition, and we felt that we really really needs to change this rule to achieve "Real Agility". 
I felt it is most important thing to consider right now, upgrading equipment is next!!. 
I hope Australian competition will be more relaxed about it and allow people to train at the competition someday. Restriction for tugging and "must put dogs on lead before leave the ring" totally putting dog's excitement off.  




Super midget in action!! Wow a real Le was super fast, (everyone knows she is super fast, but actually she was faster than you see on video!)  
I just couldn't believe that my camera actually caught her running :) 



 Perfect Matej's Juice! 

Here is a video of the wonderful day's run. (Miha and Duce) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAeKsgma00I