Finnish Championships 2012
Last weekend the Finnish Championships in agility were held in Jyväskylä. I drove down late on friday evening, since my plane from Stockholm was more than an hour late, and met up with Katya and Saku at the hotel. I was supposed to participate in the team competition with Alva and Hasty on Saturday and in the individuals with Hasty and Gilja on Sunday. Alva missed one faultless race to be able to participate this year.
Alva was first out in our team on Saturday. She followed me well, but a jump obstacle came down and the second last obstacle was the tyre, which she for some reason didn´t jump, result: disqualified. The rest of the team members had to perform well to get a result! Next out were Saku and Katya. They made a clean run. Great! Next out Marie-Louise and Maya. Maya didn´t take the contact on the dog walk, 5 faults. Our last dog was Hasty. Unfortunately Hasty´s old injury in the paw is back. It started aching on thursday, before the Championships. I was hoping for the best until the bitter end, but the paw was still aching on Saturday, so we had to pass this time. 🙁 Instead Marie-Louise and Mexi competed with the result 10 faults. The team ended up 15th.
On Sunday morning it was Gilja´s turn to compete in the individuals. The track was tricky, but I think we solved the difficult things well and Gilja had good speed, but we got 5 faults in the difficult entrance to slalom and also an unnecessary refusal at the last tunnel, so our chances were out, when only the 50 best results passed to the finals. I was still hoping for the best with Hasty on Sunday morning. She didn´t limp wearing her sock and the swelling had gone down. I brought her to the vet at the competition. At first she didn´t see Hasty aching, but when telling her that she´s mostly limps on concrete ground we decided to pass from the competitions this year. Of course, I don´t want to compete with a limping dog, but I was very disappointed to miss the highlight of the year. Luckily, Anne and Kiiru (Hasty´s puppy) came to cheer me up and this week I also got a nice video clip from an unofficial competition with Kiiru. Looking good for the future! 🙂