EUROPEAN OPEN – WE WERE FLYING! - Maruša Podjed Seitl

EUROPEAN OPEN – WE WERE FLYING!

Posted by Marusa 2025-07-28 0 Comments Competitions, Nekategorizirano, News, Reflections, Training articles

I’m not even sure where to start – maybe with “flying“, which had many meanings for us.

FLYING – PART 1

Literally, we flew to Portugal. I’ve flown with my shelties before, but they were in the cabin with me. This time was different. Driving to Portugal would have been about 3,000 km one way – after the exhausting 2,500 km drive to AWC 2019 in Finland, I promised myself I’d never do such a long trip by car again. So flying was the only option.

Apart from one complication – the airline somehow managed to lose our dog booking for both flights (!!!) – everything went smoothly. The airport staff were very helpful, and in the end, we made it there and back safely.

Tip for anyone flying with dogs: Arrive extra early to the airport!

FLYING – PART 2

We were flying on the course too! No flawless runs – baby mistakes happen – but Tiger was amazing. He was focused, precise 99% of the time, FAST and showed some great skills. I couldn’t be prouder.
We’ve been working some more on weaves lately, and he nailed entries and exits I wasn’t sure about – like a pro! Tiger never really has big “aha moments” in training. He just sleeps on it, and suddenly… he knows it. It was exactly like that with our weave entries.

I decided to share all our runs here – with all my notes, mistakes and homeworks. Agility is not only rainbows and unicorns.

Team Agility

I was quite worried about the weaves entry. The morning grass was slippery, and Tiger struggles to decelerate coming out of tunnels. I decided to trust him and stayed on the opposite side of the dogwalk to be out of his way and help him focus. He even corrected his line. I was so proud.

But then he slipped after the first jump after the DW and bypassed it… and then another slip soon after that caused him missing the tunnel. Later in the course, he didn’t take another jump, likely because he didn’t trust the footing enough to adjust his line.

I hate running on wet grass. I don’t blame the organizers – after months of criticism about the heat in Abrantes, they did everything possible to keep dogs cool. Cooling tents, little pools everywhere, early morning schedules… it actually ended up being my first EO where I spent most of the time feeling cold! Luckily, I had packed my warm jacket and wore it every day.

Besides that, I loved the venue, the staff were incredibly friendly, and the surroundings were perfect for walking the dogs. The atmosphere was great, and we loved being there.

Team Jumping

When I saw the white dog, I thought, “just too hard for us.” A very tempting off-course jump after jump number 3, a difficult weaves entry and exit, and lots of technical situations.

But after the course walk, it didn’t seem impossible anymore. I decided to trust Tiger with the weaves and tried a different handling option at jump 3 than most handlers. It paid off – we had a really nice run with just one bar down (after a very tricky soft turn and blind cross combo we’re still working on).

Individual Jumping

This one was full of situations I wasn’t sure about. We had a refusal at a backside jump that caused problems for more than half the dogs I watched. Some handlers chose a blind cross and flick there, but I didn’t fully trust that skill yet. Sometimes a dog just needs more experience to manage tricky parts.

We also had a mistake at the hidden “in” after the long jump – definitely something to work on before AWC. But then… the tricky weaves entry I was so worried about? Tiger solved it perfectly. And the “in” before the tyre! And the layering at the end! So many small victories!

Individual Agility

This course wasn’t very technical, but one part worried me: after the dogwalk, you needed to be fast enough to handle the second jump and then get to the opposite side to blind cross before the tunnel. Some chose a rear cross, but we haven’t trained those before tunnels, so I decided for a blind.

It was a similar situation to the one in team jumping (soft turn to the right while the handler blind crosses), but this time we managed with no bar. He lost the line a little, so this is most definitely a skill to work on before Worlds!

He also dropped a bar after the weaves and ignored my backside command after the tunnel under the A-frame. This is something he finds hard and is of course on our training list.

Again, he nailed the weaves – and that meant 4/4 perfect weave entries (yaaay!). I have to mention our contacts too – 100% success rate here as well!

All in all – I am super happy with how we did considering the amount of experience Tiger has!

FLYING – PART 3

And now we’re back home… and still flying high. Portugal was truly inspiring. It showed me we’re on the right track. My training list has some new additions, but I’m super motivated and excited to get back to training.

And one of the best parts of our trip? Sharing it with my dear friend Urška – the best travel buddy anyone could ask for. We arrived already on Tuesday to make the most of it: a quick hop-on bus tour through Lisbon, a walk with the dogs by the ocean at the famous beach of Nazaré, a visit to beautiful Tomar and exploring all the hidden (and not-so-hidden) gems around Abrantes where the EO took place.