Since the first seminar we have had private lessons in different places and one more whole seminar day Saturday. We have also done a lot of fun activities and been eating good food in small simple but very nice restaurants. I love that kind of places, the smaller and less luxurious they are, the more I like them! We have seen the nature and some small neighborhoods from the horse-back and done some extreme activities. We have had a good time! To night I’m going to Brazil for another seminar. I haven’t been there since 2007 so I really look forward to it!
One night I had a kind of a lesson from videos with Andres and Tathiana. I think it’s a good training to analyze runs from real competitions. In that way I can give suggestions on other handling moves in some situations, what the dog needs to improve, how to understand about lines, etc… The day after I built some of the combinations and I drilled them for three hours! One thing that is very important when you train, as many often forget, is to break things apart if you realize your dog doesn’t understand your commands or is not able to do some obstacles independent etc. It’s important to train that separate part and reinforce the missing things instead for trying to help the dog. The thing is to trust in the dog and the dogs intelligence!
Parachuting!
Yesterday it was time and a perfect weather for
parapental (parachute)! So we went to the village Sopó and drove to the top of a mountain with, Favio, the guy who should go with me in the parachute. First I thought ”- Wow, maybe it’s enough just to get up here and watch the view…!” It was so peaceful and magnificent… Favio prepared our equipment and then we had to wait for the wind… I realized after a while that you have to have a very patience to keep on with this sport… Favio explained we had to look at the clouds, birds, lake and the trees to know when the wind was coming… Interesting and very exciting! Finally the wind gave us some signs, it started to snatch in the parachute and we got ready… but then some fog was coming through the mountains stopped the wind and we had to keep waiting… after more than two hours of patience, (which was not a big deal because it was not that hard to sit in the sun and watch the wiev… 😉 Favio noticed that the wind had changed direction so he decided to move to another mountain. We repacked the things and drove up to a new peak and parked the car. From there we went by foot to the spot where we could do the take of from. Here the wind was much stronger and it was just to bring on the equipment and get ready to take off. We run out, over the edge an let the wind bring us up in the air! It was a fantastic feeling from the start :o) Favio steered the parachute straight toward a cliff and just a few meters away he lifted again…! Exciting, but not scary at all. Strange… I sat there and philosophized on how it could be that I had the day before death anxiety twenty meters up a tree, with safety lines and now did now not feel any fear at
Anyway, it was so cool to fly around up there and this was really an experience of life! But… the last minute was not as fun as the rest of the time in the air… I have a tendency to get carsick and that was exactly what happened when he steered down to the village and fields where we should do the landing. I think it was because everything got closer and more real. In the end I just thought: ”- I f-n don’t care if we crash, just that I don’t vomit…!” I made myself all the way to the ground (puh!) and the landing was easy but, in the middle of a cattle field. Ok, I’m not afraid of cows, but Favio was… he told me a cow attacked the equipment one time..! And it was a whole adventure to get out from that muddy field! We needed to be kind of engineers to build bridges, get over fences etc… ;o) But it was worth it!!
