Picture of Jenny Damm

Jenny Damm

Colombia, part two :o)

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!

Privates at Gabriela’s place. We focused a lot on how to plan a course walk. How to start, lines, choices to make, how to plan the timing of different handling moves etc. It was a fun class and an important part of the training!
 Look at Gabriela’s new cool house in the background, built for an ecological architecture. The rooms are round as most of the things in the house! 

Private classes during the week. Here at Club Challenger. They had a plastic industry as the neighbor… maybe not that common in Sweden…

Training independence

On Saturday we were at a club called Siberia for a seminar day. Here we’re training the command ”out”…

…for it to get meaning out AND always take the jump from the back, no matter how the handler moves .

Training ”push and go”! Quite good but I think Adriana was a little bit late at this picture… ;o)

Friday and Saturday we were out, first at Galeria café libro, a very nice salsa club with a great atmosphere and then to my favorite place Andres Carnes de Res. Here’s a drink at, everything there is made with a special touch. Look at  the ”mariposa” on the beer…

Each table has an own heart.

I ate a delicious soup!
Dancing!

A visit in a small village,  La Calera. Barbecue along the street, this was not our lunch… ;o)

An old man dressed in a ruana, typical sewing
Sundays, the big day for ”postres”, desserts!
Everyone in the family enjoy the Sundays with ”postres”
Helloween is really big in Colombia, everywhere there are decorations and everyone is preparing for a big party. Maybe this hairstyle would fit me for a Halloween-party…? ;o)
Or this one…? 

Time for flying canopi. I landed in a three about 20 meters up in the air, then I had to climb up to another branch and from there move on to the end station. First he snapped off my safety lines to move them to another place and he tried to give me some instructions in Spanish…! I understood he wanted me to move to the left so he could secure me again, in another line but I felt panic and agony and I refused to move! In the end he tried to still reach to attach ropes to the new place, I stood where I stood… Then he asked me to climb up. ”- Arriba, vamos!” (Up, let’s go!)  I still refused to move, still with agony and I tried to figure out how I could get from that place in another way… helicopter maybe..? Again and again…: ”- Arriba, vamos!” Hm… I really didn’t dare to climb but I realized I had no choice… so I did it. With shaky hands and shaky legs I climbed up to the next branch and throwed my self out from that scary tree! ;o) When I came down to the ground I thought, ”- It was scary like hell, but I could have done it again, right now..!” ;o) 

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!!

Favio has prepared the parachute and looks for signs that tells the wind will come…

The view from the ”Parapental Paraiso”…
Waiting for the wind, quite an easy task…
Thati, Favio and me, waiting for the wind…

Ready to fly!
At the new place the wind was perfect and it was just to prepare the equipment again, run out over the edge and let the wind bring us up in the air!
To do parachute the first time is about trust… I trusted Favio, who was a master of parachuting after 16 years of experience, to 100%. He flow around and steered the parachute along and over the mountain, high up in the air, with speed and in slow gliding… He also made it stop, totally still… like a prey-bird with a prey in sight… It was a totally fantastic feeling, almost unreal to fly free like a bird over the mountains.