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The last weekend we had our Swedish tryouts for European Open, Nordic Championship, FCI world championship and Crufts. It’s a long weekend with eight runs. It’s always exciting and a little scary at the same time. I have been through so many qualifying systems and since 2000 I have qualified with five different dogs. That’s 18 years in a row… I know how small margins it is. I know how easily things can go wrong, even though you have technique, speed and accuracy. And for every year all other handlers and dogs get better and better. Every year I’m thinking, maybe this will be the year, that I’m not qualifying… And every year I have to convince my self to not think like that. I have to convince my self to think about the present time and not about the past or future. Every year is a new year and it’s just to do my very best. If I will qualify I will, if not… I will have some more free weekends… ;o)
Anyway, everything felt good before the tryouts and we felt prepared. But it started out with some half-assed runs, I didn’t push as I could in the first run, then I got lost in one run which costed us time and after that two unexpected eleminations… it looked so-so in the overall results. I knew we have all the knowledge and techniques we needed, I just needed to put it together and trust in our experience and our decisions.
So, it was just to pick up the fighting spirit. 100% precision, predict the difficulties, stay focused, trust my dog and attack the rest of the courses. Together with help from Nettan, we got back on track and ended the tryouts with four good runs! And, we didn’t just qualify for the championships, we also won the tryouts for the third time in Lilli’s four years long agility career. Which means we also qualified for Crufts 2018! We are really looking forward to all those events and I’m all excited to share the experiences and moments with the rest of the fantastic Swedish team <3
This year I think I appreciated the outcome even more that I use, since we started a little so-so and then had adversity in the middle. I adimire Lilli so much, she’s the coolest little silly dog I know. When I doubt, I just have to look at her. She gives me so much strenght and makes me feel happy. Nettan said, when Lilli was a puppy, that she’s our new Lotus. And I think she’s right, I think she got some Lotus-spirit, she’s very, very special…
