A little late but important update from our Swedish National Championship two weekends ago. Our little Miss Lilli did it again, we became Swedish National Champions, for the FOURTH year in a row! I think I still haven’t understood… It was (one of) my dream goals, to win again. I was thinking it could be cool to do it four times in a row. Maybe that was kind of a new thing?
But I also realised it was not very realistic. It requires a lot to win nowadays. There are so many good teams out there. And to have the time on the right side of the margin, you need to do a more than perfect run and you also need to be lucky. And how many times in a row can you be lucky..? Anyway. I loved the course by Stefanie Semkat and I was very excited to run. Ziv was the first dog of ours and she did a really nice run, but unfortunately she dropped the first bar. Second out was Lilli. I was thinking: ”It’s just to give everything. I need that on this course. And you never know, this might be the last big final with this amazing dog. The most important is to enjoy the ride and trust the Lilli!” So, I could hardly help my self on the start line and I actually started way too early, which forced me to run a bit faster than needed in the beginning
The rest of the run went exactly according to our plan and we went to the lead. After Lilli I also had Azta to run, I knew she could beat Lilli’s time and Azta felt so good and keen on every signal. But, suddenly I find my self running towards the wrong obstacle after the A-frame
My body just followed the momentum and I forgot to change my direction. Two steps in the wrong direction means four steps back and that means the handler will be far too late for the next situation
. Poor little dog, it was definitely not her fault that she got disqualified. I think I forgot to memorise one last time, exactly what to do because I had ran the other dogs before. So, I took my planning too much for granted in the last run. Lesson learned. Never take any planning for granted! Anyway, I really enjoyed running with little Azta and her time will come, she’s so young (even if my lost steps were really annoying…
) and even if Azta got disqualified, I was so happy for Lilli’s performance and she held the lead until the end.
