October resume

Often when I am mushroom "hunting" I can not see Prikka but she sees me always from her hideaways.

Summer, autumn and winter, pictures taken on Wednesday this week.

Exactly year ago on a halloween night I was picked up from Heathrow to Epsom through the heavy London traffic to meet Prikka. How exiting it was and how long did the journey last - two hours. The journey that could take 30 minutes when no traffic! A week ago a visitor in Jyväskylä just could not thrust me when I told him that it is enough to take a taxi to the airport (20 km) just an hour before the flight. I made him really scared and should have ordered the taxi earlier just make him feel to be on the safe side. Well, Jyväskylä is on the countryside, there is no traffic and airport is tiny. Anyway, we are having an anniversary of meeting with Prikka!

After her one year birthday we visited an unofficial obedience competition. She was good and behaved the same way as when we train. I was so proud of her! The video (except the first movement: down stay and the last: jump). What we had not trained were the movements after movement and the waiting between the commands. That is something we really need to concentrate from now on.

And today one of the local clubs, Taitavat Tassut, organized halloween obedience. I went there with my black and whites. Prikka was pretty much the same a month earlier, she made her tasks with pleasure and joy. The only movement I felt now more secure was her heeling, now we have done a bit the longer ones, too. Unfortunately there was no progress in the endurance in the beginning or in the end of the movements, since we forgot to train that.  There just have been so many new things to do that I have forgotten that. Luckily she is still very young and we have lots of time for becoming calm and learning the endurance. But we had fun and it was so nice to to be able to reward her thoroughly between the movements. The judge: "The dog can do technically the movements correctly. Lovely will-to-please :) Because of her age she does not have patience to finnish each movement. Well done! 162 points out of 200. Less points than last time but the performance was pretty much the same, only judging was more stick. We also lost points because of Jinga, she started to whine and yell a few meters away when it was time to start our performance with the heel work. Prikka had all her attention in Jinga instead of me (next time I know, not to have them in the same room).
Then it was Jinga's turn, and all that time Prikka was silent and well behaving in her crate! Jinga was  good, too. We lost some points in her down stay, she obeyed the neighbours down command. With her scent, she had a problem, she found the correct object but dropped it. Then it took ages that she found it again when it was misplaced. Otherwise she got brilliant marks and received 263 points out of 320. I was very happy that I could reward her, too, between the movements. The happiest thing in my halloween obedience was Jinga's z-movement (stand, sit, down). Her stops have been brilliant all the time, but her heelwork in between has been shameful,  so restless. But today she was heeling well between her stops. I was so happy!!!
I do not have any picks from our halloween obedience but I just recently found these, from the June 2014, her second competition in the uppermost class (in the next one she gained her Ob. Ch title - and the picks are so much Jinga,  the perfect image of her working. Today she was admired by the judge, being so explosive but having full focus in her movements.

My postings in between these two obedience trials are mainly filled with magnificent autumn colours:
 Kiila the oldest one on the pack turned nine in September, too. Some pictures of the birthday girl and the whole trio enjoying the garden colors and the autumn fruits.

n the beginning of October we participated in the obedience training of the one of the best Finns. What a nice feedback we got - we are a team working in the same bubble! No picks from the training but some beautiful golden colours when we went training on the lawns close to University one evening. A few weeks ago we visited the summerhouse  having a family reunion with the kids - lovely. Some mushroom picking and great cooking done. To celebrate the lovely weather and the new canoe,  we made a late autumn canoeing trip in the new national park, Konnevesi. It was odd to be on the lakes familiar to us only on the summer season. It was also odd for the dogs, in the heavy rowing boat they have been allowed to move quite freely and lean on to sides of the boat. Now, it was absolutely no! No paws on the sides of the canoe. What  a nice and new experience it was - the late autumn and the lakes!

  My black and whites and their prizes from the halloween obedience:

The older ladies and their naps: