Freestyle - LinköpingX4, July 25-26. Videos

Practising at our boarding house.

Folke and I have had a very intense weekend together with Victoria and her shapendoes Pommac and Payas. Linköping's dog club arranged 4 competitions in 2 days and I entered in all - competing in Class 1 twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday.

Freestyle competitions are not very frequent unfortunately and since I am a newbie when it comes to competing (which differs quite a lot from just watching) -I enter in everything within three hours driving distance. I need to practise, watch and learn. Since the regulations are so vague and confusing - learning by doing is pretty much the way to learn.

Waiting - in the shade - for our turn.

So what did I learn - well as mentioned before - A LOT. Apart from all the tricks I now want to learn I also found out that:

1) Folke's stamina and joy is impressive. We watched several dogs blacking out in the ring, focusing on everything but the handler or just sitting there doing nothing.

Folke never quit wagging his tail and lasted 3 competitions. Both Folke and I had a mental melt down in the last competition. I forgot to do one of the mandatory tricks which meant a huge point reduction - and Folke's brain was just very tired, but he was still a happy lad and wanted to co-operate and did his best.

It's just so much fun to have such a dog - he is still very young, there were bitches on heat around and dogs everywhere, loud music from early morning until late afternoon, no routine from before..and...he was the sweetest boy and did a great job!

Team Anatnaq - Sharing bed and food at the boarding house.

2) Where we sat we could hear handlers repeating commands several times and/or giving a command and the dog did something entirely different and they still managed to get high scores - while we got in our critics that we had double commands and some miscommunications.

Took us a little while but then we realised that the more experienced handlers did as many tricks as possible as far away from the judges as possible. So both Victoria and I followed their example and moved down in the ring, away from the judges. Part of the points is on how well you use the ring space - but you can do simple position work or tricks you know the dog will do without any problem covering the ring with those and then move down for the more critical ones.

This is one of the reasons why I cannot understand why the freestyle regulations do not state that the judges must sit on opposite sides.

We did not get any scratched over and altered points this time eventhough the judges sat next to eachother - and the points did differ so that was good.

Victoria slepping to Heel Work to Music.

3) Repetitions means reduction in points. This resulted in me taking one minute of my 2.20 minute long programme and re-thinking the entire choreograpy to fit everything in. We realised this 7.30 Sunday morning and I was first in the ring at 9.45. This also meant a whole new way of thinking as I thought it was okay to do tricks more than once to fit the music and to have a nice programme. I had totally missed the part in the written regulations saying that - and it seems again that the rules are too vague in order to guide the judges the right way as some repetitions - such as doing the same position work over and over again seemed to be okay but other repetitions not.

4) Freestyle regulation is very confusing. You need 70 points (39 in technical parts) out of 100 to qualify for Class 2, BUT in order to get your Class 1 title (FSD1) you need 80points X 3. If someone has the logical explanation to that please share - neither of us could figure it out. If you are good enough to qualify for a more advanced level one would think that you should also qualify for the title - obedience for instance work that way.

We realised this Sunday morning as we checked the rules and regulations again - a bit of a disappointment as I thought I was 2 down on the way to the title as everybody at the competition focused on qualifying for Class 2 and the speaker congratulated everyone who reached 70 points and more. Nobody put any extra attention to the ones getting over 80 points. Strange!

A very clever programme where the handler and dog illustrated a

comedy song with tricks and different items. Great entertainment.

5) That you can compete before lunch - and then judge a competition in the afternoon.

Okay - you compete against yourself really, the podium just gives it that extra touch and excitement, but still. I guess I am too much of a dog show person where people would be very upset if people responsible for the show competed or if a judge showed one day and judged the other.

6) That there is always a nice surprise and entertainment around the corner when watching freestyle. Like the 35+ handler who brought a feather boa and a golden mask in the ring (as that is what the music artist has on stage) and had an outfit showing half her belly - walking around showing herself off looking at the audience and judges through her mask but had very little contact with her dog and did a really bad programme, running around the ring having the dog chasing the flickering feather boa as some kind of a position work as the dog would never have followed her otherwise. After she finished people had to come in the ring and help her clean up all the feathers. She did this programme more than once so it was not a theory gone wrong in reality.

We quietly laughed at the programme and the costume as it was so over the top and that it was obvious that she would get bad scores using the boa to keep her dog's attention.

Well, we had to eat that laugh as she was the judge the same afternoon and of course got a good score. There were some costumes she didn't quite get - as she wrote in the critics - and thus did not give the highest score. He he he having watched freestyle pretty much from the beginning before it became an official sport I can say that she belongs to a dying freestyle generation dating back a decade or so.

Many of the real pro's did not have any outfit at all - which I quite like as I hate trying to figure out how little I can get away with but still get the highest score for costume.

7) That you can compete with a Great Dane and really capture the audience and adapt the music and movements to fit the rather slow breed and still get high scores. Truly impressive and just what the Freestyle sport needs among all the border collies and poodles. It was fun to see the diversity in breeds as well as handlers. Folke and the Great Danes were the largest breeds there with the nearest size about 25 kilos lighter than Folke, large breeds are still not very common in the freestyle ring unfortunately - but I think it is just a matter of time. Handlers ranged from young girls to ladies in their mid 50's.

The results:

Folke got 76 points both competitions the first day and 77,5 the first competition the second day - getting a qualifying score for Class 2, 3 times out of four. He was also 6 out of 29 competitors at the first competition Saturday morning and 10 out of 27 the second competition.

Video: The long programme - 76 points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLZI-kbNDfE

Video: The shorter programme - 77,5 points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_mu0uttnX0&NR=1

I was very happy about the results and our increase in points from our first try. I took off 1 minute of our programme the second day which gave us a slightly higher score. It was a bit frustrating to get that close to 80 points and I had to remind myself that we haven't practiced for very long and hardly competed at all - I have to rememeber to put things into perspective really.

Victoria - who competed with her shapendoes Pommac and Payas - shared the podium with herself at one of the competitions on Sunday winning gold and bronze. She scored over 80 points twice with Pommac and once with Payas (I have videos of her programmes as well but since she is a hard hitter I do not dare publishing them without her consent). Well done - the Schapendoes Mafia is on the move!

Victoria - a slightly more happy camper on the Sunday than on the Saturday

as she got to share the podium with herself.

I am already planning new tricks and I am eager to get started. Pity there are no competitions around for the rest of this year.