Looking back on our first big international tournament — a rollercoaster of ups and downs, some bad luck, some good luck, believing in your dog and bringing it on!

The prelude

Our WAO journey started back in December 2023, when we qualified for the Games at the Dutch tryouts.
This was also a first for me. San is my first dog of this calibre, and although he showed promise straight away, we've been battling long episodes of bad luck primarily due to my own ongoing injuries which have really limited my ability to train and run trials.
San is awesome and we've found a way to stay competitive despite my limited mobility, but that's not always enough when you need to perform and run well consistently, as is the case for these tryout events.

However, at that moment back in December, we'd been able to get back into a trialing flow for a bit and my hip injury seemed to be on the mend, after 14 months of tendon strain. Finally, things seemed to be looking up! ☀️

Unfortunately, that feeling didn't last long. 😅

My hip took a turn for the worse again over the Christmas holidays — triggered by gardening work, of course — and my trial rhythm went back to resembling a flickering light bulb. Sometimes it was on, but mostly off. 😅

Then at the end of February, San injured himself. We believed it to be his right front foot, probably a bruised toe, although assessing pain in my Aussies is always a challenge because they're so hard on themselves. 😬 He was put on rest for a month, until the European Open tryouts. I watched him closely and he seemed fine and showed no further discomfort, so I picked up training and trialing again.

Fast-forward a few weeks, right after the first weekend of the Agility World Championship tryouts. After the tryouts, San was fine, but a few days later after training, San was limping again. Shit 😬 We were less than 4 weeks away from the WAO at this point, and then realising you have a recurring injury... I feared for the worst. I know myself how persistent soft tissue injuries can be, having dealt with one for well over 1.5 years now, so my heart sank when I saw my poor boy in pain. Not just because I saw our dream of participating at a world event shatter, but most of all because I was worried for his well-being.

I'll spare you the details but long story short, it took a while to get a diagnosis as x-rays were inconclusive at first, but an ultrasound confirmed that San had a partially healed hairline fracture in one of the metatarsal bones. The weeks of rest had healed it for the most part, but not quite fully, so now it had started to cause him discomfort again.

Honestly, it was a good diagnosis. The ultrasound had also confirmed that all the soft tissue in his wrists was undamaged, and bones do heal, and once they're healed, they're fine.
The timing just royally sucked.

We were about 2.5 weeks before WAO at this point. It would be tight, and I assumed we wouldn't be able to go. But we started treating San with EMTT and all the bone healing supplements I could find 😅 And planned a new x-ray the day before we'd be leaving for the WAO to see how the healing was progressing.

I was so sure there wouldn't be enough time. So when the vet told me, as he was looking at the new x-rays, he loved what he was seeing, that the fracture had fully healed and that San was good to go, my first thought was...

Well shit. I'd better start packing.

I went to the World Agility Open and all I got was this lousy T-shirt...

...and a head full of wonderful memories and so many new experiences!
(And shirts from England and the US)

I don't even know where to start! These events are something else. I loved everything (well, most things) about it. The sheer scale of it is indescribable.

Of course we were there to perform, and with San having been on rest for the better part of the year and me still coping with my tendon injury, I wasn't too sure what to expect. But despite the really, really shitty preparation (none), I know I could trust San on his great foundations and eagerness and focus for the game. After all, I eat my challenges like I eat my energy bars: to energise me so I can give it my best. 💪🏻

We were in the last group for our Snooker run on Thursday, which meant we walked the course at 6:20 in the morning and then wouldn't run until something like 6 in the evening. I like to see my glass half full, and while such a long wait could potentially hurt your focus, I took it as an opportunity to watch the other groups and see how other large combinations were doing.

I saw fast — and I mean FAST — dogs not being able to clear the final 7abc in the closing sequence if they tried to go for 6-5-7 or 7-5-6. 44 seconds was incredibly tight, and while it had been my plan A to go for a 6-5-7 or 7-5-6, I knew almost certainly that I would not be able to get the final 7 points, like so many of my fellow competitors.

I had two options:

1. Go for 6-5-7 and in the closing sequence, go straight to the finish jump after completing 6, so I would finish with 38 points as a LOT of other people did, but finish with a faster time and hopefully make the cut-off to place for the finals.
2. Go for 4-5-7, which is 2 points less in the opening but a bit faster, so more chance of clearing 7 in the closing sequence, and landing on 43 points total. That would definitely place us for the finals. The caveat was, if we didn't make 7abc, we'd definitely NOT make the cut.

I decided to go for option #2.



Unfortunately, San misunderstood my threadle cue on 7b, and flicked away towards the finish jump in the opening 🫣 I managed to call him back, but this cost us so much time, that we didn't get to clear 7c before the buzzer went.





Bummer! That meant no Gambling for us! 😔 But...
Except for that little misunderstanding, San was so awesome!! 🤩🤩🤩
I was SO happy with how he performed! To him, it was just like any other trial, so he was full focus and not bothered by all the hubbub! He listened so well, jumped beautifully and most importantly: showed no signs of discomfort afterwards! 🥳 I was so proud!

And then the Bonus Speedstakes...

Then on Saturday, we got to run the Bonus Speedstakes. This time nice and early, before the real heat, at 8 in the morning. 😉

There were a couple of things in this round to be mindful of, particularly at the start. The dog's path didn't really allow for handling some of the jumps as threadles, unless you were really far ahead. I have a bit of a fear for blind crossing after tunnels though, because San's head is made of diamond and my kneecaps are not 😬 Because I can't run at training, I rarely train blind crosses after tunnels and I find it really hard to judge if I'll be out of my cannon ball's way in time.



But eh, who needs kneecaps anyway. Even though I hadn't practised it when walking the course, I decided to try a blind anyway. Yes I'm one of those people that's not afraid to change their plan later. 😜

The result? Well... watch for yourself!





I'm so, SO happy we finished this amazing event with a clear run!
Other than that first A-frame 😬 (I blame the fact that it's Galican soft line, plus we weren't able to train the A-frame during team training)... I don't think we could have run it faster or tighter with the preparation that we've had. San must have lost some muscle mass during the periods he was on rest. So I'm super, super pleased that despite the many challenges, we didn't back down. No, we showed up, saying to ourselves "Bring it on!" as we walked to that start line, not anxious about the bad preparation but instead excited and ready to give it our best shot, with the whole world watching.



It was awesome, and I can't wait to do this again, with my best Aussie boy San, who never ceases to amaze me!



(Don't let San's face fool you there — he loved the event a LOT more than he loved getting picked up and photographed 😂).

For those of us that enjoy the competitive aspect, running agility is all about running clear as fast as possible.

I remember my trialing journey with my first agility dogs Juno and Kai. They didn't have any agility foundations so I had to repair a lot along the way. Contacts, weaves and jumping performance left a lot to be desired.

With San, I wanted to reduce the chance of getting faulted for these obstacles as much as possible. It's not realistic to assume you'll run 100% clear — but with a great understanding of independent obstacle performance, I figured I should be able to drastically increase my chances.

And with great success! San's had very reliable contacts — running dog walk, running A-frame and a stopped seesaw. His understanding of independent weave entries and exits is very good. And he's generally a very clean jumper.

Of course, dogs are brilliant at picking up patterns and continue to learn their entire life — it is no different when we run agility trials. Our dogs know we will release them faster in a trial, and that we may not re-do an obstacle if criteria weren't quite met. They will start to anticipate this and start releasing themselves. We can grumble all we want, but if we continue running the course, then the dog gets to continue to do agility, so what we've really done is reinforce the dog for leaving early!

I was aware that this was happening with San's seesaw. He was no longer waiting for my release, but he did wait for the seesaw to hit the ground, so I wasn't too bothered. In his early career, he used to lose a lot of time on the seesaw, being a good boy waiting for my release, so again, I wasn't too bothered.

Until we learned a hard lesson at this year's European Open tryouts...

This seesaw fault has probably cost us a placement for the EO 2024. It was our first seesaw fault ever, so yes, that did sting.

And I know it was a close call. Personally I don't really care at this point whether the call was correct or not. The judge has to do this in the blink of an eye and honestly, they shouldn't have to be in this position where it's a close call — it's my job to make it as obvious as possible to the judge that my dog hits his contacts!

So after a bit of grumbling and feeling sorry for myself 😉 I have learned that I need a more reliable seesaw! So I have just started to re-train it! My plan is to have two cues: one for his current trial behaviour (a running seesaw) and one where he has to stop and wait for my release. To be continued!

Fast forward a week later to the Easter trial...

A week later, we had a "Finals" competition. It's a special kind of trial for the A3 combinations here in the Netherlands. The combination winning the Finals round on that day is awarded with a ticket for the Dutch Championships Finals in June.

It was our first outdoor trial of the year, on wet grass, so I didn't have high hopes, but we managed to qualify to run the Finals round by a hair. This meant we had to start as the first of the finalists. I didn't find the round too difficult, other than maybe the dogwalk -> open weave entry with the finish jump right next to it.

We ran a beautiful tight round and I was overjoyed, thinking we were clear, only to realise as we finished that we'd received a fault. Apparently San had been given a dog walk fault. Which shocked me, because he's so incredibly reliable on his dog walk! It turns out that he had lost his balance on the dog walk (a lot of dogs had issues with the dog walk in this round). People that were watching on that side of the ring, told me that San had actually still tried so hard to hit the contact with his left rear leg, whilst tumbling. His understanding of the criteria is insane! On close inspection of the video, I think I see what they mean. But despite his best effort, he'd still (understandably) gotten the fault.

I was gutted. San was always so reliable with his contacts, and yet we'd received contact faults 2 weekends in a row! 😥 On trials that mattered!

Only this time, during the Easter trial Finals... no one else ran clear!

So we won the Finals and with that, the ticket for the Dutch Championships Finals! 🥳

This was definitely a week of highs and lows... with two unusual contact faults, one which cost me a lot, and another where we fortunately got lucky!

Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn!

Oh Sannie!

6 for 6 today at the LASC trial with 5x 1st place 🥇 and a 2nd place 🥈 because of some emergency brakes towards off-courses 😅🤭
Well deserved High in Trial I think!

This boy 💕💕💕

After a lot of of bad luck and "almosts"... Finally we did it! 🥳

San and I qualified for the Games and will be representing the Netherlands at the World Agility Open in May 2024!

First we ran the snooker. The time was set incredibly tight so I went for 4-6-7. No one else managed to get more in my height class 😅 There was one combination that managed 5-6-7.

Then we had to run a good gambler. I know San has good weaves and dog walk so I went for double points on both!

ATCH San 😍

In what often felt like a lost year, we managed to achieve this championship at least. But of course you don’t just become an ATCH. It is years of hard work, with challenges and setbacks. Looking back though, I can genuinely say I have enjoyed (and still enjoy) the journey. San is an incredible dog and I love playing this game with him, regardless of the results.

I always say San is talented, and he is, but I am ready to admit and accept that I play a part in this team as well. 😅 I see that even more now, going through this old footage, and I swell with pride seeing what we have overcome and achieved so far.

And we are just getting started…