My Beagles...

Emma and Levi......are 5 months apart. Emma was born 3 November 2004 and I soon realised she needed a playmate. I was very lucky to find Levi within a few months of getting Emma, as I waited nearly two years for Emma!Levi was born 28 March 2005 and was the naughtiest puppy alive! Him and Emma immediately hit it off and became the best of Beagle Buddies.I desperately needed to find an outlet for my Beagle kids' energy, and ventured into the world of agility. It soon became one of my biggest passions, apart from the Beagle breed, and today Emma and Levi are both competing in the top grades. I made a friend in Slovenia, running her Beagle Xsara in agility, and she inspired me to start teaching them tricks. I'm enjoying it very much and hopefully this blog will be as entertaining and inspiring to others, as Xsara's is to me.

Monday, October 5, 2009

5 Months behind...

Oh my, I haven't posted in 5 months! Shame on me!!! It's been such a busy year, but with so many highs, I will have to do another catch-up session soon.

For now, what you've missed, in short... was our National SA Championships end of May, where we had an international judge, Alen Marekovic from Croatia judge some of our rounds which also formed part of our final qualifiers for AWC. Emma was Reserve SA Champion, coming second to awesome cross-breed Benji, winning it for the 3rd year in a row. Emma was the Top qualifier in Medium for AWC. Along with her two Pyrenean Shepherd teammates, brother and sister, Chippy & Lollie, they made history by being the first ever Medium team to represent SA at AWC. More about that later...

In June we had a 6 Champ Show weekend in PE (Port Elizabeth), the town where I lived for the first 17 years of my life. Levi was the star of the weekend, taking home 5 QCs, the most won by any dog on the weekend, and also being overall Medium winner for the weekend. Emma came 3rd overall.

Chinzi qualified up to the Top Grade in PE and also won her very first Contact Agility QC amongst some really tough competition. Needless to say, it was a very memorable weekend of competition.

We travelled to the SADAA Nationals held in Knysna at the beginning of July, and here little Emma once again showed what she can do, by becoming the National Mini Winner for 2009!

August was slightly quiet, except for the KUSA Nationals held in Bloem, where Chinzi's Flyball Team, the Boland Flyers, won the Nationals in a time of 18.66sec. She also became a Flyball Champion that weekend. The rest of the month was taken up with loads of preparation for the AWC in Dornbirn, Austria.

The highlight of the year by far, was our AWC trip to Austria, starting off 12 September... and most certainly, MUCH MORE ABOUT THAT LATER! :)

It was just an amazing and wonderful experience all around, what a beautiful country and AWESOME display of agility!

More later, with pics, I promise!

The day after we got back, we went on a loooong (1000km one-way) road trip to Bloemfontein (crazy I know!) for another SADAA Regional Competition. My little BC Chinzi was so happy to have mom home, she won 4 of the 8 Gold medals she competed for, and Levi won 2 of the others... making our total in the Midi group 6 from 8! What a highlight! :) Emma was very happy to be back on home soil and again, for the 3rd time in a row, won overall Mini dog at Regionals. She also won a Gold, 2 Silver and a Bronze. Chinzi was also part of the winning Flyball team, running a time of 18.34 in very hot conditions, as well as taking home another Silver medal and being 2nd overall in Midi. Levi took 3rd spot overall, with 2 Golds and a Bronze.

That's all for now, let me go sort those pics, so I can start uploading the good stuff! :)

3 comments:

TWa76 said...

*aww* I'm so proud of you guy´s! And so happy to read what is going on :) Wellcome back.

Lenni & Ressu agility beagles from Finland

Xsara and Tani said...

wow, really incredible results! And yes, you are officially a crazy agility person for driving so far for a competition the day you came back from Austria :) Welcome to the club, LOL! It was very nice meeting you and Emma, hope to see you again next year!

Unknown said...

who did you get your beagles from??
Im searching for a good breeder:)

Photos in slideshow courtesy of Gary Killian.

Levi pulling out front in Drag Hunt

Photos in slideshow courtesy of Nico Nel.