Nordic Nursery Final Norway, training and trialling

Thursday
In the evening me, Minna and Leena with Coel and Heili drove to the airport, this time the destination was Norway, to participate in the Nordic Nursery Final. NN is a trial for dogs under 3 years from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, it´s a two days trial, an open course with shedding pen and single. The both days points are counted together.

Minna Leena and me

After struggling with the dogs tickets (again), I remebered why I don´t like to fly with Finnair if I´m travelling with dogs. The staff in the check in couldn´t see that the dogs were payed in advance, I managed to convince them that I had paid for everything. Finally they got a EMD -code (?) and said it´s okay, they gave us a yellow post it -note with the code in case of the same problem would occur also on our way home.


 Gardemoen
We had to take the bus to the car rental which was a few km away, at last we managed to squeeze in all luggage, cages, dogs and our selves. It was dark and rainy so we were glad we had only one hour to drive.


Loten
We arrived at our B&B about 23.30... The kindest Kristin welcomed us and showed us our roooms, we took the dogs out and went to bed.

Friday
Up early for breakfast, and then off  for 2,5  hours driving to Alvdal, to visit Karin Mattsson and Jo Agnar Hansen for some training. It started to snow andwas foggy so it took some time to drive.

On our way to Alvdal

They have a really nice farm, it´s at the foot of a mountain so the views are great. After a cup of coffee we went out on the field.
Their sheep are just perfect to train with, Jo Agnar is a great teacher who notices everything. At first we showed him how we train at home and told him what we wanted help with, I wanted to focus on incalls and shedding. JoAgnars way training incalls worked very well, he also showed us how he trains clean flanks with the youngsters. We spent several hours training our own dogs and watching JoAgnar and Karin training their own.
Before lunch they showed us their new sheephouse, really nice, everything was thought of . After lunch we went out again and trained until it was dark. A great day, and I hope I´ll be able to train for JoAgnar again!

Alvdal, perfect weather for training

Not much for a gap in the shed

Saturday
Up early and off to the trial fiels, which was 5 minutes from our accomodation.
The field was nice even if it was quite small, kind of hillish. Both outrun and drive was short, maybe 200m and drive max 300m, they could have made it bigger if they wanted though so that was a bit dissapointing.
The running order was made so each countrys best dogs from their qualifications run last, Finland didn´t have any quali because we don´t have many young dogs that are ready for opens. Coel running quite late, so plenty of time to watch the others.
Well, what can you say...the sheep moved light away from the dogs, but couldn´t care less about the handler. I thought we have respectless sheep in Finland...noup. I have never seen more apathetic sheep and some of them were so big and unfit, so it was hard for them to walk up and down the the hilly course ...they were almost impossible to shed and single. In the middle of the day they had a pause for one hour, because of the fog.

Coel had an okay run, one big mama that had difficulties to keep up with the others. I made a forced shed, pen okay and forced single, Coel came in in a gap that didn´t almost excist...the judge penalized me for being in the middle myself, but wasn´t able to do it any better. Before my own run I thought the sheep looked difficult, but you didn´t realize how bad it was until you were there.
Coel ended up 5th, 4 Norwegians in lead.
In the evening we had pizza and went to bed quite early.

Sunday
Minna run quite early in the morning. She had a superb run with Heili, she really run her and not just babysitted her, Heili worked great and they got 92! After that we watched a couple of dogs and went back to our B&B to warm up when it was really cold, because of the reversed running order I was supposed to run quite late.
When we came back nothing was happening, it was all too foggy. After waiting for over two hours, they had no other choise than to cancel the trial, so the results from the first day would also be the results for Nordic Nursery Final, that meant Coel became 5th.

1. Jaran Knive & Gin, Norway
2. Arne Christoffer Sand & Craig, Norway
3. Karin Mattson & Derwen Roy, Norway
4. Erlend Kvinnesland & Zac , Norway
5. Anja Lehtiö & Coel, Finland
6. Victoria Fornander & Baronen , Sverige

Victoria Fornander, me, Erland Kvinnesland, Karin Mattson, Arne Christoffer Sand, Jaran Knive

Kristin had made dinner for us sunday night

 

It was such a dissapointment, not that we only became fifth, but because we didn´t have the opportunity to even try.
Many of us had drove many hundred kilometers, or payed a lot of money for flight tickets, taken time off from work etc. only for this trial.
I really hope that the NN committe will change the date for this trial in the future, I have suggested already a few years ago that it should be organized earlier, because everybody knows how unstable the weather is in November, Norway didn´t agree. I really hope that even Norway would now be rational and accept an earlier date, beacause this shouldn´t happen again.

Monday
We returned the rental car and went to check in at Finnairs desk. After waiting almost an hour, a child behind us kicking Coel (who didn´t care), it was finally our turn. As I was afraid, the man behind the desk couldn´t see that the dogs were paid in advance. I explained what had happened in Helsinki and showed him the note with the emd-number, he was very rude but agreed to call his supervisor. After the call he just stated that "you haven´t paid for the dogs so you have to go to the last desk in the other end of the hall". Great.
Well we went to the desk in the end and waited, a lady asks us if we were those who had some problems...after explaining she told us to go to a third desk, becasue this was the desk for special luggage.
Okay, a rude beautiful woman perfect makeup who was the supervisor, just stated that you haven´t paid because its´not in the system, your dogs can´t fly if you don´t pay. I persuaded that we have paid, showed her the note and the confirmation from Finnair. She didn´t want to believe me, she repeated the same thing. I didn´t give up, told her it´s not our problem if their systems aren´t working, asked her to call Helsinki, which she finally did...but had to wait...
At that time it was half an hour to departure... at the same time a man had came to Leena and told her he´ll take the dogs (with out the check in tape, they aren´t allowed to do so...)...he took them and we hoped they´d arrive to Helsinki and not to China...
At last the woman came trough to Helsinki, talked a few minutes, then she said yes it´s okay you can go. Gah. Not one word to apologize or anything. And then we run, like hell. We made it just in time. If the kind man hadn´t took the dogs without the check in tapes, we would have missed the flight, hope he didn´t loose his job because of that..
I swore I´ll never ever fly with the dogs with Finnair again...until next time...

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9.1
Now it´s only 3 weeks until me and Minna are going to Wales. Minna will stay for 10 days and then fly home, I´ll stay until late April or beginning of May. In February I´ll work on a farm in Conwy North Wales, March and April I´ll be lambing on two farms in South Wales. Can´t wait :-)