Hi

Oh what a life I am having lately. Chippy, Quincy and I have been away again. This time even longer - a whole 5 days and the days were packed full of Agility and Dog Jumping. I mean packed FULL. Even I was tired in the evenings.

According to mum this was yet another big deal competition weekend, and Chippy and I won, well, maybe not all, but definitely all the big prizes.

First off I managed to get another piece of paper for mum by winning the Dog Jumping, and she says I am now a Double Champion. It feels really good to be a Double Champion. My name is Ch, ChDJ Wesavi LaLollita, of course all of my friends still call me Lollie.

But then mum says I went on to win a really big deal competition. It is called the KUSA Nationals. Honestly, if you ask me there were more difficult courses there that weekend, but mum says that doesn't matter, it is one specific event that gets the title. OK, so I won that. It was most satisfying, because all the competitors from Port Elisabeth were there as well, and we didn't have to "catch" them anymore, they had to catch me! I was the fastest dog ... and to be fair, mum was clearly the fastest handler there. She has come a long way my mum. Of course she still made some really dumb mistakes on the weekend, I'll tell you about those later. Anyway, we won the KUSA National Dog Jumping competition and lo and behold, that adds another title to my name! So now, I am known as CH, CHDJ, KUSA Nat. DJ '09 Wesavi LaLollita. Now what a mouthfull is that? Mum is very pleased about it and you must see the rosette I got, it is bigger than I am - no honestly, it is.

Then we had some really bad confusion. I was representing my Province in the Interprovincial Dog Jumping competition. That was cool. There were 4 of us in the Team. My friend Benji, Gracie, who is really cute and little and Ricki. Actually Allez should have been in the Team, but mum said she didn't take her, 'cause Allez doesn't like those long trips very much and gets very grumpy after the second day or so. So she made space for Ricki. We were a real hot-shot team - even got to wear fancy bandanas and had to walk in a parade. During the first round mum ran one way, when I knew that the next obstacle was straight ahead of me and they disqualified us! Now I am not sure if the judge couldn't remember the course properly, because I tell you, the next obstacle was clearly the tunnel I went into, or perhaps mum was just not very good at telling me were to go. In any case, we got a DQ. Of course for the second round I sat mum down and we had a discussion and we had a brilliant second round. Mums says it was the best round for the small dogs. You see, we can do brilliantly if mum just concentrates a little. In any case, they announce our Team as the winners and we have wonderful photos taken with our rosettes and a nice trophy (Quincy and Allez have won the trophy before, so it is rather special to our family). And you will never guess what happens - 2 days later they tell us they made a mistake and we didn't win after all! Now is that fair I ask you? What if I had eaten all the dog food we won already and had departed early with the trophy? This is clearly another human thing. With us if you win you win - maybe you get challenged again, but certainly nobody can come to you days later and tell you that you hadn't actually won.... So you can decide whether we won or not - me, I think we won, we have the picture to prove it ....

The next big prize belongs to Chippy. One of the competitions on the weekend was the FCI Agility competition. Just to confuse matters even more, mum wants to collect more papers. She says this one is an International piece of paper, and it gets send all the way from Belgium (which is really far away) to us. So, perhaps they have got different paper in Belgium or something? Anyway, it seemed to be a really big deal for mum and Chippy managed to win it. Me ... I honestly can't tell you any more what happened to me. I think it was another one of mum's bad moves, but we didn't feature.
In any case, mum says Chippy is the first Medium dog in South Africa to get a CACIAG (that's what that paper is called, and if you can pronounce that, you are a lot better than I am). But, it is just a paper and nothing to add to his name yet, so it is hardly as good as mine. Mum says, perhaps, if he wins some more of these FCI papers he will also get a fancy title to his name. We will see.

So, back to me. I won another Non-Contact Agility round and won a piece of paper for mum again. She said it was my first Non-Contact QC. She was ever so pleased with her paper ... sigh ... those humans. But I was really pleased with our round. Mum ran really well.

As I told you above, she made some really silly mistakes during the course of the weekend. We had one course were we started off really fast and need to make a U-turn - mum does a front cross so that the hurdle is between me and her and actually still expects me to jump over ... You know by now I am good, but I am a dog not a flea - how on earth did she think I would get over that jump? In any case she was quite upset that I went under the cross bar, especially since she didn't even notice until after the run when they told her. I do believe that she was upset with ME. Just to show her that it was HER mistake, not mine, she runs with Chippy and makes the exact same silly move and guess what ... yes, of course Chippy also runs underneath the jump ..... That finally made her realise it wasn't ME or Chippy that was the problem, but her. Well, according to her, it wasn't HER either, she believes we can practise that and train it so we can actually do that .... hmmmm ... not sure what she did during physics classes at school, but she obviously doesn't understand much about momentum and gravity and such things. I will keep you posted on this.


And another miscommunication we had was at yet another tunnel. We have been practising different entries to the tunnels, and I know I have to watch mum which side she points to for me to go in, but we have also been practising blind crosses and when mum runs really close to the tunnel entry and  does a blind cross just in front of it, what do you think she is trying to tell you? - Go in "there" - right? - WRONG. I was supposed to understand that she was just running past that entry and I had to follow her to the other side ... Sometimes I could scream with her. It doesn't work that way. We even came home and she tried it at home and I did the same thing as I did at the show - no doubt in my mind what she is trying to tell me. In any case it was a real shame that she messed that up so badly, we would have won that event for sure ... instead we get a big fat DQ.


So you see, we had some mistakes, even some bad mistakes, but overall I think mum and I are becoming a Team and she is getting so much faster. Most of the time we were the fastest, or within a second of even the fast little brown dog Whisky. A little more training and mum will be able to catch him.

Before I go I must tell you about our new house. You know in the meantime that every time we travel we get a new house. well this one our fairy godmother booked for us. She was supposed to come and stay there with her dogs, but in the last minute had to cancel - what a shame. I was so looking forward to seeing her again. I even brought my pink collar with. She really knows dogs. The house wasn't very big, so there was no space for us dogs to sleep on the floor and we all had to share mum's bed. However, there was a massive garden - it was great. Except that there were quite a few other dogs there and mum wouldn't allow me to explain our house rules to them. It would have been very easy, I am sure they would have understood very quickly, but mum kept calling me back. The other interesting bit were the neighbours. They seemed to change every night. And at times it sounded like they were going to come through the connecting door. Mum was very strict, we weren't allowed to tell them that they were too noisy and we weren't allowed to join in either. So that was quite odd all round. But we were there so little, it didn't really matter too much. 

I think everyone has gone to bed already, I better get some sleep as well, never know what exciting things will happen tomorrow.

Kisses to all my fans