Kathie's Web Log

Received 09/17/2009 13:56

Thu, Sep 17 - Ready, Set ...

Ready, Set…

I got to sleep in today!!! This is the first day since I’ve left that I actually got to sleep in. All the way to 8:00! Wow. It was a great start to a busy day.

Thursday is always given over to practice at the site and team photographs. Normally, we do practice in the morning and then back to the hotel, change and go somewhere for team pictures. But this year, Team USA was the last team on the practice schedule, with our veterinary check time at 3:30 and our practice scheduled for 4:30. SO, that means we had to do team photos in the morning. With the periodic rains, last night at the team meeting, we couldn’t tell the team for sure that they would have photos this morning because we definitely wouldn’t have them out in the rain for it. So we left it hanging until this morning when we could check the weather. This morning dawned cloudy but dry, so the photos were scheduled for 10:00 am. Finding a place within walking distance of the hotel was tough, but we eventually found a quaint looking building, white with red shutters, that made a nice backdrop for the group photos. It felt really awkward walking to the site: 14 Americans in full uniform, carrying an American flag on a flagpole. Not exactly inconspicuous! The site was on a narrow side street, so it was a little challenging to get the teams set up and photos taken in between the occasional car coming down the street. But it worked out just fine. The cars passing seemed to take it in stride and slowed way down, crept past us and went on.

After we had taken the first batch of photos, our team photographer (and team member) Dee Anna Gamel, asked us to stay in formation (so to speak) and for the front row (which was mostly the large dog team) to make a noticeable space; a missing man formation—in honor of the teammate who is not with us any longer. We were all very somber during this part of the shoot as we thought of Geri and Focus.

Once the team photos were done, we went to another site near the hotel where there was a very cute little wishing well. This is where the individual photos were shot. It was right on the edge of a very busy street, so we were getting a lot of strange looks from the drivers going by and not a few horn honks! We finally got done with the photos around 11:30 or so.

The onsite practices had started with Team Austria at 8:00 am and many of our Team members wanted to go over and watch, so we arranged for the 3 vans to go over on a staggered schedule: Nancy’s van at 12:30; mine at 1:30; and Andy’s at 2:00. That way, people had some options. Some of the team watched the practice over the internet right here in the hotel, thanks to Agility Vision. But there’s nothing that can compare to watching it in person!

As we have done every years since 2001, Team USA has a private locker room. Some years they have just given it to us; this year we paid for it--something the Europeans find absolutely absurd. This allows our handlers to have a quiet, secure place to rest and for the dogs to relax. This year, our locker room is the closest one to where the competitors will enter the ring, which is really great. Its not so good for getting up into the stands. Our supporter section is about as far from our locker room as possible so it will take a bit more time and effort for team members to go spend time with the supporters after they run, but they will get there.

After everyone arrived at the site,they spent time buying their souvenirs: event shirts, caps, bags, etc. You always need to do this the irst day because they inevitably run out of sizes and choices. Our vet check was scheduled for 3:23 pm, but at 3:10, they came calling for us. Not all our handlers were in our locker room, so Nancy took the ones that were there, and I headed out to find the ones that weren’t. The ones missing was the big dog team, so I had a pretty good idea where they were. Sure enough, I found them high up in the bleachers, watching the other teams practice and working on what they would do. I hustled them down to get teir dogs and get to vet check. It all went very smoothly; the only question I heard about was one vet asked Channnan about Icon’s feet (they are a bit red from allergies), but nothing more. All of our small and medium dogs who had not been measured last year were sent to the measuring room (as was done with all the teams). Out of our 8 small/medium dogs, two had been done last year. But the rest passed with flying colors; now they won’t have to do that again. So, now we had about 30 minutes before our scheduled practice time. People spent the time walking their dogs out, stretching or massaging them, and just getting their dogs and themselves ready for a very intensive 16 ½ minutes. We are given 1.5 minutes per dog running, so with our 11 dogs, that added up to 16 ½ minutes.

Out on the floor, there were three sections set up on the floor. Each section had a defined set up that could not be changed: section 1 had the dogwalk and weaves along with jumps and the chute; section 2 had the AFrame, tire, and broad jump along with other jumps; and Section 3 had the see saw, a straight tunnel, table and spread jump. We had seen the set up last night while we were waiting for the coaches meeting and so were able to sketch it out on Clean Run, get it printed off for our teams, and they used that to plan their practices sequences. This way, when they got out on the floor, they could make the best use of the 5 ½ minutes they had in each section. We had a number of USA volunteers down on the floor to reset bars, chutes and change jump heights as well as one person in each ring assigned as a “traffic cop” to make sure only one dog was out working at a time in each section. Nancy and I floated and watched each section. Our teams did a fantastic job working out the sequences for themselves. They all knew what they wanted to work on during this time and set up the sequences to meet their needs. In total we had 16 ½ minutes of working time on the floor, so each team had 5 ½ minutes on each section. That may not sound like a lot of time, but try it sometime: find three other fiends, set up 3, 6-8 obstacle sequences, and work them for 16 ½ minutes. You’ll discover that this is a LOT of time. All the dogs were definitely tired by the time the final whistle blew!

The teams returned to the hotel about 5:30 in time to take care of the dogs and get ready for a 6:20 pm departure for team dinner. This is the one time during the trip that the team, and only the team (members, coaches, and Captain) has dinner alone. We went to a wonderful Italian restaurant. Nancy had preordered 8 different pizzas and 4 different pastas for a 6:45 delivery time and that restaurant had everything out exactly on time. And it as all really good! We had a good time socializing and laughing, relaxing before getting down to business tomorrow.

I ended my night taking long walk with Ashley and Luka; Channan and Icon; Marcus and Juice; Katie and Twix; along with Nancy and Ingrid. We walked down to and along the bike path that runs along the Rheine (the dogs couldn’t get to the water). It was a nice relaxing way to end the evening and really helped settle dinner.

Tomorrow things get serious—competition starts. Opening ceremonies begin at 8:30 and the first dog will be on the line at 10:22 (according to their schedule). First up will be Large Team Jumping. Following that will be Medium Team Jumping, Small Team Jumping; and Large Team Agility (Standard). So, by the end of the day tomorrow, we will know who the Large Team Champions are!

Received 09/17/2009 03:35

Wednesday, Sep 16 - Bregenz, Team Leader Meeting, Supporter Dinne

After our long day visiting the castles, I was really looking forward to sleeping in on our last day off. However, that was not to be. Nancy wanted me to be meet her and Andy at a 7:30 breakfast meeting to talk about the day’s schedule and what would go on at the Supporter Dinner that night. So, I was up at 7:00 and down to breakfast to start off the day. The meeting went quickly and I was back in the room by 8:00 to find Val just crawling out of bed. Lucky girl!

As this was our last day to do any sort of local sightseeing, we decided to go over to Bregenz, a nearby town, and take the cable car up to the top of the mountain. There was a Bird Show advertised and some others who had seen it the day before said it was well worth seeing. So, at about 9:30, we loaded back up in the van and headed down the road to Bregenz. Faithful George got us there without any wrong turns. After a slight adventure in parking (our vans are really tall), we bought our tickets and got on the next gondola to the top. It was a beautiful trip up, giving us panoramic views of Lake Lucerne (also called Bodensee here in Austria) and the surrounding mountains. The Bird show started at 11:00 am, so we have about 45 minutes to wander around. About 30 minutes before the show, we started down towards where the bird show would be . What we hadn’t realized was that there was a wildlife park at the top as well with a few different animals, ranging from bunnies to wild boar to ibex and mountain sheep! They were all beautiful and pretty indifferent to visitors.

We got down to the Bird show about 20 minutes before show time. That gave us some time to admire allthe different birds in their mews. There were owls, hawks, falcons, eagles, and vultures. The owls, hawks, falcons, and vultures were all in cages. The eagles, however, were just tethered to stumps on the hillside. You couldn’t walk up to them of course, but they weren’t caged. They all looked very healthy with shiny feathers. These were the birds that would be used in the show. After walking around the mews for awhile, we took seats on the benches and waited for the show to start.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the whole narration was in German. So, we could watch and admire the birds, but had absolutely no idea of what was being said. We had great seats, mostly because we had asked when we bought our tickets where would be the best place to sit. There really wasn’t a bad seat anywhere in the house. The bird handlers made sure they held their birds long enough for us to get great photos and when they gave demonstrations of the birds’ hunting styles. At one point, one of the falcons decided to be a bit naughty and ignore her recall signal, flying off out of the demonstration area and out of sight for a bit, but she eventually came back and landed on her handlers arm. Probably the most awesome of the birds was the vulture. All the birds would fly right over the audience, some of them very close above. In fact, at one point when a little owl was released from her handler, I actually got hit a glancing blow in the back of the head! Twice! But it was all a lot of fun. Sure wish we could have understood what they were telling us about the birds though. The show ended and we were faced with a really steep climb back up the hill to where the cable cars would depart from. That was the hardest hike I’ve had yet! I was really puffing by the time we reached the top. Of course part of that is that we were also at 1064 meters altitude (about 3100 feet) and this little girl is used to sea level! After a quick ride down, the two vans split up. One to take one team member to find a dentist cause she lost a temporary crown right when we arrived at the cable car in the morning; the other down into Bregenz for some shopping and wander around time. What we didn’t realize at that point was that in Austria, most shopping closes from noon – 2 pm. And of course, what time did we get there? Just after noon. But everyone still had a good time. The restaurants and bakeries were open and so we stopped into a bakery for lunch, then spent the rest of the time wandering around. We all met back up at the van at 2 and headed back to Lustenau and the hotel.

Nancy, Andy, and I left to attend the Team Leaders meeting over at the event site about 5:15 pm. This meeting is where the event organizers go over any particulars about this event such as: no food on the practice floor during the Thursday practice; how the starting procedure would work; introduction of the two judges; and where we turned in our team running order and picked up our team credentials and the competitor’s bibs with numbers. Normally, this is also when we received the event catalog, but not this time. Not sure why not. This meeting has always been on Thursday night in the past, which is why our Supporter Dinner is scheduled on Wed. But for whatever reason this year, they changed it to Wed. So, the dinner, originally scheduled for 7 was slipped to 7:15 and we hoped that he Team Leader meeting that started at 6:00 would go quickly! It wasn’t too bad—we got back to the hotel at 7:40. They had started without us, which is good, but they were only on the appetizer buffet. The food was incredible! And, in true European tradition, we had a very leisurely dinner. The different courses were separated by speeches from Andy, the Team and the Coaches. Andy introduced the team members to the Supporters; gave thanks to our sponsors and those who did so much work behind the scenes but for some reason could not travel with us (Sharon Anderson and Toni Osojnicki) and then introduced the coaches. Up next was the Team representative, Karen Holik who read off the Top 10 Reasons Why Nancy Gyes Had to Coach the World Team Again Next Year”. There were many inside jokes that probably went over the heads of the supporters, but the team and coaches all thought they were very funny. At that point the dinner buffet was set up and we took a break in the speeches to eat yet again! The final part of the speeches was Nancy talking to the Supporters and playing a little trivia with everyone. When she was done, the dessert buffet was set up. See the pattern of the night? Our night ended with a brief team meeting so we could go over what we learned at the Team leaders meeting. We also used this time to get everyone refocused on why we are here. Everyone left the banquet room, with high spirits and ready to get started tomorrow.