It's been a while since my last report... The reason for that is simple – I've been on a trip. Destination – the stone age. This is a place where you don't have internet and you can find hot water at most in the aquarium with the heater on, but not in the shower. To cut it short, our house has conspired against me, so it was only on rare occasions that I got to enjoy the luxury of an internet connection or a hot shower. Right now the situation is better and as I have taken a few days off from my faculty obligations, I have the time and chance to make up for the lost time. So, what have we been doing…
The winter was so brutally harsh that the birds almost threw back the food we put for them in the garden. Snow fell twice, the first time it fell 4cm of it, the second time not even 10. On January, 5th we went on a walk wearing T-shirts, and at the beginning of March we were walking Sambo in T-shirts in Bovec (a mountain region), sweating heavily. Despite the mild weather we didn't do much training in 'winter'. We regularly did a bit of obedience training during our walks, but didn't do any serious IPO training. We don't have any agility trainings in winter either; nevertheless, after 4 months of agility deprivation we still had two very nice runs on the first trial and ended up fifth and even won on our second trial. We were disqualified on the last trial, but had an excellent first run and made the second qualification to enter the third, highest level.
Meanwhile we also went to a show, the international show in Graz, Austria. There were 13 groens besides Sambo. I entered him in open class, where he beat two males half his age without much problem and later on won even the BOB. I will have a particularly nice memory of this show because there is no competition whatsoever in our shows and the only time I had more than one male in the ring was either on a specialty show or the european or wolrd show. But here there were 13 more and what is even more important, we were the only foreigners, so this success means even more to me.
The only shadow over us the last few months is Sambo's periodical limping. At first I though it was another outburst of borelia, but the blood results were normal. Furthermore, the vet said that the borelia would jump from one joint to the other, while Sambo always limps on the same leg. He limps irrespective of the activity and, being a true Belgian, didn't even twitch with a whisker when the vet examined the leg and had it almost behind Sambo's neck in yoga position. Today we'll go to X-ray the leg and see if we can determine anything…

Sambo lives in complete and perfect ignorance, of course. More power to him! He doesn't know how old is he or that there's something wrong with his leg (don't even think of telling him!). I can only hope he will walk this Earth for at least as many years as now and as ignorant as now. And perhaps by the way win another agility trial or two and get another BOB in competition with dogs half his age… :)