This year's show season for Sambo began in May. I knew that after half a year I would have a big case of delirium tremens due to the show abstinence (our last show was Belgium in November), so I decided (around new year) to enter Sambo to the international show in Klagenfurt in May. Why not sooner? Because I worked on every single show this year, earning money for dog kibble, and there were no shows nearby with judges that would convince me (in order to meet my criteria the judge would have to have at least one live encounter with a BSD in his/her life). So when I saw that there was a show in Klagenfurt this year for the first time my alarm bell started to ring and when I saw that the judge was Štefan Šinko I definitely decided to go. Klagenfurt isn't far from Ljubljana, Šinko is a good judge and we'll probably have some competition too…

So on Sunday, May fourth, the standard team Živa & Uroš & Klark & Leia (ok, she's not a traditional member yet, but she will be) and Urša & Gregor & Sambo packed ourselves into the car and drove off, heading in search for new adventures. The showing ground was nice and quite big, we could smell the stands with reserve animal parts (Sambo's favourite being piggy noses and cow tongues) from a distance and the rings were medium big and with a very good carpet to run on – yep, we were definitely in Austria. I saw that it would soon be our turn so I dedicated the usual 1,7 minutes for Sambo's hairstyle. After the makeover we saw that we had still some minutes left, so Sambo and I went outside the hall and made good use of the green area outside. Nobody was outside, so I let him run off leash, we played and clicked for two minutes and thus returned to the hall with our spirits high. We entered the ring and Sambo was, as usually, floating in air, hopping around me and giving big smiles to anyone that would look at him. We were alone in the Champion class, presented ourselves well and got the CAC title. In a few minutes we returned to fight for the CACIB with the nice Austrian groen I met in April in the show in Celje, won the fight fair and square and got also the BOB. We happily returned to our camp and went to see what's going on with the Swissies. The answer was – nothing. And it satyed like that for a while. So we went to have a look around with Chuna the Kelpie and her human escort and came back just in time to cheer for Slovene Swissies Nuba and Klark that won both CACIBs and the BOB in an exclusively Austrian competition too.

We rewarded ourselves by setting out on a hunt for muzzles, tongues and… well, other animal parts and then let the dogs play in the almost empty hall whle waiting for the BIS. The judge for the shepherd group in the BIS was the Austrian judge Erwin Deutscher. The Black Death apparently charmed him too since Mr. Deutscher placed him among the best 9 dogs from the first FCI group, but this is as far as we got this time. Still, we had a wonderful time, made friends with the handler of the Czech wolfdog in the ring and entertained the audience with a few tricks while waiting (cause Sambo figured that he had to do something else other than simply stand for that last piece of treat I had left, so he tried with giving a bow, making a totem, and…). All in all, we left Austria in a very good mood and with nice memories of the show, and, of course, with a car that smelled like a pet cemetery. A big sack containing 100 piggy ears sat onto my head in every left turn, and on right turns this pleasure belonged to Gregor. Oh well, at least we weren't hungry :).

Neca and Nuba



Uroš and Klark







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