Sunday morning started off with the mini dogs taking the field.  Unfortunately both J.J. and Dice had off courses.  The medium team had some nice runs with Flip running the course cleanly, but with a few time faults and Nitro having a spectacular run.  The ‘Sunday Curse’ for Lucie has been lifted!  J  I think the only other dog that beat her in that round was a short legged BC from Great Britain who eventually went on to be World Champion.  The large individual dogs had a course that was built for speed with not as many handling challenges as we’ve seen.  Unfortunately Abbi took the wrong obstacle in a see-saw/dog walk discrimination and was eliminated L  Adrian and Fizz had a BEAUTIFUL run and were on top of the leader board for a long time and ended up in the top 25 (I think).  We all held our breath as Encore & Susan took the field—we knew this was their type of course but a bar coming down, early on in the course, was a heart breaker.  I’ve got to say, it is very impressive that Susan & Encore have been in that position now two years running and they just keep getting better!

Team Kanada taking to the field for the opening ceremonies.  Too bad that they changed us back to Canada for the closing ceremonies—-half our team (including me) missed the parade onto the field because we weren't behind Japan like in the opening ceremonies! 

Rio & I were happy to meet Eric & Petra who own one of Rio’s grandsons out of Lightning, Blaze.  Eric is originally from BC and even competed at the BC Regionals, but is currently living in Switzerland.  Eric & Petra also joined us in the Canadian section to cheer on our Large Dog Team.

Our team had great fun swapping Canadian clothing with the other countries all day with most of our team members coming home with South African apparel.  There may be more of us right now with South African agility jackets than Canadian ones!  LOL

 
Rio begging for treats from Adrian during the very, very, very long closing ceremonies.  Did I mention that they dragged on a bit?

Dinner was a relaxing event at an Italian Restaurant that Susan, Nathalie and I discovered accidentally when some un-named individual gave us wrong directions to our pre-competition team dinner.  Christina eventually found us and brought us back to the group but not before we’d had the world’s best bruchetta and promised the owner Daniele, that we’d be back again.  It was a fantastic way to end our time with the team, with lots of laughs and sharing of good memories.  Even Sandra Esford and travelling companions, who had been staying in Dornbirn, took the train into town to join us.


Team Canada before leaving the venue for the last time.  I'm going to miss those mountains!

I just waved good bye to Susan, Adrian & Deryl as they took an early morning shuttle to the airport.  I think its going to be very quiet in my little room!  I will miss Susan’s music here and on our bus.  She spoiled us with entertaining, uplifting and patriotic music every day to and from the venue.

Today we will be travelling to Switzerland where I think we are going up a mountain by cable car.  Rio is going to be thrilled to get out run a bit.  Its been many long days in the hotel room and then in her crate at the agility stadium. 

I’m pretty sad that my time here in Austria is almost up, but can’t wait to get home to see the two-legged and four legged family members.  Austria is such a beautiful country!


Celebrating the Individual Large Dog Team World Champions.  Austria took first and third place and the US second place.