The judge was Marleen Haeneefstingels from Belgium.

14/03/2026

My stress level was unusually high, no matter what I did, and Kaïa, being an emotional sponge, was also nervous and stressed. The result was catastrophic: I didn’t handle her properly, and she didn’t listen anyway.

15/03/2026

I took the time to get rid of the stress and get Kaïa out of the car at the very last minute to warm her up and run so she doesn’t stay in the ambient stress. I don’t really like this process, but it’s better not to have her fully stressed in the ring.

It didn’t change the results, as we finished this first weekend with nothing but disqualifications. But at least it felt like a normal competition.

The judge was Tamara Cuypers from Belgium.

Eliminated on the first course, she took the first hoop twice, which resulted in an immediate elimination.

I was worried from the beginning. Some parts of the course were a bit short, and Kaïa trains on much larger courses to prepare for the H2 level. She also recently had physiotherapy and was really eager to run now that her body is in order.

The physiotherapy worked too well, I guess. The effort she made to take the tunnel this way is unbelievable. We got 1 fault for this.

Yennefer

There was a little game at the end of the competition, so I took the opportunity to put the blue-eyed demon in a real situation.

She wasn’t disturbed by the spectators or anything. She behaved perfectly.

Since it’s an unofficial competition, instead of running Kaïa at her official level H1, I chose to move her directly to H2 to see how she would manage.
H2 is also what we actually train at, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

The judge was Tamara Cuypers from Belgium.

When I looked at the course, I already knew it would be difficult. It was messy, and I failed to make her understand what I wanted.

The judge was Ari Valkhoff-Leclerq from the Netherlands.

This was more the kind of course we train on, just a little bigger. The judge took advantage of the large hall and created a course with a lot of distance. Even though we did not succeed, I think she did great, covering the distance happily.

Team course

The judge was Tamara Cuypers from Belgium.

This challenge also featured a team course. So Kaïa and Maïky teamed up to try to finish this very wide course. The farthest hoop was 18 m from the box. You can see both dogs struggling to cover the distance since they are not used to it yet. I’m still proud of them since they both actually closed the distance at some point.