Frisbee shows

posted by Jean, with the assistance of field reporters Alenka, Nadja, Tamara, and Tomaž

This past weekend (April 25-26) was a busy one for Flipsi members, who put on three shows in two days. In preparation, Manca and Maja put together a flyer about our club and its activities, for distribution at these and other public events:


Then on Saturday April 25 Tomaž and Casper traveled to Bled, where they took part in Dogging Bled 2009, a charity run around the lake for dogs and their owners.


Turnout for the event was quite high; all the money from entry fees was donated to an animal shelter in Jesenice. Tomaž and Casper did not do the run around the lake, but were invited by the organizers to do a dogfrisbee freestyle demonstration, somewhat adapted to the smaller size of the playing area, right next to the lake.


Since Tomaž is a very accurate thrower, no frisbees ended up in the water...



...though if they had I am sure Casper would have happily retrieved them.

Tomaž reports that spectators were very impressed with the show, and the organizers invited them to do it again next year. Hopefully next year more of us will be able to participate.



This year only Tomaž was free to go. But that same day, Amadea and I had the opportunity to do a show in Ajdovščina, where our home kennel club, ŠKD Ajdovščina, was hosting an agility competition. Amadea and Bora went first:

www.agility-slo.net

I followed their performance with one of my own, using two dogs, in a continuous performance to a song called N'taka by the Slovenian band Terrafolk.

www.agility-slo.net

This is the music I've been using for Lyra's freestyle routines since the 2008 EC; I really like it for freestyle but usually have to stop two minutes into the song. This time, when I got to the usual stopping point, I simply switched dogs and continued to the end (another minute and a half or so) with Bamm Bamm.

www.agility-slo.net

Bamm Bamm and I don't have a set routine worked out yet, so we mostly improvised together.

www.agility-slo.net

Then the next day, Sunday April 26, Amadea (obviously working overtime this weekend),



Nadja



and Tamara



traveled to Bled to do a show in conjunction with the rowing regatta there, which attracts lots of spectators. Just to make things more exciting, Nadja had some car problems the day before. She and Ginny were returning from a day of SAR field exercises in Tržič when her car gave up the ghost shortly before reaching Ljubljana. Fortunately she managed to make it as far as the exit off the highway, where with the help of SAR colleagues Laura and Vid, who were driving behind her, she got the car safely out of the way and waited for the tow truck. In the meantime she called Tamara and Alenka to let them know that the frisbee plans for the next day were off, since Tamara was to travel to Bled with Nadja. :(

However, with a strong dose of determination, they managed to pull off the plan after all, with everyone piling into the Coljas' car for the trip to Bled. If I'm counting right, that was three dogs and six people in one car.

Once there they had a look around and selected a small grassy area as a location for their shows. Many a passerby stopped to watch with admiration and amazement. Two little girls were so delighted that they wanted to try throwing these flying plastic wonders themselves.



At the end they took a group photo in front of the lake


and made a stop at Aleš's parents' place for a bite to eat and a viewing of photos and videos from the recent competition in the Czech Republic, arriving in Ljubljana just in time to get Tamara and Žak on the train for home.

Earth Day visit to Tone Okrogar Elementary School

posted by Tamara Gregorčič

On Wednesday April 22 Žak and I were invited through the Šnoflja society for the protection of animals to make a visit to Tone Okrogar Elementary School in Zagorje. Pupils there had a different kind of lesson organized in honor of Earth Day: they cleaned up the area around the school and inside it, they painted a little house for collecting contributions to help homeless animals, and a part of the day was devoted to learning about Šnoflja's work. Two representatives from the society talked about its activities and explained what to do if you find or lose a pet, how to approach a strange dog, and so on. Žak and Tina's Chica (Žak's half-sister) added some variety to the program. First Žak and I put on a frisbee show:



We did some passing, vaults, overs, blind catches and some other moves. The children were most impressed with flips and the dog catch. I tried to present frisbee as an interesting and varied dog sport, and the kids seemed to really like it.



After that Chica and Žak showed off some of their tricks, Chica demonstrated searching and Žak did some obedience. The children were really amazed at how much these two dogs knew. We did the presentation three times, since all nine grades watched it, divided into three groups. The last group was the largest, since some of the kids came to see it again. After a successful morning's work, our dogs were pleasantly tired from being patted by so many hands. The teachers were really pleased with our presentation and invited us to do it again at an affiliated school.

The teachers will send us some of the photos they took after the holidays, we'll post some more here when we get them.

Kirican seminar and competition, Olomouc

posted by Jean McCollister

Several of us from Flipsi are leaving tomorrow for a weekend of frisbee fun in the Czech Republic. On Saturday we'll be attending a full day seminar with Bryan Lamky from the United States. We met Bryan last year at the European Championship, where he was the canine judge for the Open freestyle category. (For the uninitiated, there are four judges for freestyle events under the USDDN system: one each for player, canine, team, and execution.) Looking forward to seeing him again. The seminar will be in Olomouc, then on Sunday we move to a little town called Tovačov, about 25 km south of Olomouc, for the competition. Amadea and Bora will be competing in superminidistance and in the Starters category in freestyle (and dad Aleš will also try his hand at superminidistance), Manca and Bode in superminidistance, and Tomaž and Casper in superminidistance and Open freestyle.

As for me, I'm entered in superminidistance and Open freestyle with Lyra and with Bamm Bamm (who is the dog doing the flip in the previous post). I'm not sure yet whether I'll compete with Bamm Bamm; we stopped training a week ago because I was concerned about his mouth: when he catches discs, he starts to get a big blister in one corner, which can swell, crack, and bleed, and I want that to heal completely before we start training again regularly. It's much better now, so we'll almost certainly do minidistance, and maybe an improvised freestyle routine. And I may be the team judge for Young Dogs, but it's hard to combine judging and competing because the minidistance rounds will be interlarded with the freestyle rounds. It will be good experience if I can manage it. I went to a judging seminar last fall with Melissa Heeter, International Judging Director at USDDN, and passed exams for minidistance and freestyle (Level II) judging, but this would be my first time judging freestyle at a competition.

Really forward to reconnecting with our Czech friends, whom we haven't seen since the EC last September. Look for a full report on the event next week some time, after we get back, and in the meantime wish us luck!

Why Flipsi?

posted by Jean McCollister

This is actually two questions. Why start up a dogfrisbee club in Slovenia? And where did we get the name "Flipsi" for it?

As for the first, a bit of history is in order. There has been an informal, and steadily growing, community of dogfrisbee enthusiasts in Slovenia at least since January of 2007. It started up first mainly within the agility community, a canine sport which is already highly developed in this country. Through the agility and PeSjanar internet forums, as well as in person when we saw one another at agility competitions, we organized group purchases of canine frisbees and shared training tips and ideas. A little later I ordered a Skyhoundz DVD, watched it myself, and loaned it to others who were interested. Of course YouTube was also a source of ideas and inspiration for all of us learning the sport. Then in the spring of 2007, following a link posted by a member of the agility forum, I learned of a five-day seminar in Germany at Hundesporthotel Wolf with Karin Actun in late June, and signed up.

At that point I was hooked: together with my daughter, I went to another seminar at the same place in August with Sabine Bruns and Marcus Wolff, and learned even more. In between I went to my first competition in Stromovka Park, Prague, at which Sabine and Marcus were judges, and first met people in the Czech Republic involved in the sport, with whom we Slovenian players have close cooperation to this day.

The Czechs have played a major role in teaching us the sport. Nine of them, under the leadership of Jakub Stybr, came to Slovenia at our invitation in April 2008 to give a two-day seminar hosted by Ajdovščina Kennel Club, and help us organize and judge the first ever dogfrisbee competition in Slovenia a day later, in Vipava. The seminar was a huge hit and the number of active and skilled Slovenian players grew still further.

Several of these players competed successfully at competitions in the Czech Republic, including the USDDN European Championship, during the 2008 season, and at that point it was a logical step to establish a sports club, to bring us all together under one organization, and through the organization to promote the visibility of the sport, to teach basic skills and rules of the game to newcomers through classes and seminars, to organize competitions and purchases of frisbee equipment, raise funds for the further development of the sport and the participation of our members at competitions and seminars abroad, and so on. Much of this had been taking place already informally, but we felt we could do it more effectively as a club.

And why "Flipsi" the name? The suggestion came from one of our members, Tomaž Šubic. Actually he had a couple of suggestions, both inspired by an Ultimate Frisbee club in Slovenia called Frizmi. "Frizmi" is a combination of "frizbi" (the slovenized form of "frisbee") and "mi", which means "we" in Slovene. Now "psi" means "dogs" in Slovene, so Tomaž suggested "Fripsi" for FRIzbi PSI(frisbee dogs). An alternative suggestion was FLIPSI, since one of the elements of frisbee freestyle is the flip, when the dog goes up into the air and twists to one side (some even perform a near somersault) to catch a short, high throw pitched slightly to one side. It looks like this:



So "Flipsi" could be seen as a composite of "flip" + "si" (country abbreviation for Slovenia), and it also has the word "psi" contained within it.

Another suggestion put forth, which I personally liked a lot, was "Leteče tačke", which means "flying paws" in Slovene. (By law the names of Slovenian-based organizations have to be in the Slovene language, so an English name such as those used by many clubs elsewhere in Europe was not an option for us.) But most people preferred Flipsi, because it's short and snappy and easier for non-Slovenes to pronounce.

And so here we are. A Slovenian dogfrisbee club called Flipsi.