Written by: Bina
Finally, the day of the Flying dogs 2018 competition arrives. Last year the competition did not take place, because the organizers could not find a venue, but this year they combined their powers with the Kennel club Zagorje and revived a long forgotten and abandoned pool complex Medijske toplice in Izlake. For this occasion, they cleaned the large pool and with the help of the fire fighters filled it with water. And so, the venue was ready for the four legged dock diving and swimming competition.
43 dogs and their owners participated in the event. There were 3 categories of the competition: dock diving from the edge of the pool, dock diving from approximately one meter high pier and fast swimming from one side of the pool to the other. The contestants have 4 hours for training. Then, the qualification rounds started at noon. First, 2 rounds of jumping from the edge of the pool and 2 rounds of jumping from the pier and one round of fast swimming. The first 10 best contestants entered into the finals, where there was just one round of each competition.
My mum always wished I would compete in dock diving. I can jump high and long on the ground, but I hesitate before jumping into the water. Mum thought I could try to jump from the pier during the qualification hours, but I didn’t want to. I’ve jumped before into the sea from approximately half a meter, but this pier was too high for me and the water was too clear since I could see the bottom of the pool. So, there will be no jumping for me today, only swimming. Anyway, as I watched the training, I saw that many dogs had the same problem, they just didn’t want to jump into the water, a little bit of relief for me.
After long hours of waiting under the hot sun and a few rain showers we finally lived to see the swimming competition. There was no swimming line and the start was too close to the edge of the pool. The result was that many dogs were disqualified because they wanted to take a shortcut over the land. Some dogs lost time because they didn’t jump but took the stairs.
Anyway, I got qualified in the finals; I swam across the poll in 18.75 second, which was the 9th time of the first round. The difference between the 1st and the 10th ranked dog was just 3.5 seconds. I admit I could’ve swum faster. I was distracted by the noise and too many people around the pool.
In the finals I swam even slower, only 21.66 seconds, which was enough for the final 8th place. My mum was a little disappointed because she knows I can swim much faster. I know that too, but the crowd and the noise were frightful. And I also needed a better motivation to swim faster to the other side of the pool. Maybe some tasty snacks or a huge stick? But, the point of this competition is to have fun and we had a lot of fan. And I’m already looking forward to the next year Flying dogs competition.
