By Mark Laker
I’m writing this months blog from the garden at 9pm in the evening sat here in shorts and a T-shirt enjoying a warm evening. The weather has been amazing. Too hot for some and perfect for others. Next week we travel to The Netherlands for the European Open for Juniors and the weather seems set to continue there.
Many team members have been acclimatising their dogs to the weather as its set to continue in Austria when we’re there in three weeks time too. While I accept some dogs struggle in the heat, I’ve seen how dogs can acclimatise and if treated sensible take it in their stride.
So its the junior competition first and our YKC team are looking confident. Their last training session went very well and they have had plenty of practice on the type of courses they can expect to be faced with.
One a different but related subject, q few handlers have commented to me recently how inspired they’ve been from watching the World Cup. From my own experience no matter whether you follow football or not, the sporting principle is the same. It’s about drawing on all your strengthens and skills to deliver a world class performance. What professional sports people / athletes do is take this to a higher level and go in too much greater depth of analysis than most of us, this is where we can learn.
So I hope the teams going to the competitions in Europe this month feel extra inspired and show us what great athletes they are as we compete against some of the best in the world.
You can keep up with the European Open for Juniors here and the European Open (adult championships) here.
Enjoy the weather.
Mark Laker
International Team Manager
