Continental Sheepdog Championship 2013: Serge Van Der Zweep wins prize for best Shedding!

While I was taking pictures, my mom was filming some of the runs. Well, actually not the whole run but the interesting parts like shedding and penning, and also some bits and pieces of the other parts of a handler's run on the course.

So we have also the pleasure of showing you the video of the best shedding of the CSC 2013:

Serge Van Der Zweep with Eve!

Watch and learn, people! I'm sure I will try so :)

Continental Sheepdog Championship 2013

The CSC 2013 happened the last weekend of August, and the best handlers and their dogs from all over Europe competed for the title. I wasn't able to go to the qualifiers on Friday and Saturday, but saw a great deal of the Final on Sunday. As always it has been a joy to watch the best of the best, both handlers and dogs, and hoping to learn something of them too. Judges were Aled Owen form North Wales and James McGee from Northern Ireland.

The new Champion of 2013 is Jo Agnar Hansen with Sisko, and guess who is runner up? The same Jo Agnar Hansen with 11 year old Tika! And you want to know who was third? Well, that would happen to be his lady Karin Mattson with Trim, so the Championship was kind of a Norwegian party...

The Young Handlers Competition was won by the Swedish Frida Greiss with her dog Yoei. They did a great job on a quite difficult course.

I think I can say we all enjoyed the beautiful teamwork of Jo Agnar and his dogs, and that of Karin who did a really great job. She was the favorite of the day of the public, I think, along with the Swedish Anja Holgersson who put down an excellent run too.

Karin Mattson and Trim shedding...

... and penning

Anja Holgersson with Random Sod at the pen

One of the most touching moments of the trial was for sure when Jo Agnar Hansen led his 11 year old bitch Tika to the water tub for cooling down after the cross drive, while holding the sheep in the shedding ring himself. I'm sure judge Aled Owen appreciated this ;-)
After a few minutes they proceeded with the shedding.

A truly deserved victory for the winning couple!

Continental Sheepdog Championship 2012

Yes, I went to watch some of Europe's finest handlers last weekend!

What a treat it was indeed... this was handling at top level. And the dogs!
The best sheepdogs in Europe, running with such great style and doing everything they were told.
It was also a good oppurtunity to test my 70-300mm Nikon lense, and I took more than 700 pictures :)))

T. Jaran Knive became European Champion 2012 with Maico. It was their second year in a row, and for Jaran even the 6th time he won the title! And they did it with such ease, like it was just practising for them, awesome to watch!

Here's Maico working:

But the other competitors where also worth while, it was really a joy watching them handle their dogs. And if something did not go as it should have, it was not the dogs' fault...
The sheep were pretty behaving, sometimes challenging, but these dogs knew how to handle them. All in all these Kempische and Veluwse Heideschapen ran really good.

The winners of the Continental Sheepdog Championship from left to right: Serge van der Zweep (2nd place) with Eve, T. Jaran Knive with Maico (1st place) and Jo Agnar Hansen with Sisko (3rd place):

But the best thing I saw at this Trial was Jo Agnar Hansen picking up his dog and kiss it after his run, what a guy!