Angelo's glamorous future...

After about 4 hours sleep, I had to get up again because we were expecting Angelo’s future owner for the day. I went for a last walk alone with Angelo in the morning, washed and brushed him and snuggled him before his new owner and his wife arrived. We spent the day with them showing them how to handle Angelo. Angelo will have a life many would envy: his new owners mostly travel on their luxury 60 feet yacht or enjoy life in their villa on the Steinberger lake near Munich or occasionally chill out in their new villa in Tuscany...I know that they will take excellent care of him...

Vienna...

Well, we finally left to Vienna at about 1 pm and arrived at about 1 am. We stopped for a break in Salzburg at Martina’s house where we took the eagle and the dog out into the garden and had a nice dinner prepared by Martina’s mum: my new favourite meal, ‘sur’ Schnitzel! The next day, it was Hans birthday and we welcomed him with a mini cake and a candle at our hotel’s breakfast buffet. Then we spent the whole day at the fair. We had 4 shows with Hans and his dog Sirius but nevertheless, it was a bit slow. In the evening we went to the ‘Heuriger’(a typical restaurant where they serve local wine and food)to celebrate Hans birthday. The next day at the fair was much more interesting as somebody arrived with an extremely aggressive dog (a Dutch shepherd) that attacks people and dogs, basically everything that moves, without any previous warnings. His owner had tried to train him as a police dog and one of his trainers had hanged the dog for a while when he wouldn’t bark when he was expected to!!! Starting from then, the dog became aggressive. He was wearing a muzzle and he started by attacking the security guard and then even Hans. Hans worked with him on stage while many people were watching and after a while he just took off the muzzle and snuggled with the dog! It was amazing to see how quickly he connected with the dog and the dog trusted him! Then he put the muzzle back on and asked Martina and me to come on stage to assist him. We had to walk to the dog and confront him, for example by jumping in front of him. The dog attacked Martina and hit her with the muzzle on the chin (that hurts!!). I must admit that my heart was beating much quicker than usual when Hans asked me right after to go to the dog and pet him!! However, I was lucky and nothing happened...after a while the dog became much calmer and by the end of the day the owner wouldn’t stop thanking us for what we had done. She had tried different therapies for years but nothing would work and people had told her that her dog was a hopeless case. Hans said that if she would join us for just a few days, the dog would be completely fine! We left late and finally arrived back home at 2 am!

Vienna preparations...

Today we are leaving for Vienna as we are participating in a big animal exhibition, EXOTICA. It’s aprox. an 8 hr drive from Gansingen. We were supposed to leave at 9 am but as it is quite common with Hans, plans have changed over night: He decided to take his eagle and therefore we are now waiting for the public vet to fill out some papers...Also we will have to take the trailer which will add at least 2 more hours to our trip. So we are talking about a 10 hours drive now. Well, I took advantage of the extra time and went for a walk with Angelo, Paulo and Liwa. Liwa was not all happy to see Angelo again who on the other side seems quite attracted to her...In the end, we had a good walk and a very obedient Liwa who wouldn’t leave my side. More to Vienna, when I am back on Monday...

Happy Teenies...

A school class of 16 years old came to visit Wolfsprung the whole day. It was really touching to see how they were captured by the place and fascinated by everything we would show them. I must admit that I didn’t expect this from a group of adolescent teenagers. Hans did a little show with his dogs and I took Angelo out for a little while. We also did a kind of mediation with Ayana, the eagle. For dinner Martina and I went back to our favourite restaurant ‘Baer’. Later on Hans also joined and we had a very nice chat. When we came back, we took our mustangs out together with Paulo and Liwa. Paulo was happily playing with Angelo but Liwa quickly disappeared in my caravan.

Bitchy Liwa...

Today we did a lot of theory stuff with Hans. I realized that dog training lies in the details and that it needs a lot of practice and experience to become proficient. As yesterday was an extremely long and tiring day and today our head was filled with new stuff, we are quite groggy. So I went for a 2 hr walk with Paulo & Liwa all the way to the top of the Laubberg which is at about 650 meters. We enjoyed a fantastic view and observed parachutists. When I came back Hans and Martina were having a cigarette in front of my caravan. Then Martina, the dogs and I went for a nice dinner in the village. Liwa decided not to like one of the waitresses and started growling each time she would approach the table. However, she didn’t have any problems with Sonja, the daughter of the owner who then took over from the other waitress. Restaurant ‘Baer’ is now our new top favourite. They serve excellent meat as they also have a butchery next door and Sonja always takes very good care of us.

24hrs are not enough...

Today was a long and productive day! We started at 06:45 am as always from now on and I stopped working at 10 pm! First, we started off where we left the evening before: we took the dogs in the trailer once again, drove to the other side of the mountain as the sun was shining on that side already and we played with our mustangs. Then, for the rest of the morning, Hans was busy and Martina and my task was to teach the new trainees some basics in dog training. In the afternoon, Hans taught us some new stuff that we need to know for our exam that will take place at the end of June and then we assisted Hans for his evening course where he prepares a group of people for the ‘Schweizer Halterpruefung’, an official exam for dog owners in Switzerland, developed and managed by Hans. In between all those activities, we walked our mustangs several times, I went bicycling with Paulo and Liwa, I also walked them and we ate some wild cherries from the trees, Martina and I prepared a Greek salad for everybody at lunch time , I tidied up my caravan and I did several training sessions with Paulo and Liwa to teach them how to sit quietly...Now, my feet are full of blisters and I can barely walk and I am quickly going to sleep as tomorrow we have an early start again...

Pfingsten...

Today was a public holiday and Hans went to see his daughter Tanaya. However, he had left a message with Caro asking us to clean the windows of our dog’s kennel and the bathroom that we all use and to do some work with our mustangs. In the morning 2 new trainees appeared, Dieter and Michael. Just before lunch time, Hans came back with his daughter. Then Martina and I went to lunch with the new trainees thinking that the rest of the day was more or less off. So we started eating and drinking but after a while, Hans called saying that he was waiting for us. We all rushed back and had a briefing on how the next month will look like. Later on, Hans told Martina and me that we should take the dogs in the trailer and come with him to drop Tanaya home. We were not too happy as she lives quite far away (about 1.45h). He then explained that he would drop us in a city on the way so that we could walk the dogs while he drops Tanaya. Well, Hans picked us up about 2 ½ hours later and we arrived back home at 11 pm!