o'cockaigne

European Championship coursing in Pouch, Germany.

  During the weekend of 22 and 23 June. The European Championships coursing on the Pouch in the immediate vicinity of Bitterfeld was organised. The many negative rumors in advance and the high tide alarm ensured that we were prepared for everything. There would be no clean drinking water, the catering would not be good/sufficient, the area would have been inundated with all the consequences and there would be too little manpower to make everything run. Luckily it all came along and all this was fine. However, what was not in order and where it was going with a European championship coursing was the Coursingvelden. To begin with, the total area was strewn with glass shards. Several weeks before there was a concert and the visitors had left their glass bottles which were then broken by the bulldozers/lorries that had to clean the terrain again for the next event. Incredibly dangerous of course for a dog sporting event. For Thursday evening, a cleanup action was planned, if all the participants were to walk next to each other over the Coursingterreinen, it was necessary to clear the most and most dangerous glass. But… at seven o'clock a huge distress broke out. Gusts who had the Dixie toilets flying through the air, extremely heavy rain and big hails made sure that everyone hung on his awning/tent/Party tent. And it took quite a long time! Just before that the storm erupted, we sat down with a pretty large group to eat. Chris and Henriette had a tremendous uitgesloofd on this delicious meal, but it would literally fly in the air later. At the last moment we decided to pick up everything and move to our awning and canopy, about 20 meters away. But when Simon and Sonja went with a table loaded by the gate, and the table had to lift a little higher, a squall came and blew everything off the table! That happened to everyone who walked into his hands with a table. In no time it was a ravage of your Welsh. If the bugger had to be windows and skylights closed, awnings had to be turned on but because of the enormous wind this was almost impossible. An additional problem was that because of the hard rain, the roaring winds and the huge thunders that followed each other at a rapid pace, it was not understood if someone shouted at you something. Awnings had to be hung, but also our large party tent that I wanted to use for my ceramics was built. The hounds also walked outside and did not understand. Except Lavinia, who saw her chance where and began to eat all the food she could find on the ground, on. As the bugger we have done the hounds through open doors, not looking which hound where and if we all had them. Our awning at the front tent was already broken, so we first demolished it quickly before he could damage the car, when the canopy of Angelika was saved, that of Sonja could still wait (we thought) and then hung with eight men at the party tent. Large hail stones beat against our hands and that did twisted a lot of pain. In no time everyone was soaked and there was ten inches of water locally. Among others at my party tent where the ceramic boxes were already covered. There was no more saving here. Also our freezers stood deep in the water, all the chairs, dog beds/rugs that stood outside, everything, everything was soaked. When the storm fell and we could see the damage, the courage fell into our shoes. What an incredible gang!! Everywhere lay food, the pans and dishes with food were filled with water, everywhere couched tables, chairs, plates and cutlery. Well, garbage bag and tidy. When the biggest troop was gone we went to watch the hounds. Most lay quietly to sleep only a confused brandir came at Angelika from the RV, Xena of Angelika, came from Sonja's camper and Silva from Sonja lag in our car. After having a bit of order again, we first got some drying and a glass of sect, we would see the next day. Friday shined the sun again and dried everything up quite quickly, except for the dog "water" bed, which needed a little longer. Of course I had an awful lot of extra work on my ceramics. All the boxes were soaked and several I couldn't even bite. First everything but displayed so that it could dry a bit in the right form, fortunately this went quite quickly and I could then extract everything and let the boxes dry and possibly paste back into the model with tape. The ceramics had nothing to do with it except the ones that were really under water, which after drying were pretty dusty and I have to finish with a tassel fabric.

Many had considerable damage and the enormous mess that had arisen took a lot of hours to clean up. In the meantime, the courses were turned off and it soon became apparent that two areas were not suitable in any case and did not meet the regulatory requirements of the FCI for a EKC-course. The minimum length is for the large varieties 800 meters and for the small varieties 600. Only Field 1 complied with this and it was also a fun and challenging course which was also well-overlooked by the officials. Two other fields were not fully overlooked for the Turner and the judges, the one had a length of 500 and the other 600 meters! Also the trailed courses did not suggest much. Last year, Simon agreed that he would also explain a course. This would be field 4. Simon had already started running a trail on Wednesday, but soon found out that he couldn't get rid of the necessary meters. It was promised that there was more mowing and that the glass would be cleared. Unfortunately this Friday had not yet happened and several people were in the meantime interfering with the race route so that Simon was forced to pull his hands. Here, something was put out where he was not behind. Field 4 would only be put into service on Sunday, and this area was not fully met by the requirements. Absolutely not championship worthy so!

On Friday-evening, the opening took place in the amphitheatre in the middle of the peninsula. There Simon (almost) was too late and had forgotten to attract his orange polo, I sent Sonja with that thing to him to dress and-audience him. There were several speakers, and the hounds who appeared to have won last year were still honoured. These were two, a German Azawakh and our Dutch Saluki; Non-Serviam Abdelhaziz of Henriette of Constance and Chris Bekker. The opening was brightened up by a ballet group with accompanying orchestra. The atmosphere was super again, and under the line of three orange colored Dutch people, a true party arose between the performances of the group.

Even Sonja couldn't control himself and stepped on Bernd Josh to work with him to dance a waltz on the merry Notes of the Wind Orchestra.

            From 19 countries there were 808 hounds registered, with 157 reserves remaining. The number of hounds that actually started was on Saturday 305 and Sunday 443. The biggest report of course from Germany with 159 hounds, the Netherlands had 45 there. For the first time no Dutch Deerhounds at the start, where I was happy for several reasons. Firstly because of the glass, secondly because of the bad and short courses and thirdly because of the atypical Deerhounds that we currently see many appear on the Coursingveld and also win everywhere. By the way, this year it was very striking how many atypical rasvertegenwoordigers there milling about. Dogs that I really thought were the crossings were standing on stage in the evening. It is high time that all the greyhounds were tested on varietal purity.

What was noticed by the larger varieties like the greyhounds, the Deerhounds and the next day the Barsoi's, Chart Polski's and the Irish Wolfhounds, was that there was quite a percentage of lame going to the podium. And there are only twelve of them…. According to the Chef D'équipe this was not by glass but by the bad courses/terrains. There were also several hounds unsubscribed for the second circulation due to injuries. Among other glass anyway??? All in all, the Netherlands did not perform badly, two first places, four second places, one fourth and one fifth place and yet we sang three times the Wilhelmus. I would like to add another critical note; We see more and more often that the FCI regulations for International Sighthound races and Lure coursing Events are not respected. In this case rules No. 1.2 Protection of Animals The safety and health of the animals must always guide all officials and participants during racing and lure coursing events. and 4.11.2 Track length for lure coursing. Distances to be applied for FCI European Lure coursing Championship • For Whippets and Italian Greyhounds: 600-800 metres • For all other Sighthound breeds: 800-1000 metres Small variations of the above distances are tolerated. Two years back, at the EKC in the Netherlands, there was a Whippet without her union booklet and she had already done a test run on the field where she was allowed to walk the same day. At least two rules have been violated in this one hound alone! Last year, in Hungary, because of the ground squirrel-holes were life-threatening, there was (just like this year) not enough spare material available and so I can go on. Rules are apparently to trample on. Is it not possible to abolish them all better? That makes it a lot more relaxed!