Eli Beate Sæther | Agility, physical training and mental strength Unleashed
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- Pets & Animals
JEANETTE: Today’s guest is one of the world’s best athletes in agility. With her Shetland sheepdog Zelda, she placed third in this year’s European Open, and they have been on the podium at the World Championship two times. Eli Beate Sæther, welcome.
ELI BEATE: Thank you.
JEANETTE: Agility might look very easy when you look at some good athletes doing it, but it’s a lot of hard work behind it.
ELI BEATE: I thought that as well. When I first saw someone do agility, it looks like a dance, kind of, when you are handling your dog through the course. It’s nice when you’re seeing someone that has this good connection with her or his dog. You have to have a good basic to get this good rhythm, to get it to look like this dance. Absolutely much hard work to come there.
I think for someone it’s hard to get this rhythm through their whole career, but if you are always trying to find the small key points, I think you will come there.
JEANETTE:: On the course you are communicating with your dog in different ways, and everything goes so fast, but you use body language. You use your voice. What do you do to tell your dog what to do on the course?
ELI BEATE: I started with agility in 2008, and then I was just 12 years old. So I was very young myself. I had a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and his name was Todd, and he didn’t want to work. He was just walking through the course. Then I didn’t have this much speed either, so the rhythm was not so good then. But after two years, I got my first Shetland sheepdog, Siraja. She is now 10 years old. With her it was much more speed.
The good thing with Todd was that I had to learn how to take – you have different ways to handle a dog through the course. You have front cross, you have rear cross, you have blind cross, and then you have different techniques you can use on the jump obstacles or the tunnels. With Todd, I really had to learn his crosses in a good way because it was so slow. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It was never fast with Todd, but with Siraja I had this good rhythm in my own body, so when she ran faster than Todd, it was easy to me to do the same process with her. The rhythm was much better.
For other people that start their agility career with a fast dog, it can be very hard to learn these crosses in a good way because it’s not so often that you are repeating it on your own without the dog. You will always do it with the dog, and then it’s always too fast, and then you never learn it good enough. But if you have a slow dog, then you’ll learn it very well, and then it’s easier to do it with a fast dog afterwards.
I’m very grateful that I had Todd and I learned it in this good way at the beginning. It was much easier for me to then have Siraja. I was just 14 when I got her, so I was not that good a dog trainer then either, but when I then got Zelda that I have been in the World Championship and European Open with, I learned a lot more myself. We found this good connection and rhythm quite fast.
JEANETTE: How do you build this connection from the dog as a puppy? How do you start with an agility dog, and when do you start training?
ELI BEATE: Zelda is the first dog I really started to work with from a young age. The reason is that Siraja, when she was I think two years old, she got a big injury, a slipped tendon. Her tendon where her ankle is, like her Achilles tendon, was slipping. So then she started to limp. Because of that, she had an operation. First she had one operation on her first leg, and after rehabilitation, in 6 months she had the same injury on the other leg.
The vet I had talked to said to me that that could happen, that when you get it on the first leg, it can come on the second leg also. And that did happen with Siraja. Then I had to go through a new rehabilitation. Like I said, I was quite young, so maybe 15 years old. I was tired of waiting at this time, so I started to search on the internet for different things to do w
JEANETTE: Today’s guest is one of the world’s best athletes in agility. With her Shetland sheepdog Zelda, she placed third in this year’s European Open, and they have been on the podium at the World Championship two times. Eli Beate Sæther, welcome.
ELI BEATE: Thank you.
JEANETTE: Agility might look very easy when you look at some good athletes doing it, but it’s a lot of hard work behind it.
ELI BEATE: I thought that as well. When I first saw someone do agility, it looks like a dance, kind of, when you are handling your dog through the course. It’s nice when you’re seeing someone that has this good connection with her or his dog. You have to have a good basic to get this good rhythm, to get it to look like this dance. Absolutely much hard work to come there.
I think for someone it’s hard to get this rhythm through their whole career, but if you are always trying to find the small key points, I think you will come there.
JEANETTE:: On the course you are communicating with your dog in different ways, and everything goes so fast, but you use body language. You use your voice. What do you do to tell your dog what to do on the course?
ELI BEATE: I started with agility in 2008, and then I was just 12 years old. So I was very young myself. I had a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and his name was Todd, and he didn’t want to work. He was just walking through the course. Then I didn’t have this much speed either, so the rhythm was not so good then. But after two years, I got my first Shetland sheepdog, Siraja. She is now 10 years old. With her it was much more speed.
The good thing with Todd was that I had to learn how to take – you have different ways to handle a dog through the course. You have front cross, you have rear cross, you have blind cross, and then you have different techniques you can use on the jump obstacles or the tunnels. With Todd, I really had to learn his crosses in a good way because it was so slow. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It was never fast with Todd, but with Siraja I had this good rhythm in my own body, so when she ran faster than Todd, it was easy to me to do the same process with her. The rhythm was much better.
For other people that start their agility career with a fast dog, it can be very hard to learn these crosses in a good way because it’s not so often that you are repeating it on your own without the dog. You will always do it with the dog, and then it’s always too fast, and then you never learn it good enough. But if you have a slow dog, then you’ll learn it very well, and then it’s easier to do it with a fast dog afterwards.
I’m very grateful that I had Todd and I learned it in this good way at the beginning. It was much easier for me to then have Siraja. I was just 14 when I got her, so I was not that good a dog trainer then either, but when I then got Zelda that I have been in the World Championship and European Open with, I learned a lot more myself. We found this good connection and rhythm quite fast.
JEANETTE: How do you build this connection from the dog as a puppy? How do you start with an agility dog, and when do you start training?
ELI BEATE: Zelda is the first dog I really started to work with from a young age. The reason is that Siraja, when she was I think two years old, she got a big injury, a slipped tendon. Her tendon where her ankle is, like her Achilles tendon, was slipping. So then she started to limp. Because of that, she had an operation. First she had one operation on her first leg, and after rehabilitation, in 6 months she had the same injury on the other leg.
The vet I had talked to said to me that that could happen, that when you get it on the first leg, it can come on the second leg also. And that did happen with Siraja. Then I had to go through a new rehabilitation. Like I said, I was quite young, so maybe 15 years old. I was tired of waiting at this time, so I started to search on the internet for different things to do w