I promised pictures from Italy

So as you know, we were in Italy for Dachshund trials two weeks ago (the 15th-16th of December). Frankly, I can't believe that it was only 2 weeks ago! It seems like much longer...

The trip was about 430km (267mi), which is quite a distance by European standards, but not by my American Standards. It is really a beautiful area with a lot of rolling hills, castles, and great food and wine. What more could you want? (Maps courtesy of Google Maps)

Anyhow,  the weather in Basel had been quite rainy, but relatively warm.  I had been watching the weather in Italy and it was hovering around 5-10 C (40-50F) with a bit of rain, but mostly cloudy. I thought that it would actually be quite good for tracking and trials in general since it would be above freezing and a little moist. Wrong. When we arrived it was dark and there was light rain. I couldn't see much out the car windows since there is very little light on the roads in Switzerland/Italy aside from the car's headlights. When we arrived at our bed and breakfast (a beautiful place in Gropparello -Torre del Borgo), we saw the snow. It was at least a few inches deep and had obviously fallen a few days ago.  Great. We settled down for the night, grabbed dinner at a nice pizzeria down the road, and headed to bed.

Woke up the next day to a cold, grey, brisk day. Checked my email to ensure I hadn't gotten anything from the trial organizers. Nothing. So we headed to the trial location at 10am to check in and pay for for our tracking trials at 11am. When we got to Cimafava, this was the weather situation:

Not the nicest conditions.

Freddie and Simon December 17th, 2011 after their SchwhK

/20.

We were told that tracking would not happen today as the past couple days had caused everything to ice over, making tracking too difficult. In addition there was quite a bit of wind that day, which isn't common for the area. We were disappointed that 2 of our 5 trials were cancelled, but so be it. The weather was not on our side. We were told that this type of weather was not common for Italy this time of year and that this year had been especially snowy. It reminded me of our nice weather the year before and wished that we had the same luck.

Since we had all afternoon free, we went shopping at a local shopping center to pick up lots of wine, meat, cheese, and Christmas goodies to take home. Went back to the agricultural center in Cimafava where the trials were held for a delicious Italian lunch and got updated on what was happening tomorrow and when we should meet back for the exams. We then made what was left of the day into a site-seeing adventure to the nearby town of Castell'arquato to walk around the old town and see the castle.

This is the same field pictured above 1 year later.

All of us enjoyed the old town and stretching our legs walking through the city and up the hill to the castle.

The snowy road up

The dogs weren't sure what I was doing, but they both seem concerned for my well being.

We ended the day kicking back at the bed and breakfast, having tea with the owners, who are some of the nicest people that I have met, and chatting for a while about life, work, dogs, travel, etc...

Everyone looks pretty comfy!

The next day we got up early and headed back to Cimafava for Sauprüfung (Wild Boar trial) and 2 Fox trials. Unfortunately, the weather was even crappier than the day before:

In addition to iced over snow, due to thawing and melting the day before and freezing over night, we had very, very thick fog. It was so thick that you couldn't see a car more than 10m/30ft in front of you. The result of which was us almost getting rear-ended trying to turn into the parking lot of the trial grounds. The picture above was taken around 10 in the morning when some of the fog was starting to lift a bit. Supposedly, fog is common in this area due to lack of wind. I don't know, but we certainly aren't used to conditions like that. It was Freddie's first time in with the Boars and although we hoped for the best, the reality was that he was too inexperienced to find them. He searched well enough, but without any visual cues (due to fog), he wasn't sure what he was searching for. He got about 5 minutes to search a wooded, enclosed area containing two boars. Supposedly even the conditions were bad for the seasoned dogs. We were told that only 10% of the dogs entered passed the exam and normally this number was closer to 50%. Mr. Palladini did invite us down to practice on the boars in the future if we would ever want to try the test again.

After Boar we had 2 fox exams. I won't go into too much detail here as I explained them (more or less) in a previous post. I am happy to say that Freddie walked away with 2- 1st place ratings and 1 second in trial. There were 40 total Bauprüfung (fox or hare) that day, so it was quite a lot of waiting. We started at about 9 am and finished around 2:30 pm. After that we were on our way home.

Freddie with his 2nd place medal, ready to head home.

 Even though the fog had started to clear throughout the morning, it was back in full-force by the drive home.

My view from the Italian highway

Funnily enough, the fog started to lift just as we hit the Swiss border, leading to a wonderful view of the Alps at sunset. What a great way to be welcomed home!