Buenas, tal y como prometí, os dejo con la entrevista en inglés:
Maren Helen con Amira
Name: Maren Helene Burdahl Teien
Age: 21
Country: Norway
CLICKDOGGING:Can you briefly describe your life with your three dogs? How is a day at home with Maren Helene and her dogs?
Maren: Yippie lives at my parents’ farm, so I normally just live with Amira and Kiter. I’m a student, so I run my own routines as I prefer. I wake up pretty early to eat breakfast. Kiter is then ready for action while Amira lays in my bed and usually skip the morning walk. The dogs pulls my bike to school where I leave them outside for some hours. Back home I make dinner and read a lot… I train obedience in the afternoon/night with my club 1 or 2 times per week. Otherwise I train some tricks, go for a run or leave the dogs at home and go to meet some friends.
CLICKDOGGING:I love walking with my dogs, if there is a river or lake, much better! Norway is a paradise for playing sports in nature: when I saw Stavanger, Voss and other places … I couldn’t stop thinking about activities for my dogs in that paradise.. What activities do you like practice together?
Maren: Most of all I love to go skiing with my dogs – especially in the mountains! To let them pull me when I’m skiing It’s my absolute favourite activity! In summertime I usually go mountain hiking for a week or so with some friends and the dogs. Of course I also let the dogs swim a lot to make more muscles.
CLICKDOGGING:Your Border Collie Amira, is seven years old and this 2011 has been your first participation in a Obedience World Championship, When did you start to train in obedience? Why did you start in this discipline and not others such as Agility or Sch?
Maren: I went to courses and stared to train obedience my family’s 6 year old german shepherd when I was 11 years old. I already then wanted a border collie, but wasn’t allowed to have one. Then I started to train a lot of other families’ dogs to get rid of unwanted behavior. When I was 14 years old I had cried for a border collie for 3 years and I finally got Amira. We stared to train obedience when she was 3 months old. I have trained some Agility, tracking and herding, but it takes too much time. In obedience I just need 30 minutes and some cones! I also think it’s challenging and fascinating to learn the dog that it is fun to do obedience exercises.
CLICKDOGGING:There is a tendency to look for a particular genetic for each sport (Sch, Obedience, Agility, etc.).. Did you know you were going to practice obedience with Amira?, Did you look for something special in breeder or just looking for a companion dog?
Maren: Already a year before I was allowed to have a border collie and I decided that my border collie should be named Amira and that our goal should be to win the world championship in obedience one day. I didn’t know to much about obedience of border collie breeders at that point, but I bought from a farmer that breed a lot of border collies that are good herders.
CLICKDOGGING:Could you tell us a bit of sporting history with your three dogs, how was passing grades Amira? How many degrees are in Norwegian regulations?
Maren: He got 4 degrees in Norway, where class 1 is the lowest level and elite is the highest.
Amira was absolutely terrible when we competed in class 1. She was extremely slow and hard to motivate. This got a lot better when she passed two years and we were in elite class. I think she just needed to get used to my nerves and grow up to be able to have fun in competitions. She can still have days when she is low motivated, but that’s very seldom. We always got quite good score and were able to go to the next level after the first competition in each class, but we continued in the same class just to get used to compete.
Yippie is the family-dog and is always happy, but not a fast runner! I have never had any goal to compete a lot with her, but we have a lot of fun we do.
Kiter is now 12 months old and are not ready to compete yet. I want to try some new sports and is therefore planning to compete in tracking and herding with him.
CLICKDOGGING:How do you plan your sessions? Daily? Weekly? Biweekly?
Maren: I just train when I have a plan. If I don’t know what I’m going to improve I don’t train. Sometimes it can therfore go weeks between each training! I make a plan (in me head) for how I want a part of the exercice to look like and try different metodes until I’m satisfied. In that way I’m kind of making a new plan for each session.
CLICKDOGGING:How much is usually the duration of your training?
Maren: The duration of my training depends on my own motivation. When I’m out training with my best friend in good weather we can train the whole day. Other times I just have to test something I have figured out that makes the session 10 seconds long. Normally I train 1-2 times per week for about 1 hour, but then we are many that train together and help each other.
CLICKDOGGING:During the week, how many days do you rest?
Maren: We don’t rest. I don’t train much obedience anyway, but I train the dogs physically every day. Often I bring a ball when I’m walking the dogs. Then I do all the obedience-training for the week at the walk.
CLICKDOGGING:What is the easiest exercise for you? And the most difficult?
Maren: The easiest exercise must be the heelwork. It was hard at some point, but the last years she have just followed me however I move. The hardest exercise is the recall. It’s very hard to get Amira run fast enough to get top-score!
CLICKDOGGING:Do you usually train alone? How often do you train with partners?
Maren: I think I do some of the most important training alone when I’m walking the dogs – like recall the dogs and suddenly tell the dog to stop and throw the ball, do some heelwork and so on. I train with parners 1-2 times per week at the most.
CLICKDOGGING:What mistakes do you usually see when you watch people training their dogs?
Maren: I see that people train the whole elite program every day with any plan of what to make better. I think it is wrong to do the whole program to see if any mistake comes up. I prefer to focus on that small part that is not perfect and train on this part until it is better and THEN try the whole exercise once.
CLICKDOGGING:How do you prepare to enter the ring?
Maren: I’m that kind of person that always is a bit too late… Most of the times I just have to grab the dog and run into the ring where the judge already is waiting for me… Amira handles this quite well, but I’m getting very stressed! If I once have time to prepare I just play, do some tricks and have fun.
CLICKDOGGING:There are many videos on my website where you get scores of around 300 points, this is really difficult. What is the secret to get this regularity in the ring?
Maren: It’s very seldom we pass 300 points, but we normally get about 280-295 points. How to get there is very individual, but in my case it is important to not train just to train. I have to have a plan of what I want better. If I train too much, both Amira and I get unmotivated.
CLICKDOGGING:Finally, Can you give us some advice?
Maren: Do not get stuck in the same way of training every day. If those things you are working on don’t give the result you are looking for – try something new! Do also remember to surprise your dog! For example; when you are doing the distance control you can tell the dog to roll around and in the heelwork you can tell the dog the go slalom between your legs. This will make the dog paying you more attention because the dog never know what going to happen next!
De izquierda a derecha: Yippie, Kiter y Amira
, tanto el cobro direccional, como el cobro con salto. 
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