Agility Handlers

Nicola Giraudi

Nicola is a professional dog trainer running education, agility and obedience classes and was 3 times in a row on the Euro/World Championships podium in Obedience Team Competition.

He has helped many people to get to the highest levels of competitions, bringing 2 teams to the Italian Obedience Team in the past years, and more recently one of his students gained the 3rd place at the Swiss Agility Championship in 2008 with an Aussie, and another one just qualified for the Italian Agility Team in Medium Class with his Sheltie.

Stop press! Email from Nicola on July 28^th 2009

I've just come back home from Holland, from the Agility European Open:
I've won the Small Individual Final with Twister, my Parson!! We're soooooo happy!!!
Here you can see the video of the finals: http://europeanopen2009.agilityvision.com/winners-individual-european-agility-open-2009 - it's the first video on the page and I'm the first to run!

Nicola's own dogs

Currently he owns ten Border Collies, one Bearded Collie and one Parson Russell Terrier with his partner Silvana Soncini.

How the involvement with sport came about…

Nicola says, ‘I saw my first agility trial in Italy in 1991 after my parents bought our first dog, a German Shepherd. As the pup started to grow and showed that he needed some education to become a good family member, I asked my parents to let me follow a basic education class. After some months, I started my first agility class. It was a real “pioneer time” in Italy in 1992, we had a lot of fun but could not get good results. Luckily as time went by, so could we get new and better technical tips and training methods. In 1995 came my first Border Collie, an almost fully black bitch which I named Shep (her pedigree name being Dream of Ireland). With her I discovered a whole new world of what working with a dog could mean. In 1997 the Italian Kennel Club organized the first Obedience Clinic in Italy with the exiting World Champion Ulf Kalborg and team mate Nils Larsson. We were one of the very first teams to start training in that new (for Italy) sport.

In the last years I entered the magical world of sheepdog trials, where I'm competing with Ace at the moment, but hope to start trialling in the near future - also with my young dogs Penny and Moel Don.'

Other successes - aside from the Euro/World Champ Obedience Team Competition successes above?

Nicola replies, ‘With Shep I took part in 4 Agility World Championships for the Italian Team, from 1999 to 2002, being 11^th overall in Dortmund 1999, 7^th in Porto 2001, where we were probably also the only team to have 4 clean runs (I ran both Individual and Team), and then 8^th in Dortmund 2002.

We took also part in 7 European / World Obedience Championships, from 1998 to 2005, only missing 2001 when we had been picked up for team but could not participate. We were 3 times in a row 3^rd in the Team Standings with the Italian Team in Italy 1998, France 1999 and Italy 2000. As Individual we had a 3^rd place on Friday in 1999, resulting in a 9^th place overall on 69 dogs, and a 2nd place with reserve CACIOB on Sunday in 2003, which granted us a 10^th place over 100 dogs.

Our best competition was surely in Italy in 2004, where we were scoring incredible points in every exercise, the crowd encouraging us like crazy, until Shep, who was REALLY excited, touched one wrong object in the nosework exercise, costing us a 0!

We finished with a 10 in distance control but we lost a title we could have won. But that's life!

Shep won more than 250 agility competitions and 40 obedience competitions in her long career, becoming the one and only dog so far to accomplish the titles of Italian Agility Champion and Italian Obedience Champion.

In this days I compete in obedience with Ace and Glen, both competing in Class 3, the highest Class in Switzerland, and in Agility with Cayenne, Border Collie dog in Agility 2, and the 2 “Twisters”: a Parson Russel Terrier bitch and a blue merle Border Collie dog.

My Parson went up to Agility 3 in only 9 starts, gained the Italian Agility Champ title in 5 starts (3 results needed), and after 9 months of competitions took me to the 3^rd step of the podium at the Swiss Agility Championship (held every year) in 2006.

In 2007 we ran at the European Open in Agility and qualified for the final individual with a 4^th and a 5^th place in th qualifiers (over 130 dogs!), but then we unluckily got a DIS at the last obstacles of our final run.

In 2009 me and both “Twisters” qualified for the European Open, little Twister – the Parson- qualified for the Swiss Agility Team for the World Champ in the Small category. In the meantime on May, 10^th we won the Frontline Trophy held in Monza, Italy, over a very strong international parterre.'

Other canine involvements…

Nicola offers a ‘little family-run boarding kennel service'.

If you would like to make contact …

Nicola Giraudi
Via Pizzamiglio 4, 6833 Vacallo – SWITZERLAND
nicola.giraudi@bluewin.ch – mobile +41 79 359 87 21