I kind of disappeared from the European agility world—and at the same time, I slipped into a social media break that was supposed to last a month but ended up lasting much longer . Yeah, time runs quickly. So when I appeared in Finland recently and met many agility friends, I got this question pretty often. And my answer is: how much time do you have?
The Message That Changed Everything
I was living in southern Finland at the time, between Turku and Helsinki. It was afternoon, and I was driving to a training session I was supposed to lead on the outskirts of Helsinki. I was stopped at a red light at an intersection when a message popped up on my Messenger. It was from Kathleen, a friend from New York whom I’d met a few years earlier at an agility seminar in the Czech Republic.
That meeting had been quite interesting. The seminar was held in a village in the middle of nowhere, where I expected to see all the familiar faces. Although the agility community in the Czech Republic was growing at rocket speed at the time, we mostly encountered the same enthusiasts at seminars with agility stars. I definitely did not expect to meet there an American lady who was enjoying her agility holiday in Europe. We vibed very nicely together and stayed in touch over the years.
That’s life—you never know who you’ll meet around the next corner.
Back then, in 2016, I took agility very seriously—I mean, I swept through all the agility events. Every weekend was either competitions or seminars, with training sessions during the week and occasional theoretical seminars about dog training, positive motivation, or mental preparation for athletic performance. I attended all the Slovak and Czech qualifications, and AWC and EO were two dates written in my calendar with a thick marker, with the rest of the year—or rather, the season—arranged around them. I’d occasionally find myself at running training for agility handlers or sign up for agility-oriented online courses. I was totally into it.
“Would you like to come to judge to USA?” I read on my phone screen and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Oh, bloody hell yeah!” flashed through my mind immediately.
The light turned green, so I continued driving. A few minutes later, I parked in front of the agility complex, Agility HAU—one course under a roof and two or three more outdoor courses. One of the few modest agility playgrounds in southern Finland, a country where agility is officially recognized as a sport and where, at that time, there were 6,500 registered licenses for 5 million inhabitants. In Slovakia, with the same population, there were exactly 200 licenses issued at that time. Welcome to Finland, the country where agility is taken seriously. As I later discovered, it’s somewhat typical of Finns that when something is done, it’s done properly.
That day I had three groups. I arrived, we set up the course, and everything went smoothly. An agility course is a place where I feel “at home,” regardless of the location, country, or continent. Time somehow slows down, adrenaline gradually builds, and I let myself be carried away in the flow. Here and now. Pure joy.
Only when I was driving home that evening did I remember Kathleen’s message again. The competition was scheduled for mid-October—that’s four months away. Although I hadn’t had time to respond to the message yet, I was already slowly hatching a plan in my head about how I’d experience agility in a new country outside Europe. I love agility and traveling, discovering, exploring, and now I could combine it all together in distant America. The whole thing felt like a dream. “Agility on the road.” Oh yes. That sounds good.
The Corona Complications
The next day I called Kathleen, who explained that due to the current Corona regulations, I couldn’t fly directly from Europe to the USA but had to spend two weeks beforehand in a country that Americans had on their “Corona free” list. These were mainly countries in South and Central America. “Costa Rica would be ideal,” Kathleen told me. A relatively safe country with good connections both from Europe and subsequently to New Jersey, where the competition was being held. “I know a few people there and can reach out to see if they’d be interested in a competition while you’re there.”
Hmm, interesting, I thought as I googled where Costa Rica was even on the map. Central America, here we go. Holy cow, this is like a dream. “Alright, Kathleen—I’m coming!” I wrote to her a few days later with my decision. The truth is, I had already decided right there at that intersection where I first read the message, and although I had no idea when, where, or how, my sense of adventure and discovery was at maximum and practically screaming: You can do it! This is exactly why I quit the corporate world —so I could live my dream and not be limited by 25 vacation days and a boss who might or might not approve my leave.
That one message started a chain of events that would take me far from Europe, deep into jungles, beaches, and new cultures—and even deeper into myself.
But I’ll get to that later…
PS: That’s me and Kathleen on the picture at the Brooklyn Bridge this year, exploring New York together.
AGILITY ON THE ROAD 
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