On Saturday evening and Sunday late afternoon there was also a gala show. Imagine large tribunes, lots of public, total darkness and some spot lights on you and you have the atmosphere. As we had never worked with such a light show, we had a practise session on Friday evening to see how Wizz would react to it all. In short: he just did his job perfectly, it was me who got slightly disorientated due to not being able to see the boundaries of the ring and not quite knowing where I was in the room. But after a bit of practising that was not a problem any more. Wizz was the opening act and just before his routine would start we would walk into the ring during a light show with loud music. The floor of the ring was sand, which made it a bit of a job for Wizz to walk so much on his hind legs, but he is very muscular (all this training, running and cycling with him certainly must have helped) so he managed it all fine.
We opened the show with our Madonna routine and later did another little routine to Hello Goodbye of the Beatles. The people loved the music and clapped with it and in between that cheered Wizz on when he did his signature moves. They were very impressed by my little boy. As Wizz got poorly at the end of the evening and was vomiting all night he needed to see a vet. Dr. Manuel Tücke came to our rescue with the perfect homeopathic treatment for Wizz and with his help he has recovered more or less by now, hopefully just in time for the Crufts semi finals this Saturday. As poor little Wizz was in no state to perform on Sunday afternoon, Koda stepped in and we did a little demo on how to train some moves at the gala show, so people could go home and have a practise with their own dogs. People seemed to enjoy that very much and we got lots of nice remarks on both performances.
This picture was placed on the facebook page of Messe und Congres Centrum Halle Münsterland with the following text: To watch Hetty van Hassel and Wizz during Freestyle is an experience. No wonder that this Dutch resident who lives in England is seen as one of Europe's most renowned dog trainers.
The Ahlener Zeitung published the following pictures of our show:
More links to articles & photos of our show:
Last but not least I want to give my special thanks to Claudine Melein for coming with me this weekend and looking after Wizz while he was poorly when I had to give a workshop and demo with Koda and Dr. Manuel Tücke who, with his amazing treatment, got Wizz all better again.
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