Agility

I am Mirja Lapanja, I was born in the capital of Slovenia- Ljubljana and still live here with myfamily. I finished Law University in Ljubljana and I worked in prosecution office for someyears.Together with my partner Matej Čuček, who is also International Agility judge and acompetitor, we are breeders of Border Collies with prefix Shadow of Aire. Currently we have7 Border Collies,3 are competing on International level and 4 are retired. I am proud thatour dogs are representing Slovenia at European Opens and Agility World Championshipsevery year since 1996.Agility is my passion for the last 32 years, I started to compete in Agility in 1994 and I wasrunning my first AWC in 1996 at Morges . I participated on 5 AWCs with 3 different dogs. Fora long time I was agility instructor in the biggest and most successful agility club in Slovenia,KD Agility-Ilirija and for many years also its president.I am Agility judge since 2000 and judging and having seminars frequently since then all overEurope, Canada, USA, Australia and in Japan. I was also one of the judges at EO 2013 inBelgium, JEO 2014 in Italy and AWC judge 2017 in Czech. I am a team leader of SlovenianAgility team for EO and AWC.For me as a judge, course flow and safety are a big priority when it comes to coursedesigning. Of course I like to see well trained dogs who knows their job and handlers thatknow how to make it happen. It is a poetry, when dog and a handler work as a team on thecourse. I always try to make courses, which consists of some technical challenges, but onthe other hand, dogs can move through the course smoothly and with great speed.