Jeriko is my first own dog, and therefore also my first sports dog. When I was a child, we had a mixed-breed dog at home, a collie-Finnish spitz mix Vanja, which I tried to train a little bit myself as a child, but I didn't have any more experience than that. I started wishing for a border collie in my childhood after falling in love with border collies in the movie Babe - a little pig goes a long way. In addition, with age, the interest in sports grew. However, when Jeriko came to us, I mainly knew agility and obedience, not any other sports. However, the breeder and the owners of Jeriko's father helped me to dive into working trials as well.

Jeriko has been everything I could have ever dreamed for and even more. It has been eager to do any sport, and this is how I have always been able to get to know new sports with Jeriko and at the same time find the ones that felt the best to me. Jeriko is very self-confident, stable and open. He is 100% confident with loud sounds and different surfaces. He is more of a diesel than ferrari, but he never ran out of bangers. Jeriko is an exceptionally intelligent dog. He has a very broad and good ability to apply what he has learned to new situations, and I didn't have to do much generalization exercises with him. Jeriko learns and adapts very quickly, and he has been very easy to train.

However, Jeriko has not been an easy first dog; he has a strong will of his own and a sense of self-worth, so in his youth he did not avoid quarrels with other males. Since then, the authority has grown so strong that Jeriko has received the nickname "Keisari" ("Emperor") and I can let Jeriko go free in any group of dogs without any problems. He does not dominate, and reads other dogs perfectly. As a sport dog, Jeriko is very resilient, he does not get pressured by my mistakes or moods (not forgetting the short period around 2 years old when Ukko came into the house, and that upset Jeriko at first), and he always tries his best. Jeriko is at his strongest when he is allowed to work independently, and thus it is no surprise that scent work, especially tracking, became our favorite sport.

At tracking Jericho is naturally precise and close to the ground. He is always motivated of tracking and wants to solve challenging tasks. Treats at the trail hasn't been very interesting to him. On the searching course, Jeriko was perhaps a little too independent, but very effective. I always thought he would have been great at rescue search, because the work itself motivates him so much. The IGP obedience 1 metre jump caused difficulties in our career. Jeriko is a small male (about 48 cm at withers) and I didn't know how to train my first dog to jump properly. He crashed really badly at our first trial with the jump. I ended up moving Jeriko to the IFH trail after winning the breed clubs national tracking trials championship at 2018. Jeriko progressed well even on the IFH, the expression was a little wobbly at the beginning, but when I changed it from landing to picking up, the results started to come. Jeriko got working trial champion title from IFH trail in 2020 and he was the IFH breed champion in the same year. In the end, Jeriko was retired in the summer of 2022 at age of 12 years.

In agility, Jeriko was never the fastest dog in the world because, its structure is not quite optimal; it has a too long loin and rear angles could be stronger. However, Jeriko was very easy and comfortable to do agility with.

In obedience Jeriko was always enthusiastic. Heelwork was one of his favorite tasks. Jerikos weak point was a little too close and energetic heel work for obedience. In addition, Jeriko was a little too smart to repeat the same things "stupidly", instead he began to cut corners with excercises. I had to be imaginative to vary the workouts we did, so that they were not formulaic and Jeriko couldn't quess what was going to happen next.

Herding was definitely the most difficult sport for me as a beginner handler. In retrospect, it can be said that Jeriko received horribly bad and illogical training and guidance, but despite that and his lineage/breeding, he was able to perform surprisingly well. Jeriko's strength was outruns; he was not dazzled by long outruns of class 3 courses. I wasn't really talented handler at that time either, and therefore we didn't really finish class 3 courses.

All other sports have been more or less fun&games for us. I started skijoring with dogs without any decent skiing skills, but Jeriko did all he could to pull me. Jeriko did the dog dance/HTM for a short while with my friend Liisa-Ida, and rally obediense has been done just for fun at older age. My interest for that sport was not enough to go further.

In terms of health, Jeriko's joints and spinal are not flawless, but he has managed to do just fine with them in a long sport career. At about 2 years old, Jeriko broke his toe while herding on a slippery slope (relative hardness is also indicated by the fact that when the sheep were still being transferred, I didn't notice anything, but when the sheep were safely inside I had a three-legged dog), and this has developed arthritis, which has had symptoms from time to time. Jeriko doesn't have any hypersensitivities, has a pretty iron stomach, rarely loose and never any special itches etc. Jeriko is currently living an active life as a senior dog, jogging all the long runs with the youngsters and at 14.5 years old, he has no special ailments of old age ecept hearing loss that came when he was about 13,5 years old.

Jeriko represents well my own ideal and what I wish I could aim for in my own breeding. I hope to bring out (and I feel that I already have in my breeding) Jeriko's type of self-confidence, strong character and balance, high working motivation and openness of character. My ideal dog Jeriko 2.0 would be equipped with Jeriko's nerves, just a touch more lively/high-spirited, as well as structurally bigger and better/more balanced angulated version of Jeriko.