Club Report Winter 2004
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fter Regionals, Claire searched the internet to find a trial in August in hopes of getting her SchH 1. She found a trial at the O.G. Inselstadt SchH Club in Wisconsin on August 25th where she successfully completed her SchH 1 under Judge Al Govednik. Congratulations Claire, now you can try for your SchH 2 at our club trial in September. Only one problem or maybe two. Bob went out west on a bike trip with his brothers and John went east to Toronto in search of employment. No helpers to work dogs before the trial. Not so fast. Lol stepped up to the plate or should I say the blind and did our helper work for 3 weeks before the trial. A great job she did too. We worked on a lot of prey and barking and boy did our dogs ever get cocky. This would unfortunately come back to bite us later.
Bob returned from his trip on Thursday September 23rd, one day before the trial and just in time to host Mike Bauer, Shirley Habke, and George Kopecky who came from Winnipeg to support us. It’s always great to see our Manitoba friends. Thanks for coming and making sure we wouldn’t have to store any beer over the winter.
Another bonus, John returned from Toronto to do the helper work for the trial. Thanks so much John, we really appreciated your help.
Friday September 24th rolled around and we had 2 successful BH’s under Judge Frank Mensing. Congratulations to Marly Desjardins and Tucson and Lol Carvalho and Dakota on achieving your BH’s.
Everything was looking good for Marly and Tucson to try for their SchH 1 on Saturday. What a great start to our trial, or so we thought.
Saturday arrived and we had beautiful weather and excellent tracking conditions. Everyone passed the tracking phase with Trish and Kassie and Mike and Axt tying with 92. Claire and Cabre, the most improved team finished with 90. All that hard work really paid off. Marly and Tucson pulled off a respectable 89 and Jacki and Aro missed an article and ended up with 84.
After a successful morning of tracking we headed back to the club where everything began to crash and burn around us. Tucson decided that getting a BH was good enough and refused to do any SchH 1 obedience. All of a sudden everyone else in the club developed a bite problem.
Kassie wouldn’t bite and Cabre and Aro wouldn’t out! (The previously mentioned cockiness coming back to bite us) So much for home field advantage.
Congratulations to the last team standing, Mike, and Axt vom Albi SchH3 on your High Tracking, High Obedience, High Protection, and High in Trial.
Once the trail was over, we had plenty of time to work on our problems with the help of Frank Mensing. Thank you Frank for your informative critiques and for sharing your ideas and techniques with us after the trial. We were able to address and correct most of the things that gave us problems in the trial.
Frank had to leave early Sunday morning but the rest of us decided to go out to the club to work dogs. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity for our dogs to see a different helper in Mike Bauer. As Mike worked with Lol and Dakota, he tried to tweak a little bit more out of Deek (Dakota), with dubious results. A message from Dakota to Mike – The hand is quicker than the eye but 42 will get you every time. Lol and Dakota send their best and hope you have a speedy recovery.
Speaking of recoveries, it could be a long one for Bob after his little crash. The week after the trial, Bob decided to go for a short motorcycle ride in the countryside. As he was gazing to the right admiring the scenery, the road went left and his attempt to muscle the bike off the gravel back on to the road was less than successful. He flopped the bike, breaking his collar bone in the process. As I write this, the collar bone has healed but many hours of therapy are in order for the rest of the resulting shoulder damage.
It’s a good thing his verbal skills weren’t affected because he has to train Pino Pucci our up and coming helper. Lucky for us we have Lol and Pino and Claire to fall back on for helper work.
2004 was full of many valuable learning experiences, some good, and some bad. We are all looking forward to taking this knowledge into the New Year and making the most of it.
We’ll see you in the spring but until then have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Jacki Barnes