The Auberies , Sudbury
Results:
1st Winner of Spaines Hall Cup – Wadesmill Kite GRD - Andrew Wright
2nd Winner of Brettonsfield Trophy –Bellspaddle Jock-LRD - Sharron Dingle
3rd Winner of Hassenbrook Cup – Brockaghs Forba LRD - Jim Collins
4th Overthwarts Berwick LRD- Andrew Wright
Best Essex Entry Winner of the Flightline Trophy - Wadesmill Kite GRD - Andrew Wright.
We returned to the wonderful setting of The Auberies at Bulmer near Sudbury for our Open Qualifier Working Test.
We are extremely grateful to our hosts the Burke family, and Dominick joined us for most of the day and kindly presented the awards at the end of the day.
As usual we were lucky with the weather, almost too hot at times, and limited shade for the exercises, but with a couple of gazebos competitors and dogs seemed to cope, as did our two judges.
Our judges for the day were Kevin Doughty and Tom Lowe, Kevin was also shadowed by one of our members who wanted to gain some experience and understand what is involved with judging. Kevin suggested this was a good idea for anyone interested in judging and thanked the committee for giving someone this opportunity.
There were four exercises before lunch. Test one and two were almost mirror images consisting of a long high thrown single marked retrieve. The dogs had a long run downhill toward the area of the retrieve. Test one with Kevin saw the dummy land just out of sight over the brow of the hill, all the dogs succeeded this exercise with a lot of dogs getting full marks.
Test two was with Tom, which again was a high thrown dummy but the background was all trees, and several of the dogs pulled to the right and lost their mark, but the majority had success.
Test three was a mark which became a memory, the dummy landing behind a tree, which meant the handler briefly lost sight of their dog while they picked. The dogs had a long run downhill, and had a fence to jump to the right then handler’s had to push their dogs for a blind retrieve in the woods. Again you had to trust your dog to hunt. Some of the dogs managed to find their way round the fence! But the majority of dogs completed the exercise with only a few dogs failing. This was judged by Kevin.
Tom was judging test four which was a run downhill for a blind retrieve in the water, which also had a marked memory as a distraction. Sadly a lot of dogs failed on this exercise and many wouldn’t either go in the water or once in the water couldn’t be handled to swim back for the retrieve.
A cut was made at lunch and any dogs that had scored zero did not go forward to the final test, however there was the opportunity to go back to the lake and do some training on the water, which was appreciated and gave handlers chance to have another go at the exercise.
The final test was a walk up, with a slight difference, the judges, competitors and dummy throwers were at a long distance from each other and there was no-one walking up in the middle to form a long line. Two dummies were thrown from one end of “the line” one in front and one behind and the dogs at the opposite end of the line each had a retrieve. All the dogs in line alternated in pairs to have a mark behind and a mark in front. All the dogs succeeded although some made a better job than others, in part down to the handler having a good mark on the dummy.
The day concluded with a clear winner and no run-offs were required for any of the places.
We ended a good day with the usual tea and cakes followed by a raffle while the scores were added and then our host Dominick presented the awards to the winners.
Thanks again to our hosts, to our judges and all our helpers particularly the non committee helpers, without you all we couldn’t enjoy our sport. Thank you to our sponsors Masters Dog Food for their continued support and also to Sporting Saint for some additional prizes for those in the awards.
Good luck to the team that represent the Essex Area at the Area Finals in July.
