Saturday: June 17

2006 Interim Retriever Advisory Council Sub-Committee Minutes

Nelson Sills brought the meeting to order at 2:15 PM welcoming everyone in attendance to the Interim Retriever Advisory Committee Meeting.

Mr. Sills introduced the AKC contingent, Vice President Bill Speck, Field Director Jerry Mann, Manager Performance Events Lisa Carroll and AKC Web Photographer Robert Young. He then introduced Chairman Pete Simonds and members of the committee Bill Daley and John Goettl.

Pete Simonds then went over the recommendations of the advisory committee. Mr. Simonds reported on what had happened with the recommendations from a year ago. Due to the vote being open until the end of December with all passing by a majority, the AKC Board of Directors just did pass them with a majority in April. They were read to the Delgates at the June Delegates' Meeting and will be voted on at the September meeting. If the Delegate Body passes the recommendations they will go into effect January 1, 2007. In the meantime the early start in the amateur stake with 65 dogs to start at 9am on Friday with the option of those not available on Friday to run on Saturday is being honored and practiced by AKC even though not in effect until January 2007.

Electronic entries went into effect May 1, 2006.

Current proposals are relatively few in number. We have been fighting entry size. The Board of Directors voted to reduce the protected zone from 350 to 200 miles, effective January 1, 2007. Statistics from FT News give some evidence that we are making progress. Between February 3 and May 19 a total of 85 trials were run, 5 trials with more than 100 entries in the Open, an additional 16 trials with more than 80 dogs in the Open, with a total of 33 trials with more than 75 entries in the Open. 52 of the 85 trials have been Opens with less than 70 dogs. Amateur - no trials with over 80 entries - 7 with higher than 70, 20 with higher than 60.

The proposals already adopted that help this problem:

There has been an accelerated procedure to get a new clubs approved to run more trials by getting rid of the requirement to hold 2 sanctioned events.

The second is a development of a federation of existing clubs to assist non-member clubs to hold events thus running conflicting trials and reducing entries.

It was noted that we already have tools to solve most of the problems of large entries. What is lacking is a universal willingness to enforce those tools. Restricted Open, Owner Handler Qualify, Owner Handler Amateur are restrictions that will cut trial size. A lot of clubs for whatever reason do not do it.

The proposal this year evolves from some thinking that a club ought to have the option to take a second look at what kind of trial their running giving the club an option after closing of entries to change the type of trial (refunding those for entrants who may withdraw). This is a topic for further discussion.

The second proposal eliminates pigeons from Qualifying and Derby Stakes.

The third proposal gives the owner/handler rights to withdraw their dog from a test if they are concerned about the safety of the dog while still allowing the dog to run in other stakes.

Next item for discussion was large string of dogs being run in Opens which results in dogs being run out of sequence and judges waiting for professionals. If you run 6 or more dogs in the Open and you also run dogs in the Derby or Qualifying you will be expected to run your dogs on time and in order with up to a 10 minute delay. It is the professionals' responsibility to solve the problem, not the club. The policy is to be there on time for the minor stakes so we do not suffer delays in the Derby or Qualifying. A vote is not anticipated this year. Please think about it for discussion in the Fall.

The last topic for discussion was how to deal with a judge that flagrantly disregards the rules. Where the rule book reads "should" rather than "shall" or "must" some judges interpret this as something that is optional. Rather, it was incorporated years ago to protect against certain situations that may arise at a trial. The word "should" is intended to tell judges what they ought to do unless they have a compelling reason not to do it. This is something that everybody that runs field trials should be concerned about.

There were questions from the floor that were responded to by Mr. Simonds and Bill Speck.

Mr. Simonds then brought forth a proposal which came to the committee a few months ago in a disguised form which has now been flushed out pertaining to eliminating the professional stake and just running amateurs due to time constraints and large entries. The skills at training and handling dogs that they bring to the Open make it a cut above any other stake. Conflicting trials with fewer entries will solve the problem. This is another item for further discussion.

Bill Daley then asked Mr. Simonds to comment on the judges' manual. Mr. Simonds indicated that the manual is an effort to outline the steps one ought to go through to do the best possible job they can to judge a trial. The goal is to give a new judge some frame of reference to take to their field trial. The second hope is an effort to pull the issues together that even if judges do not agree disagreements can be discussed with a common understanding of what the judges' goals are.

Mr. Sills then adjourned the meeting.

Click on image for caption and larger view.

National Amateur Retriever Club - General Meeting

President Charles Tyson called the meeting to order. Roll call of delegates was taken by Secretary John Russell.

There was a motion from the floor to accept the Secretary and Treasurer's reports. The motion was seconded and carried by a majority vote.

President Charles Tyson introduced the AKC representatives at the meeting: Bill Speck (AKC Vice President of Performance Events), Lisa Carroll (AKC Manager of Performance Events), Nelson Sills and Jerry Mann (AKC Field Director of Sporting Breeds).

Sponsors were presented plaques for their contributions to the National Amateur Retriever Championship.

It was announced that the 2007 National Amateur Retriever Championship will be held in Utah. Headquarters will be located in Evanston, Wyoming. The judges for the 2007 National Amateur Retriever Championship will be:

Dr. William Goldstein (East)
Linda Patterson (Central)
Sally Foster (Pacific)

The Chair for the 2007 National Amateur Retriever Championship will be Gary Ratzlaff.

The starting dog for the 2006 National Amateur Retriever Championship will be:

71. FC AFC Longshot Black Talon - Breed: Labrador Retriever (female) - Handler: Robert Willow

Photos from around Klamath County and the Cocktail Party