Dog Numbers and Qualifiers Last Updated Saturday, August 8, 2015
1000 Point Dogs in Gold
| NUMBER |
NAME |
OWNER (HANDLER) |
LAND
SERIES |
TRAIL |
UPLAND |
WATER
SERIES |
| 1 |
Lizzie |
Joan & Dave Hilts (Joan) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 2 |
Shooter |
John D. Barton |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 3 |
K |
Ray May |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 4 |
Gee |
Sue Snow |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 5 |
Brew |
Tom Rourke |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 6 |
Tank |
Harry Williams |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 7 |
Jock |
Jim Bennett |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 8 |
Daisy |
Ted Hosmer |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 9 |
Lucy |
Tom Moore |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 10 |
Smoke |
Dave Mellender |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 11 |
Black Betty |
Mike Hemmer |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 12 |
Brewer |
Kim Smith |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 13 |
Ruby |
Sue Snow |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 14 |
Ty |
Wayne & Dale Goodrich (Wayne) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 15 |
Rain |
Chris Giardinia |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 16 |
Dooley |
Craig O'Brien |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 17 |
Teddy |
Tony Carlo |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 18 |
Oakley |
Dave Combs |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 19 |
Tank |
Jeff & Cheryl Riebling (Jeff) |
Y |
Y |
N |
|
| 20 |
Carbon |
Frank & Valerie Plewa (Frank) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 21 |
Max |
Karen Loh |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 22 |
Mist |
Jim Hundemer |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 23 |
Moxie |
Melvin & Maria McKnight (Mel) |
N |
|
|
|
| 24 |
Mandy |
Maggie Rathje |
SCRATCH |
|
|
|
| 25 |
Rye Leigh |
Paul Zurka |
Y |
Y |
Y |
N |
| 26 |
Hawkins |
Don Morgan |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 27 |
Radar |
Frank & Valerie Plewa (Frank) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 28 |
Bry |
Victoria Pepper & Larry Housman (Larry) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 29 |
Jazz |
Jeff & Cheryl Riebling (Jeff) |
SCRATCH |
|
|
|
| 30 |
Bumper |
Jim Tracy |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 31 |
Ruby |
Ted Eggertson |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 32 |
Onyx |
Vicki Butler & Bruce Butler (Vicki) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 33 |
Chip |
Mark Norbert (Maggie Rathje) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y |
| 34 |
Target |
Frank & Valerie Plewa (Frank) |
Y |
Y |
Y |
Y | |
Sunday, July 19, 2015 Final preparations are being made by the committee and things seem to be going well. The only little issue that has cropped up is the fact that live training ducks will apparently not be available until Wednesday, which for most of us is a little late in the game. I hope that we'll be able to come up with another source for the few of us that are going to be in the weekend before and want to do some live flyers. If you ordered ducks and were expecting to have them earlier you'll be fine if you are okay with previously deceased specimens, but if you are expecting ones with a little more life in them you might want to rethink things.
Friday, July 24, 2015 The catalog has gone to the printer and things continue to proceed apace. Tony Carlo is busy preparing his 1000 Point Dog extravaganza and we all await with baited breath. If you will be accompanied to the event with a 1000 point dog who may be retired or otherwise not entered, and you'd like to take part in the Bacchanalia, please email Tony at lakeeffectgundogs at gmail dot com.
Monday, August 3, 2015 7 AMish Over half of the entrants are now in town and most will be in training groups somewhere in the general area. My group from last year in Alaska will be meeting at 9 AM about 45 minutes north of Syracuse at Carol Lantiegne's training grounds. We've now lost two dogs due to coming into heat; Jeff Riebling's Jazz has joined Maggie Rathje's Mandy on the sidelines. Really a shame, as you only get so many tries at an Invitational and they are all important to us.
The judges will all be in this afternoon and taking their first look at the grounds. We have tentative plans to catch up with Kody and John for dinner but that will depend on their schedule, jet lag effects and if they can extricate themselves from the clutches of the test committee for a bit. I'll try to post some pictures this evening but I actually have some real work work I have to finish up tonight as well so we'll see.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015, 11 PM First, a brief recap of Monday's activities. Our little training group assembled in fairly good fashion at Echoewood and had a very productive training day, which was highlighted by our own Tony Carlo outracing a breaking dog to a water mark in his very tippy canoe. As he was knifing through the water on his way to deny the dog his reward, I couldn’t help but think of 70’s era Ukrainian kayaker Natasha Badonov.
Now, sadly, the breaking dog was my charge, but I felt relatively guilt-free due to the fact that it wasn’t my dog. It seems living the high life of a retired law enforcement official caught up with Dave Mellender, and he was away at the local urgent care facility being ministered to by what passes for the talented amateur medical staff out here in god’s country. I thought I’d do him a solid while he was gone and run GMHRCH Smoke for him in his absence, and since I previously got his 2014 Regional ribbon while Dave was judging I figured all would be well. Not so much.
Reality immediately set in: I found his e-collar, but it was set on level 5 and no way was I gonna use a 5 with no background info, so I left the collar off. And then I realized that Dave uses a gonia and I’m a dallahasse man. The easy solution would have been to just grab one of Dave’s whistles, but since I didn’t know the exact nature of whatever contagion had laid him low there was no way I was touching that thing; I barely wanted to touch his dog. So the end result was that I walked to the line with pretty much nothing in the way of training aides. Since it was just a triple with no blind I wasn’t thinking there’d be a problem with a 1000 point dog. And there wasn’t, right until the honor dog took off, with Smoke right on her heels. And then Smoke quickly took the lead, unfazed by my verbal suggestions that he return to land. At that point I pretty much just sat back, secure in the knowledge that if Smoke broke at the Invitational it would have been my fault, and just as secure in the knowledge that Dave would never know, as I would have intimidated or paid off all witnesses.
And then suddenly a camo-clad savior appeared, snatching the duck out from under young Smoke, thus insuring that a training lesson had been enforced on the dog, for which I could take credit with Dave, assuming of course, that the resident medics’ leaches didn’t do him in first.
The rest of the training session was uneventful and all the dogs did well. As an added bonus, Dave showed back up in a drug-induced haze to claim his dogs and equipment.
Tuesday dawned with an overcast sky, but no rain. We met at the most gorgeous 5,000+ acre farm you'd ever want to see that we had received permission on which to train and ran two land series, a trail and part of an upland hunt which was cut short by a testy little thunderstorm that pretty much cooled my ardor to keep on hunting chucker, particularly since I was able to run my two boys before the skies opened up. As we predicted, as soon as we called it for the evening the skies cleared nicely, although our post training cook-out was periodically interrupted by the odd clap of thunder and moisture so just as well.
We did have a couple of hopefully minor dog injuries. Smoke suffered a laceration just above the pad on his right leg which turned out not to be as bad as first feared. Fair amount of blood but it wasn't as deep as we thought so he'll take it easy tomorrow and should be good to go Thursday. Gee pulled up lame on the way to running her trail and we're not sure what's going on there. Sue's going to hold her out tomorrow and get a little tramadol in her and she should be okay as well after an extra day of rest. On the human side, Dave seems to be almost back to normal, but since we still don't have a definitive diagnosis that what he has isn't contagious, I spent all day trying to make sure I was upwind of him. Don't judge me, it was the only prudent thing to do.
The Mellenders have brought along the newest member of their pack, young Maxx, and he is a little doll. Although I think he may be a bit of a narcissist, based on his slavish devotion to anything even faintly resembling a mirror.
Maxx is from Travis Lund's kennel up in Minnesota and I think he sent us another NAHRA dog winner. Photo courtesy Victoria Pepper
Having given up on training for the day, we retreated to Tony Carlo's 19th century farm house on the grounds for a little R&R barbecue, courtesy of the women's auxiliary and grill master extraordinaire Chris Snow. Dessert was a special treat, with a commemorative cake in honor of the event. Supplemental decoration courtesy of Ann Mellender.
One new addition to our coverage this year is our drone capability to hopefully get some good videos of the action. This little video is of our bullpen at today's training. Hopefully I can get some actual training sequences tomorrow, or at the very least, make the women nervous when they sneak into the woods.
Click here for the Tuesday training video. It will probably try to play as it is downloading which may make for a jerky experience. Play it a second time after it downloads and it will be a lot smoother. Hit your browser's "back" button to return to this page.
It's getting late and we're supposed to be at test HQ at 7 AM tomorrow. I'm pretty sure we won't make it that early but we'll give it a try. More tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015, 11 PM Wednesday is always a fun day, with everyone’s expectations high and anything seems possible. Kind of like an Oakland Raiders fan in August.
But first a couple of pictures from Tuesday:
This is a picture of Harry Williams supervising Jim Hundemer on a set of land marks Tuesday afternoon.Photo courtesy Terry Jordan
This is Chris Snow chilling at our Tuesday training session. Chris has been our go to guy in our training group and has thrown more birds for us than anyone else. Photo courtesy Terry Jordan
Thursday, August 6, 2015, 11 PM Today's land series was a very straight-forward triple and blind with an honor. The wind was a bit of a factor, especially later when it blew from right to left across the path to the blind, but that made it much easier to pick up the center bird. Early on the sun was a factor for the blind since it was from the rear of the handler, who was in some pretty deep shadows and some dogs had a bit of trouble picking up the handler. After the first few dogs the shade retreated far enough to allow the handler to find a sunny spot from which to handle and that improved performances as time went on. These pictures were taken after the test was over, but at the beginning all of the area in the lower third of the right hand picture was in heavy shade.
The test started with the working handler sitting on a bucket with the honor dog back and to the left. Both the working and honor handlers started the test with a vigorous bit of calling and then the first bird came out left to right in the center, falling in fairly heavy, but short cover. The second bird was a flyer on the left, thrown right to left and landing in an open mowed area with excellent visibility of the entire arc of the fall. There were a few no-birds and poor Frank Plewa seemed to get more than his share. The final bird was on the far right through a small cut. The dog had to drive through some significant cover to reach the bird, which landed just in front of the tree line, but the actual landing spot was open. Most dogs picked up right, flyer, center although more than a few dogs picked up the middle bird first.
Bry ran late in the order and by the time we got to the line conditions were considerably better than for the early dogs, with a more favorable sun situation and good scent cones at the marks and nice drag-back on the blind. He was steady for the marks, but after the final bird was down he was looking at all of them to decide which one he wanted first. He ended up selecting the flyer first, but I wasn't going to run him right in front on the honor dog so we swung over and picked up the right-hand bird first and then the flyer with the middle bird last. The blind could have been better as he cut to the left after he passed the tree line and then fought the wind to get back on line but overall I was pleased with his performance.
Hank did a good job as test dog, with a big hunt for the middle bird that could have been better, but he stuck with it and dug it out. His blind was a little loose but he worked with me and had he been in the test we'd have been called back so I was happy.
We only lost one dog, with a few banged up, mostly with worrisome blinds. That dog unfortunately broke on the flyer so no arguments.
Victoria and Jim Tracy walk back from Jim and Bumper's successful run.
Sue Snow handling Ruby on their blind. Both of Sue's dogs were called back.
Judges Kody Bull, John Gilbert and Debbie Brennen discuss the callbacks after the conclusion of the land series.
In a Victoria Pepper photo from early this morning, Judges Bull, Brennen and Gilbert wait for the test dog to come to the line.
In another Victoria Pepper photo, test dog Hank is bringing back his flyer. You can clearly see the significant shade that enveloped the line area versus how it looks in the scenario photos above taken at the end of the day.
It's been a long day and I'm done for the night. I have quite a few pictures folks have sent me that I'll try to get up tomorrow, as well as giving you some info on the opening banquet last night. We are doing the trail first thing tomorrow, allegedly at 7 AM but I suspect it will kick off a bit later.
Friday, August 7, 2015, 9:30 AM Friday dawned with temps in the low 50’s and a cloudless sky. A beautiful day for a trail.
The advertised 7 AM start time turned out to be pretty close and I think we went off with test dog about 7:10. We actually would have been on time, but I didn’t imagine that the judges would want a test dog for the trail so I showed up with Hank in tow just a few minutes late. I’m pretty sure that after he ran, both the judges and assembled handlers were wishing that we had been even later, as the little miscreant pretty much did a grid search of the entire area before coming up with the bird. On the other hand, his less than stellar work gave cover to the dogs that followed with somewhat worrisome work.
At the handlers meeting, the judges announced that they would not be doing callbacks after the trail, and that if you came back with a bird you were going to the upland. The end result is that there are a good few nervous folks back in the bullpen, but I’m still sticking with my story that my feckless performance as test dog has shifted the curve for everyone into solidly mediocre territory, for which I will undoubtedly not be properly thanked.
I don’t think too many dogs really nailed the trail, although I heard Tom Moore and Lucy did great as well as Dave Mellender and Smoke, who is a trailing machine, but I didn’t see them all run so maybe a few more did as well. The ones I did see, including Bry, who was about 9th in the order, got off the trail multiple times, but eventually got back on and picked up the bird. A good number of dogs, including both of mine, got right to the end of the trail and blew by the pile at least once before hunting back to it. And obviously, as each dog did that, it made it more likely following dogs would do the same. Some dogs also missed the pile to the left and went behind the tree line where the birds were placed, but they all came back and got the pick-up. In the end, every dog completed the trail and was called back to the upland, which is being set up as I write this.
The trail ran down a hill to the edge of the pond, then took a hard right along the cover on the shore, then another right back up the hill to the birds, placed tight to the tree line. The trail was probably just a smidgen over 100 yards, although most of the dogs turned it into a 440 or more.
Now since I’ve got nothing better to do than ramble on as we wait for the start of the upland (for which I guess I’ll be test dog as well, since if we had a test dog for the trail we’ll surely have one for the upland) I think I’ll give my thoughts about test chair Dave Combs.
Being test chair of the Invitational is as thankless a job as exists in our sport. He’s working with volunteers that can get their feelings hurt and walk off the job faster than the newly unionized staff at the Tribeca McDonald’s. Perhaps the worst part of the job is having to listen to the bitching from folks that never lifted a finger to help. One of the highest compliments I’ve ever received was when he told me that he’d put up with my whining because I’d earned it (and I didn’t hold back about the roast beef at the banquet! ☺) So I know he’s looking forward to the conclusion of things on Saturday, although he and the rest of the committee will still have a ton of work to do finishing up the paperwork and restoring their equipment and relationship with the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Now I pretty much expected that at some point during the weekend I’d get a pix of Dave at the exact moment he truly realized what a horrible mistake he had made accepting the Chairman gig, but I didn’t expect to get it as early as the opening banquet. But I was wrong!
Friday, August 7, 2015, noonish We are now well into the upland, and should be finished for the day by 1:00. It’s a very well defined field, about 70 yards wide with a tree line and mowed strip on either side. The dog and handler hunt down the middle, cheating a bit to the right since the cover on the left is excessively thick and tall. The first 50 yards or so is a warm-up zone where you aren’t under judgment, and then you go another 50-60 yards to your flush. After picking up the chucker if possible, you continue another 40 yards and are excused from the field of battle.
We ended up not using a test dog so poor Hank didn’t get an opportunity for additional exercise, but I expect many in attendance were relieved. I told him to save it for the water blind tomorrow. Bry had a very workmanlike run and I expect to be called back to tomorrow. I was surprised at how heavy the cover was, as it didn’t look that bad from the gallery, but the folks in shorts came out looking like they crawled out of a multi-flora rose farm. The bleeders below belong to the barely survived Vicki Butler.
The gunners seem to be doing a good job, and I don’t recall any no-birds. While this wasn’t specifically discussed at the handlers’ meeting, the scenario seems to be that of a Shoot to Retrieve competition, with a large gallery to the rear and all the gunners in the rotation clumped up on the right side. Bry paid them a brief courtesy call, as did a few others I believe.
We’ve been told lunch is ready back at the pavilion but most of us are staying until the last dog has run. We’re going to wait around for callbacks anyway (already posted above) and it’s very comfortable in the bull pen so inertia (or lack thereof) has taken over and we’re just gonna sit on our butts for the time being.
I guess I should take this chance to mention why you haven’t seen any more drone videos. Sadly, the NAHRA II drone, complete with footage on board of one of our handlers, in flagrante delicto, taking care of business out in a field, took off on a mission from which it did not return. It was last seen at 150 feet, booking with the wind towards Lake Ontario. Clearly operator error, made all the more embarrassing by the fact that I lost NAHRA I two weeks ago, in a similar incident that left some stellar footage laying on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay. Oh well, too soon old, too late smart. NAHRA III will be arriving next week; I’m not particularly smart, but I am persistent.
One of my more amusing conversations here did concern the loss of the drone, however. The unnamed stooler was initially relieved to see the loss of the data chip, assuming the video of him would never surface. He was quite dismayed though, when I pointed out that the chip would survive for many years in any sort of weather, and at some point a fisherman is going to reel it in, in lieu of a fish, and post it on YouTube. I can’t wait!
Friday, August 7, 2015, 5 PMish Getting ready to leave to meet the Alaska reunion group for our annual dinner celebration for Dick and Kathy Ofstedal's anniversary and thought I'd throw up a few more pix. Will also try to get some posted from the restaurant if they have a wifi signal I can pilfer.
First we have a view of Dave Mellender, me and Tony Carlo waiting for the upland test to get underway.
And no blog would be complete without the obligatory dog and beer shot, this one from Brewer's mom, Judy, showing him chilling after a successful day.
Sunday, August 9, 2015, 8:30 AM The Qualifiers were put up at the top last night. I'll get the scenario pictures up before we head home, and I'll get a lot more pictures up later in the week. I've gotten a few from some other participants and if anyone has any they want posted please email them to me.
The test started with the handler and dog walking down a hill towards the line. At some point a shot was fired for the blind and then the judges exhorted the team to hurry up to the line because the birds were flying and they already had one down. All of the bird stations were calling at the same time.The dog was placed in a remote sit in front of you and you took your place on a tool box, later switched to a bucket.
The handler started the test with a call and the first bird was a flyer on the left, thrown right to left and landing in fairly low cover behind a decoy spread. There were some no-birds and at one point a mark walked off into the tree line without the judges being informed but that dog trailed it in and picked it up. The decoys delayed some of the dogs from driving back to the area of the fall but for the most part the dogs did well on this mark, and most of them picked it up second.
The next bird down was the money bird, and came out right to left from a winger behind a bush. It had a very visible arc and landed at the top of a hill, in low cover. The dogs had to drive through a patch of very heavy cover up the hill, but if they made it that far it was an easy pick-up; but most didn't make that drive without help.
The third mark came from the same location, left to right into a small patch of grass in the water. You got a splash and most dogs picked it up fairly easily, although a few drove deep and had to hunt back to it, and more that I would have expected ran the left bank down to it.
After picking up the marks you had a testy little down the shore blind with additional suction from the third mark when you got out that far. There was some really thick muck for the first 10-15 yards and some dogs had difficulty getting past that, but once they got going most dogs stayed wet and got the bird.
The whole test was really that middle mark, as from the dogs point of view the bird was falling in or behind the heavy cover and they just weren't driving up the hill. Literally ⅔ of the dogs handled on that mark, and a few that didn't handle didn't exactly front foot it either. I think it was the best mark I've seen in an invitational - a real ball buster, but eminently fair with good visibility of both mark and dog. The first running dogs seemed to handle late on it, as I did with Hank as test dog, but as the day wore on and people realized that they were probably going to have to help the dog dig it out, the handles came crisper and sooner. There were a few double handles, and the judges didn't make that a capital offense - it depended what you had coming in. It reminded me of the land series in Minnesota in 2008 (for those of you that were there) , where a huge percentage of dogs handled on that right-hand mark and a double handle in that series probably left you still playing (The Goon had one and was carried to the end of the test).
Well, I'm gonna go pack. Check back later in the week for more pix and wrap-up.
Thursday, August 13, 2015, 8:30 AM Well, the boys and I are chillin' at the lovely Princeton, NJ Howard Johnson's (who knew they still existed??) in preparation for a Q and Derby tomorrow so I thought I'd try to finish up.
I'll probably just ramble a bit and then upload some pix that people have sent in, primarily my lovely wife, the Butlers and Judy Knope.
This was Frank's last Invitational as President and more importantly, Carbon's last Invitational as a competitor. Those of us that have followed Carb's career with Frank always have a fond spot in our hearts, mostly because for almost all of us, Carb was the first dog we had ever seen that made Frank break a sweat. As God is my witness, Carb was the first dog I ever saw Frank have to handle on a blind. It was a refreshing concept to see him have to work like the rest of us mere mortals. Carb's nickname was "Eddie", taken from well known ne'er-do-well Eddie Haskell, and he certainly gave Frank all he could handle. But he turned into a great dog, and fittingly enough, he lined the water blind for his last official NAHRA ribbon. There were very few dry eyes in the gallery as Frank and Carb left the line.
My overall opinion of the test is that it really hit the sweet spot of being a bit beyond the usual weekend test degree of difficulty, but in a very subtle way. The land series was very straight-forward and most dogs handled it with ease. I think the trail tripped up more than a few people, and I've always hated when the trail gets in the way of an otherwise good run, but those are the rules we live by. It just always bothers me that we are judging something that we can neither see nor smell ourselves. But the water series was deceptively tough and really tested the dogs with the middle mark thrown at the top of the hill. It wasn't a trick, it was a giant throw with great visibility and if you had to handle you could see your dog as long as you didn't wait too long to do so. If you did wait too long to handle you did put yourself in some serious trouble but it was all your fault. If you did your job and helped your dog you came out of it okay; if not you didn't do your job as handler. I just loved it. And the water blind was a retriever 201 down the shore, keep your dog in the water affair that most of the dogs did pretty well on.
I think the judging was fair and they tried to keep all the dogs in until they took themselves out. The only two dogs that didn't make it to water both broke and that's just doesn't give the judges anything to work with. Eight dogs were dropped after the water but only a couple really did an unacceptable water series; most just ran out of points because they lost too many coming into the water, including some major deficits after the trail.
Two guys working hard and one guy hardly working. Wayne and Ty, Dave and Smoke and Tony neglecting his dog.
I'm really not sure what Donnie Morgan is doing here, but clearly Judges Bull and Brennen are singularly unimpressed.
The higher you get in the program, the more it becomes a team sport. The dog is obviously doing most of the work, but as handlers we still have an obligation to help the team wherever possible, including currying favor with the judges anyway we can. This picture is of Tony and me delivering donuts and coffee to the judges, courtesy of dogs #17 and #28. I believe this was prior to the trail, and it followed up a fruit cup delivery to them at the land series.
I'll get more pictures up as time permits, but I'll wrap it up for this year by looking forward to next year. We'll be in Wisconsin at Larry Willson's place and I've been hearing for years what a great set up he has. Four Points has run a ton of tests there over the years so they know all the ins and outs and in addition, they've done some heavy equipment work to make it even better. I've heard tales of a floating blind that we may be running out of that should be a neat addition if they can fit it in. We should have a big crowd as I believe most of the dogs that were here this year will be back next year (I'm assuming Hank will take Carb's place to keep the numbers right) and the Central dogs who took off this year to save up for next year will be joining us again.
As always, I hope you enjoyed my mindless ramblings. Thanks for the use of the hall.
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