Welcome to the This ‘N That Thursday blog hop!

It’s a little of this and a little of that and everything in between…

On Tuesday’s post I mentioned that I was still trying to recover from the long weekend of hunt testing.  Our weekend was not as long as some of our fellow club members though.  Our club put on two Masters tests along with a Junior and Senior test both Saturday and Sunday.  We only entered one of the Masters tests because we figured that three days would be too much for us.  (Of course if Thunder and Storm had made it to the third series, we would have happily dragged ourselves there on Sunday to run them. 🙂 )  I wanted to thank Michigan Flyways and all of the dedicated members who worked so hard to put on the tests.

On Saturday I was the Marshal at the Junior stake.  Being the Marshal can be a challenge because you have to over see the stake.  Some of the Marshal’s jobs include making sure the judges have what they need, and that spectators stick to the area (called the Gallery) designated by the judges.  The AKC actually has a rule to cover this:

Section 22. Gallery Location.  It is essential that all spectators attending a Hunting Test be kept far enough from the line to enable the dog whose abilities are being evaluated to clearly discern its handler, and nothing shall be done to distract the dog’s attention from its work. A handler has the right to appeal to the Judges if the gallery is interfering with his work in any way, and the Judges in their discretion may, if they believe that dog has been interfered with, allow the dog to be re-run at a later time.

The other job the Marshal has is to set the running order of the dogs.  This can be more difficult than it seems.  As the Marshal you want to have handlers with their dogs lined up so that the Judges don’t have to wait for dogs.  Everyone wants to get the test completed as quickly as possible.  Plus you have workers in the field and on a hot day, you do not want them sitting out there with nothing to do.  You also don’t want the dogs lined up too soon because if it is a hot day, they do not need to be standing in the sun.

The other issue when lining up the handlers/dogs is that the Master stake takes priority over all other stakes.  This means that if a handler is stuck at the Masters stake waiting to run their dog, you can’t make them come over to your stake until they are done running there.  You can ask, but you can’t demand it.  Luckily most handlers who have dogs entered in other stakes know that they have to visit all the stakes and try to organize it so that they can get to the other stakes as soon as possible.

With two Masters stakes and a Senior stake running simultaneously with my Junior stake, I thought this would present a problem.  It didn’t.  Just about the time I was going to get on my cell phone to look for handlers because I was running out of dogs to run, the handlers showed up.  Through both the land and water series, the Judges never had to wait for dogs.  Kudos to those handlers for excellent timing.

Speaking of jumping to different stakes, we have Storm entered in a Master test and Freighter entered in a Senior test this weekend.  At least for the first series we will have to move between two stakes.

I am not sure how Freighter will do on this test.  I think line manners may still be an issue for him.  This is the last weekend for testing in Michigan this season and hubby wanted to see where he is in his training, so he decided to enter him.

Finally I have some pictures of one of Storm’s puppies.  His name is Virgil.  He is the pick (co-owned) male from the litter.  Can you believe that the Storm puppies are already four months old?

Thanks to Gary and Dorene Irish for letting me share his pictures.

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