2006 NADKC Annual Meeting

St. Louis, MO USA

Last month I attended the annual meeting held at Purina Farms in St. Louis, Mo. What an enjoyable four days! On the first day we held a Derby test with sixteen dogs being represented, and I am happy to report that all sixteen dogs passed. It was nice to meet new members and acknowledge old members running their dogs. Cisco On Point, from my kennel, ran and was successfully handled to a Prize One by Sharon Braker in her first attempt at testing. A few 4h ratings were awarded to handlers whose dogs showed excellent performances in the field. After the Derby we broke for a great barbeque that included venison steaks with all the “fixins” hosted by the Shupe Family.

Later that afternoon a BTR (association retrieving test) was held with three different dogs participating, and two of them received passing scores. This test is a retrieving reliability test where the dog is sent into the woods from the edge of a forest and told to search. A fox is placed about 100 meters in the woods. When the dog arrives at the fox, it must pick it up and return it to the handler. Both of member Steve Remspecher’s dogs entered passed this assessment.

The next day we attended an educational presentation by one of Purina’s experts Dr. Brian Zanghi, Ph.D. on canine nutrition. Following this we toured the labs and listened to his explanations and observed the nutritional testing processes. I was amazed at the volume of research that goes into nutrition development and weight loss and gain of our dogs. Later in the afternoon two training clinics were conducted: one on force fetch training by Phil Savati and the other, which I presented, on use of and training with the electronic training collar. Members seemed pleased with the information and tips presented.

Saturday I attended the general membership meeting. We listened as specific reports were delivered by Executive Board members, Regional Directors, and Appointed Positions. I am pleased to see the ongoing growth of our club. I noticed Derby participation continues to grow, but am disappointed at the fall-off of numbers of these pups subsequently testing in the Solms. We need to keep encouraging our members to test their dogs at least to this level!

Photo Slideshow of 2006 NADKC Annual Meeting

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We had the pleasure of welcoming DKV president Professor Herbert Lemmer to the USA! We were all pleased to have him attend our meeting and personally meet him. He reported this bit of news: Unfortunately, our NADKC Formwertrichters (conformation judges) will not be allowed to issue conformation ratings until further notice. An approved judge from Germany would need to attend and evaluate our dogs. Members needing conformation ratings on their dogs in the near future should plan on attending the NAKP in October, 2006, if possible, where two of these judges will be in attendance.

We all attended the banquet Saturday evening for great food and the annual awards presentations. Two people received the club’s GOLDEN NEEDLE award for outstanding work on behalf of the club: Rich Dobey (currently our NADKC Treasurer) and Ann Carey (Website Guru Extraordanaire and publisher of our humble E-zine)! Hermann-Josef Schomachers also received the outstanding handler award for successfully testing several dogs in the IKP and the Dr. Kleemann-Zuchtauslese-Pruefung. Congratulations to these worthy award winners, and the others, too numerous to mention here. Thank you to the Mid-South Region for an Annual Meeting to be proud of.

Submitted by,
Dave Trahan, Zwinger On Point

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