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Many thanks to everyone that helped make the 2006 M.A.D. Summer Challenge a great success.
M.A.D. Club member Carrie Hartranft inspired by her recent trip to the Dog Sports Open in St. Johns Michigan decided we should have a theme to the trial. Our first theme was a “Birthday Party”. Carrie did a great job with the distractions and props! When you see the video (link below) you will see a distinct difference in the environmental pressure levels of the trial novice through advanced. We all think she has some great ideas in store for next year’s event! Great job Carrie!
The decoys were Mike Connors - (M.A.D.), Shawn Flipp - (New England Ring Club), Megan Welch – (M.A.D.), and Richi Davis – (M.A.D.). I can’t thank them enough for their hard work. They never let us down! I would like to personally thank Mr. Shawn Flipp for taking another long drive to bring some of the best decoying in New England to the event! In addition Mike Connors for his pre-game help with our new field and organizing and then leading the decoys through consistent and safe personal protection decoy work.
Also, Shawn Flipp and Mike Connors did a skillful and SAFE job at bringing (What I believe) was the toughest courage test (Advanced) in dog sports to life. They pulled it off just the way I wanted it done. That courage test took real skill and a profound understanding of dog behavior. A tough job done very well by both decoys!
Our judges were Will McNeil (Novice Judge) David Hartranft PhD (Intermediate judge) and Mac Maclusky (Advanced judge). All did a great job and filling in for our original judge that had to cancel last minute due to a family crisis. Thank you all for your qualified opinions and professionalism. You all made what could have been a huge bump in the road look very smooth and seamless.
Competitors came from New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Vermont. We thank you all for supporting this unique trial!
The Saturday obedience challenges saw some new faces and many old ones. These challenges were a great chance for obedience folks to compete and then take a look at what bite work is all about. Many of the folks that were there for the “obedience challenges only” now would like to learn more about bite work. Maybe we will see them next year in the protection challenges.
The protection challenges brought folks from Ringsport, Schutzhund, Belgian ring, and personal protection to the same field. These individual personal protection challenges are designed to let dogs that are working towards a title in a specific sport compete on a new field with new decoys without interfering with their current training program or current goals.
There were 14 entries in total for the personal protection tournament on Sunday. If a team has placed (1st – 3rd) in any of our competitions they have to move up at the next trial and are not allowed to compete in novice with the same dog. We also do not let dogs with titles (includes brevet) in other sports compete in novice. This way we can keep the teams training progressive. This rule can make the novice class very small at times but serves the purpose of keeping the novice a TRUE novice level. We took this rule from the DSO and it has been a great tool at keeping the competitors moving forward.
Thanks again to all that helped and competed! We hope to see you next year! Our next event is the WPBTCA Nationals in just a few weeks! Are you ready?
Please enjoy the video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjz-T_10b44
Safe training,
Chris Fraize
M.A.D. Club member Carrie Hartranft inspired by her recent trip to the Dog Sports Open in St. Johns Michigan decided we should have a theme to the trial. Our first theme was a “Birthday Party”. Carrie did a great job with the distractions and props! When you see the video (link below) you will see a distinct difference in the environmental pressure levels of the trial novice through advanced. We all think she has some great ideas in store for next year’s event! Great job Carrie!
The decoys were Mike Connors - (M.A.D.), Shawn Flipp - (New England Ring Club), Megan Welch – (M.A.D.), and Richi Davis – (M.A.D.). I can’t thank them enough for their hard work. They never let us down! I would like to personally thank Mr. Shawn Flipp for taking another long drive to bring some of the best decoying in New England to the event! In addition Mike Connors for his pre-game help with our new field and organizing and then leading the decoys through consistent and safe personal protection decoy work.
Also, Shawn Flipp and Mike Connors did a skillful and SAFE job at bringing (What I believe) was the toughest courage test (Advanced) in dog sports to life. They pulled it off just the way I wanted it done. That courage test took real skill and a profound understanding of dog behavior. A tough job done very well by both decoys!
Our judges were Will McNeil (Novice Judge) David Hartranft PhD (Intermediate judge) and Mac Maclusky (Advanced judge). All did a great job and filling in for our original judge that had to cancel last minute due to a family crisis. Thank you all for your qualified opinions and professionalism. You all made what could have been a huge bump in the road look very smooth and seamless.
Competitors came from New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Vermont. We thank you all for supporting this unique trial!
The Saturday obedience challenges saw some new faces and many old ones. These challenges were a great chance for obedience folks to compete and then take a look at what bite work is all about. Many of the folks that were there for the “obedience challenges only” now would like to learn more about bite work. Maybe we will see them next year in the protection challenges.
The protection challenges brought folks from Ringsport, Schutzhund, Belgian ring, and personal protection to the same field. These individual personal protection challenges are designed to let dogs that are working towards a title in a specific sport compete on a new field with new decoys without interfering with their current training program or current goals.
There were 14 entries in total for the personal protection tournament on Sunday. If a team has placed (1st – 3rd) in any of our competitions they have to move up at the next trial and are not allowed to compete in novice with the same dog. We also do not let dogs with titles (includes brevet) in other sports compete in novice. This way we can keep the teams training progressive. This rule can make the novice class very small at times but serves the purpose of keeping the novice a TRUE novice level. We took this rule from the DSO and it has been a great tool at keeping the competitors moving forward.
Thanks again to all that helped and competed! We hope to see you next year! Our next event is the WPBTCA Nationals in just a few weeks! Are you ready?
Please enjoy the video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjz-T_10b44
Safe training,
Chris Fraize