RESULTS:
1st Place Anthony Peters with Atikonak Bullrush LRD winning the Spaines Hall Cup
2nd Place Callum Raywood withPinfeathers Excalibur LRD winning the Betonsfield Trophy
3rd Place Sharon Dingle with FTCh Bellspaddle Mungo LRD winning the Hassenbrook Cup
4th Place Keith Foster with Overthwarts Bilton LRD
CoM Vince Thorby with Hullabaloo Thunder of Thorchase LRD
Flightline Trophy for Best Essex Entry also won byAnthony Peters
We returned again to West Bergholt by kind invitation of the Bergholt Shoot Syndicate and Bergholt Hall on what turned out again to be a very warm day.
Our two judges were Peter Abbs and Andy Mutimer who kindly gave up their day to travel to Bergholt to judge for us.
We had four challenging tests, but this is the Open Qualifier and the Area Finals will have very challenging tests set to test the best of the best from each area.
The two morning tests consisted of a long straight mark, with a distraction thrown when the dog was returning, which was subsequently retrieved. This caught a few dogs and handlers out and several handlers short marked the fall of the dummy. The distraction also seemed to cause issues as despite the dog seeing it on the return with the first retrieve, there was little scent so they had to work hard to find the dummy in the long grass; Andy was judging this and gave people plenty of time to work their dogs.
The other test judged by Peter was a long blind straight up the hill, with a mark memory to the left, again a long retrieve with the dogs having to go through a gap in the trees and over a ditch, if they kept a straight line you would see your dog when it picked.
Unfortunately we lost quite a few dogs in the morning.
All the dogs were kept in for the two afternoon tests, the test Andy was judging was a mark thrown through a gap in the trees into a field of rough grasses, once thrown there was a shot to the far left indicating an unseen dummy, the mark was collected first then the blind, lack of scent made both these tricky. The other exercise was a double mark, with competitor and Peter standing at the top of the hill, one mark was straight in front, just slightly over a ditch into the meadow, the second over to the far right, the competitor chose to pick in either order. Surprisingly a few more dogs fell by the wayside.
At the end of the test we had 10 dogs still standing, so very well done to all those that completed all the tests. The day culminated with a three dog run off for first place. Interestingly all in the awards were dogs!
After the customary tea and delicious homemade cakes, raffle drawn, the awards were presented.
Finally we are very grateful to Skinner’s Dog Foods for their continued support, our host, Peter and Andy our two lovely judges and to our fantastic band of helpers Frank, Nick, Stephen, Ricky, Rob and Rob for standing out in the heat throwing, placing,etc Rob for the lunches, Keith and Julie for the cakes and not forgetting the committee for their work behind the scenes, before during and after the event.
Good luck to Team Essex at the Area Finals in July at Windsor being hosted by the Bucks Area.