Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Pacific Vizsla Futurity through the eyes of a judge


"It was an honor and a pleasure to judge the Pacific Vizsla Futurity.

As described in other posts, it was a great event, with a field of dogs that
showed ability and potential in every brace.

The grounds were excellent for allowing these dogs to show their stuff as there were open stretches, long ascents up hills, broad descents (both affording excellent views of dogs), creek bottom, tree groves, islands, rock outcroppings and objectives at both near and far points.

The course allowed each dog to work tight places as well as stretch out. Physically, it required conditioning and stamina to cover this wide and varied territory and still finish hard in the half hour with all the changes in elevation. It bodes well for the future of vizslas in field competition.

Ken & Janet and all the folks who put it on deserve heartiest congratulations as do the winner and runners up. Kudos to all the entrants for a great stake.

I am sure there will be results/placements coming for the VCNC trial, but
perhaps folks do not realize this Futurity was set in the center of a three
day all-breed AKC Field Trial mounted by the Vizsla Club of Northern
California. A hard working, well-oiled staff pulled off two events!

Hats off to Nancy Colwell, Chairman, Tiffany Jorgens, Secretary, Janet Kuivenhoven, Cathy Boyd, Gordon Stronhmeier and Robert Studer.
This trial, with concurrent courses, also included three retrieving stakes with first bird shot on course...no small challenge. I also had the pleasure of judging the Open Derby and the OAA (ret.) for their trial and saw some awesome dogs in those
stakes.

Again, two fine events."

Joan Heimbach

2 comments:

Andrew Campbell said...

Rod:

That's awesome. You met my field-trial fairy godmother! Joan is great and I don't know if you met her great DC, Octane, or got to see him run -- but he is an exciting dog who even at age 8 is going to give the youngsters a run for their money.

That's a great picture of Bailey in the next post. He looks fantastic.

Andrew

Rod Michaelson said...

Andrew,
Didn't get to hear or meet Octane, but that is a name we have heard of over the year we have been in the sport.