Thursday, July 31, 2008

I've been thinking of all the new folks we have in the beagle world. I for one am very thank full for them. We sure can't have enough new blood in the sport. One of the byproducts of such rapid growth is just the proliferation of inexperience. It's no ones fault. People get involved and they are excited, eager for knowledge and information. The easiest place to get that is the internet. If you look around you will find plenty of folks telling all about how to do this or that. How a dog is supposed to do this or that. You've seen them. The problem is in many instances the person doing the telling don't know any more than those he is trying to tell. This is especially true if you look on the message boards. Sure you can find some nuggets of information but you have to really look.
What do I want to do about it? I want to help educate those who really want to learn. I plan to start holding weekend seminars right here at Five Forks Kennels. These will be at NO COST to the participants. All you'll need to do is find your way here.
I'd like to go over the things you want to talk about. It'll really be up to the folks attending. We can discuss what ever subjects you like, from kennel set-up, medicines, shotgun choices, and of course field performance of hounds. I'd even like to eventually get to the point where we can start training judges. Not the rules seminar type of training but actually following dogs. Maybe watch groups of dogs run, video the action and then come back inside and discuss what we saw and watch the video. I believe something like this will even be help full to many of our current judges as the trend has become to simply count picked checks and determine the winner by adding up which hound picked the most checks. The fact is, there's just more to determining quality than that. That's not to say judging dogs in this manner will not result in a judge getting pretty close to calling it right.
I'm also planning on a new section for the web site. I have one beagling's best studies of the AKC rule book working on a monthly column where he will discuss the particulars of some of the rules and concepts that give people the most trouble. We can also have him answer and discuss questions you send it.
So let me know what you think. I will start a list of those interested in the seminars and will get that in the works. Also, send in your rules questions and we can get the new section going as well.

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