Welcome to the home of our Flatcoats!
December 2014 Issue
Our summer quickly passed but we had a great summer with the gorgeous weather here in the lower mainland, BC! Since the weather was just fabulous, we had to take advantage of it and did lots of water works this summer. Whether we did efficient training or not, being outside was just as nice and we enjoyed it a lot! We hope everyone had a wonderful summer too!!
We participated in our National Specialty in Kamloops this year. Maaya received the All Round Retriever Award as she earned the required titles last year. In the conformation show, she took the 1st place in the Field bitch class and achieved her WCI title there! Thank you Daesha for your hard work organizing the tests, it was a lot of fun and was great to get to know you!
A week after we came back from our National Specialty, I ran Maaya as test dog for SH and by-dog for SH & MH at the GRCBC Hunt Tests on Sunday to help the test committee as well as to keep her working. We expected her to do a decent job in SH as a title holder and she did a wonderful job! But we didn’t expect much in MH or just hoped that she wouldn’t interfere with a dog in the test or wouldn’t ruin the test in a worst case scenario. While I was nervous being just in the MH test and there was so much going on before we got to the line, not only did she not disappoint us but surprised us by having done a pretty good job in the water series – a walk-up, a triple marks and a blind! It turned out to be a great run for her and I had a taste of running a dog in MH for the first time!!
Later that day at the Hunt Tests, we learned that there would be WC/X tests in Monroe, WA hosted by the EGRC but we didn’t actually plan to do it until a night before. Yes, a night before, I decided to head down in the early morning for the tests and planned to run Maaya only in WC since we hadn’t done much training for multiple marks and she had never done live flyers. But we ended up doing both WC and WCX on that day after we found that we might have been there all day anyway. For WCX, it wasn’t our concern whether she would pass or fail, we thought it would be a good opportunity for her to experience live flyers. With the judge’s permission, I introduced a duck that was just used as a live flyer to her for a few minutes. At first, she acted as if she was telling me that he was still alive but after a few minutes, she seemed to be ok. In the test, she didn’t have any issue with a live flyer at all and came home with her new two titles!
Thanks to these people who are the members of the FCRSA, Jennifer Stanley, whose girl, Jingle also earned her title on that day (Congrats!!), and Pete & Kate Szilard, who were doing the gunners all day for us (not an easy job, you know!), for assisting me how to apply and receive a certification for WC/X from the FCRSA. We were so in a rush to make it to the test in the morning that I didn’t even have time to think about the process. Really appreciated it!
Maaya has added 3 more titles since July and is now Can GCh / Am Ch Blacklace Opal Isle of Maaya Can CGN CDX RE SH WCI Am CGC CD RN WCX! This girl is really keeping us busy!! Daytime is already getting shorter and we won’t have much training out door on weekdays like we did during the summer. But we’ll try to enjoy the fall & winter somehow whether it is training or is just having fun!!
The picture here is Maaya when we were in the holding blind at the WCX test waiting for our turn. How mischievous she looks! – always looking for fun and just can’t wait quietly for her turn, a typical Flatcoat!!