A pretty good weekend

[WildRose]

Well we hit two trials, judged one very nice limited GD stake, handled a bunch of dogs in two different trials and drove about a 1,000 miles over the last weekend.

At the TPPBDC trial in Hardesty we won the Derby with "Cracker" one of Moose's son's. Friday was terribly windy, cold, and dry yet he ran a nice big GD race, handled very nicely and had two finds, one on a wild covey. I was very proud of him.

I had to leave my young Gun Dog "Duke" (dog in my avatar picture) who is a Son of Bullett with my good friend Bryan Long to run in the Open GD. Duke has been a dog I had a lot of faith in since I first took him back, and I thought I had him ready to at least show well if not win but with his range a walking GD stake didn't seem appropriate so he stayed in Hardesty.

Bryan had never even had his hands on Duke until about two hours before the stake yet he took him out and won what the judges told me was a VERY tough Gun Dog Stake, with a stellar performance. He had one wild covey find and a very nice Stop to Flush on another wild Covey. I owe Bryan a lot for this one because the judges told me he did a bang up job of handling Duke's find in a tough, tough situation with birds running and popping all around the dog. Fortunately Duke stood it with great style according to the juge who called me to tell me about it that night.

I was also comitted to the Sunflower GSP club walking trial so after a full day of judging Gun Dogs, then running and scouting derby dogs I pulled out about 8pm and drove to Howard KS.

We picked up six more placements with five dogs including winning the Open puppy with a very nice little daughter of Bullett.

So ends a long, tiring but very rewarding weekend for the guy who bred, raised, and trained all of these dogs. CR

[AHGSP]

Sounds like a heck of a good weekend CR!
Are CONGRATS in order when you had that much fun?!
CONGRATS!

[WildRose]

Thanks Bruce. I hope you can make it up to the CVVC club trial in April. I'm going to be there judging and I'm thinking of bringing out either Moose or Duke to run as well. It's about time we got a chance to sit down and have a beer and a bite to eat! CR

[Ricky Ticky Shorthairs]

Way to go Charlie!! Sounds like a busy weekend. That's a pile of ribbons for 2 days!! Very cool.

Doug

[vzkennels]

A BIG congrats Charlie,your confidence & pride is growing with each trial & it's only going to get better!! It's good to hear about Cracker knowing I had a little something to do with it, nice to see one of those all LVR dogs that every one thinks you hate do well.

[WildRose]

Well Ted I got my butt eaten out a couple of weeks ago by someone disgruntled about how we'd placed some dogs in an Amateur stake. The comments were "How could you put up that Brittany, the handler was terrible", and "How could you put that 'show dog" up for second". I looked at him and said, "Well I was judging the Brittany, not the handler, and the "show dog" laid down a perfect walking gun dog race and was perfect on her bird work on three finds". I got some more flack about handlers, Britt's and Show dogs and told him point blank, "Saddam Hussein could put down a blue goat in front of me and if it was the best dog that day it would win"!

I don't care what color they are I just like good dogs!

Just to pump your hat size up another notch or two one of the judges liked Cracker so well he now owns him! I do however get to keep the blue ribbon and retained breeding rights to him for life as part of the deal If he continues to develop as expected there will be some more little Crackers around here one of these days. CR

[remmy]

Congrats Charlie...Hey I saw somewhere you will be judging up in my neck of the woods this spring. It showed you judging Derby, among other stakes in CT. I might be running my pup under you. I just have to see when they run the derby because the Reg 2 is the same weekend here in NJ.

Hope to meet you.

Rob

[WildRose]

Thanks Rob, Yep, with any luck at all I'll finally get to meet both you and Bruce. You might even get to see one of my dogs run there as I'm sorely tempted to bring at least one just so I can say "Yes, I have run a dog east of the Mississippi"; afterall you can't get much further east unless you are wearing waders!

Here's a shot of Duke modeling with his new Jewelry. Not bad for a dog that only ran two braces of Derby, and this was only his third time in Adult stakes and his first placement!

[Chief_dog]

Nice pick of Duke there Charlie. I'm really excited about the 9 puppies we have out of him and Dixie.