2017 MSDA Judges Seminar

What a great weekend my niece, Hailee, and I had at the Michigan Sporting Dog Association’s Judges Seminar!

This is the 9th year that my friend Michelle Keehn, her husband and I have participated in this very important event. Through this event the future AKC Judges of the Sporting Dog’s are taught how to judge each perspective breed.

The Judges are given a presentation first. Michelle does this portion for the Chesapeake’s along with at least one other person who has been in the breed for a number of years. Our presentation consists of covering the things in our breed standard in more detail. The Judges can ask questions at any time. They are also given a booklet that has our breed standard, information about our breed, bio’s of the presenter’s, and several articles written by long time Chesapeake breeders. The Judges are also given a CD with the whole presentation in PDF so they have something they can refer back to.

After the presentation the Judges get a hands on demonstration. This is really the highlight of the session, the opportunity to actually go over the dogs in a similar setting as a conformation ring. The dogs are supplied by other Chesapeake owners, if not for their dedication to the breed this really wouldn’t be possible for the Judges to have this opportunity.

Each Judge gets to go over every dog and take the time to really get their hands on them and ask questions. We move the dogs around the ring just as if it was the real deal. They critique the dogs, so as I say “don’t bring your dog if you don’t want to hear the bad with the good”.

Halfway through the day there is a land and water demonstration show casing the dogs doing what they were bred to do.

The whole seminar was well received by the Judges and they commented on what a great job we did and the nice quality dogs we brought for them.

A great deal of hard work goes into putting this together not only by the MSDA but each individual breed. The weekend is long for everyone, including the dogs, but in the end it is all worth it to make sure the future Judges have this wonderful opportunity to be educated on each breed.

Some random photos from the weekend…

MSDA’s Judges Education Seminar

Well it has been a very busy weekend for us, we helped and participated with the Judge’s Education Seminar Saturday and Sunday. For those who have never heard of this I will try to give you a brief explanation; for the past four years the Michigan Sporting Dog Association (MSDA) has held a Sporting Dog Judge’s Training Education Seminar here in Michigan, this gives judge’s the opportunity to get hands on experience judging various sporting breeds and is required by the AKC for them to earn their judging license for each breed they will be judging. This year it was held at the D Bar A Scout Ranch which is a beautiful facility and worked very well for the dogs. This is a two day event starting at 8am and ending around 4:30pm. There is also a live demonstration of these breeds doing the job they were bred for. This is most exciting and very educational for the judges; last year I over heard one judge say she had never seen water retrieves before.

The Michigan Chesapeake Bay Retriever Club (MCBRC)  (I am a member/board member) represents the Chessie’s at this event. There are four sessions each day and we do a Power Point presentation first that gives a little history ( you can see more on the history here) of our breed and then in depth information about everything in our Breed Standard. After the presentation the judges are shown the dogs in a show ring setting so they can look at them move and get their hands on them to feel coat textures, bone and the over all conformation of the dogs. Each year this is made possible by the people in the Chesapeake community volunteering their time and their dogs. We have always been able to present to these future judge’s of the breed every color and many types from various kennel’s, males, females, and all ages. The feedback from the judges’ is very positive and we have been able to debunk some of the misunderstandings they had about the breed; which is a good thing.

This was a great opportunity for me to get Maia and Titan out for some socializing and conformation training. They both did very well and by the end of the second day they were pros…well maybe not pros but they were getting in to the swing of things. I was not able to get any photos myself because I was so busy with dogs, not just mine but others as well; I showed 3-4 dogs at each session, which means I ran around the ring and stacked dogs 12-16 times each day…shew I’m tired just writing about it I do have two pictures of Titan that my friends took for me, one is of him stacked, however his front leg and rear leg is not placed properly but over all it is not a bad photo and the second one is of him moving around the ring and this one is quite good.

It was a great weekend but exhausting for all of us!

If you would like to see more photos you can view them on MSDA’s facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.128694513936385.21715.128289133976923&type=1

 

 

On another note, I dropped Titan off at the trainer’s on Sunday evening after the seminar and couldn’t help myself so I texted her yesterday to see if he did okay and of course she said he did just fine but I needed to hear it for myself I will update on his training as it progresses.

Claudia Orlandi Seminar

This Saturday I am attending a seminar on breeding and anatomy; this is being presented by Claudia Orlandi, Ph.D.. She wrote the book “ABC’s of Dog Breeding” which is a home study program covering the genetics of breeding. I read and took the test in the back of the book a couple years ago, sent my test in to the AKC and received a completion certificate.

I have been waiting for a long time for her to come to Michigan again to give her seminar and now she is finally going to be here and not only will I get to hear her lecture on this book I will have the pleasure of hearing the lecture on the “Practical Canine Anatomy and Movement”

But wait it gets better, they have had such a large group of people register that they did not have enough dogs to use for the hands on anatomy section so they sent out an email requesting dogs. I thought about it and figured what the heck I will volunteer Cheyenne and great news they accepted my offer. So not only do I get to attend a seminar I have been waiting a long time for my beautiful Cheyenne gets to go with me. My friends over at Dusty Rose Chesapeakes will also be attending with one of their dogs, in fact it is because of them that I know about this book.

I love to learn all I can about the genetics and structure of dogs and I think you can never stop educating yourself. There is always something new to learn and in the long run it helps to make you a better breeder.