The Cariboo Kennel Club hosted its first Canadian Kennel Club Licensed obedience and rally obedience trial in over 25 years on May 28 and 29.
We had a very impressive entry of 122 over the four trials in two days, with entries coming from as far away as High River, Alberta and Burnaby.
The majority of our entrants were local, coming from Quesnel, 100 Mile House area and Williams Lake. Our judges were Karen Brearley from Armstrong and Norma Schaffer from Salmon Arm.
We have a perfect venue for hosting competitive events at the airport, with easy access, well maintained and surrounded by a beautiful forested area for shade.
Thank you to the city of Williams Lake for providing us with this venue.
To attain an obedience title, a dog must earn three qualifying scores under two different judges and we had many entrants complete their titles in whatever level they were entered in.
The three levels are Companion Dog (CD), Open Dog (CDX) and Utility (UD).
To more easily explain the exercise difficulty in each level, CD can be equated to elementary school, CDX to high school and UD to university.
A perfect score in obedience at each level is 200 and in order to achieve a qualifying score, a dog and handler team must score a minimum of 170 out of 200 and attain more than 50 per cent of the marks of each exercise.
High in Trial #1 was Kay Whitehead from Quesnel, with her border collie “Hollowshot’s Storm in a Tea Cup” from Novice B class under Judge Karen Brearley.
High in Trial #2 was Leslie Ernst from Quesnel with her Belgian Shepherd “Meraki’s Fire and Brimstone” from the Open class under Judge Karen Brearley
High in Trial #3 was Bonnie May from Quesnel with her Belgian Shepherd “Teseko Bet on Banner” from the Novice B class under Judge Norma Schaffer
High in Trial #4 was won by Joanne Brucks from Williams Lake with her German Shepherd Dog “Francesca Von Den Quellen CGN CD” under Judge Norma Schaffer.
The 100 Mile House Dog Club generously donated a prize for the “High Aggregate” score, which is the highest qualifying score achieved in all four trials and the winner of that prestigious achievement was Karen Brown of 108 Mile with her Golden Retriever “Sunny” from the Novice A class.
In our Rally obedience trial, in Rally Novice A, the High In Class was the Boxer “Briante’s Class Act” owned by John & Gail Wittebrood from Quesnel all four trials.
The Judges were Karen Brearley for the first two trials and Norma Schaffer for trial 3 and 4. She finished her Rally Novice title on this weekend!
In Rally obedience Novice B, “Eromit’s Suspenseful Addiction” owned by Erin Lynes was High in Class in Trial #2 under Judge Karen Brearley and she was also High in Class in Trial #3 under Judge Norma Schaffer.
“Meraki’s Fire and Brimstone CD” owned by Leslie Ernst was High in Class in Trial #4 under Judge Norma Schaffer
There are a lot of action pictures of the dogs working on the Cariboo Kennel Club Facebook page, thank you to Erin Lynes of Quesnel for taking the pictures and posting them on our Facebook page.
As you can see from the pictures, there is a large variety of dogs who compete in obedience trials. The Canadian Kennel Club (CKC) has opened up the eligibility of participants in CKC performance events to non registered and crossbred dogs.
The requirements for dogs to compete are that they must be spayed or neutered and must apply for an event number with the Canadian Kennel Club.
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ruth.lloyd@wltribune.com
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