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 Newsletter October 2009 There is some news in town! After a busy couple of months, the members of the Adelaide Sportdog Club are back with some news about what we have been up to. Besides making a lot of fun and jokes, we had to pull our socks up to get both ourselves, and our dogs ready for our first attempt at the BH test organised in our inaugural Trial for the Adelaide Sportdog Club. With having this event on our agenda in the beginning of October, we as dog handlers got busy and even more serious in training our companion dogs. We had some very interesting training sessions and not to forget some very important mock trials. Out of these mock trials we gained a lot of useful information for every handler and dog team. With setting these goals as a Sportdog Club, organising trials and getting our dogs titled, we created a very interesting atmosphere in the Club with all the members together. The weekend of 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October 2009 the inaugural Trial of the Adelaide Sportdog Club was held. All the energy and preparation from the Trial committee would come to fruition on this weekend. The ASC invited our Judge for the weekend Luc` Cendak. Luc` was not only here to Judge our competitors on the Saturday morning, but also to give a seminar and some workshops during the whole weekend. On the Friday evening the weekend was officially opened by our President Alex and Vice President Josie, welcoming the Judge, the members, the visitors and especially our interstate competitors from Victoria and New South Whales. The Friday evening was about a trial meeting and after there was time to do some training on the Trial grounds. Saturday morning the real deal started. The excitement was there and an amount of healthy nerves for all the competitors. Luc` calmed everybody down and gave everyone a good tip for the day. Enjoy your sport today, it is your hobby, so relax and everything will be fine. We had 8 teams on the oval for the day, 7 competitors and 1 mock running team (thanks to Peter and Liesel). After every team completed their routines, we saw clearly that there was still some points to train on, in the near future, but the overall performance for every team was a positive one and all 7 competitors passed their BH test. After we all heard the critic from the Judge, the traffic test followed, which again everyone passed. Especially for a Club as new as the ASC it was a great experience to watch and or participate in the BH and traffic test. In the traffic test, Luc’ explained clearly what he was doing and what he was looking for. This was a good part in the Trial to see, as we tend to be so busy training our routine that we don’t pay a lot of attention to this part of the test. With the results achieved at the trial, we as competitors and the Organisers of the ASC can look back on a very successful inaugural Trial.  
After a very nice lunch, prepared by the catering staff of the ASC, the day continued with the Seminar from Luc` Cendak. Luc` presented a clear and professional Seminar about the domestic dog, training techniques and the identification of a teams specific training needs. After the Seminar we went on the field to work with Luc`, in a “hands on” training workshop with every team in the character assessment. After a big day we sat down and had some lovely food and a couple drinks and talked a bit more about dog training.  
The Sunday morning was nice and early for all of us again, as we had a tracking workshop planned with Luc`. This morning there where a few more people in the tracking session than our usual sessions, it was really nice to see all these motivated trackers and their dogs. We tracked our dogs with the professional assistance of Luc’. This helped us all with stepping up in the understanding of tracking with our dogs. This was also a big morning with lots of results and learning material. Around lunchtime we all went back to the Club grounds to enjoy a healthy lunch. With our raffle drawn and prizes given out we then continued with the helper workshop, with each of our dogs participating. Before we knew it we had to stop our seminar/workshop, because the time was up. Otherwise Luc’ would miss the flight back to Melbourne. This is also a good reason to invite him again to continue explaining all the things that we didn’t talk about in the last 3 days! The ASC thanked Luc’ for his motivation and sharing his knowledge about dog training with us in South Australia. The ASC can look back on a very big learning experience weekend and we, as a Club will keep on working and training towards our next goals. Now we talked about the biggest subject of the last couple months, we can also look back at the Australian National Championship in Sydney 2009, organised by Schutzhund Australia. In the weekend of 24th, 25th and 26th of July the Waratah Sportdog Club hosted the National championship. Two members of the ASC went over to Sydney to meet up with all the Dog sport enthusiasts over there. It was a big honour to meet the international Judge from Germany Peter Diedrichkeit and his wife Marianne. We got the possibility to participate in Peter’s seminar on the Saturday afternoon and we had the pleasure to see Peter working with a couple dogs and their handlers. To watch the Championship from the sideline, it gives you inspiration to work with your personal dog in IPO/ Schutzhund. The level that these competitors are working on is high and you can learn a lot from it if you see what these competitors are achieving with their dogs. The ASC wants to congratulate all the competitors at the National Championship with their results and wish them all the best in the near future for achieving every ones personal goals.  
Also we, as the ASC want to thank the Waratah Sportdog Club for hosting the National in 2009 and they did a great job for this weekend with all their volunteers. Also thanks to Schutzhund Australia with getting this very experienced and inspiring Judge, Decoy and trainer Peter Diedrichkeit and partner Marianne over to Australia,  
After this great weekend in Sydney it was time to go back to South Australia and start working on the things that we learned in the last couple days. After talking to so many people and meeting new dog sport friends, drinking, eating and talking dogs. It was time to pick up training again. In the mean time the ASC is working on the Future of our Club and we came up with new ideas about our Club logo. As a result we have the new concept on top of our newsletter. With this logo we will promote our Club on our sport uniforms, website, letters, banners, (board member Club station wagons! lol) and so on. The Logo committee did a great job and is still working on the final end result. Another news item are the number of new dogs in the Club. We are growing as a Club with new members and also with new young puppies. It is great to see these new athletes at the Club grounds. All the best and lots of fun for the members with their new generation sport dogs. When we talk about our dogs now, we already see a difference in the first generation dogs from the ASC and the second generation. This is what training does for us, we learn all the time and you see it back in the results of the dogs. Let’s keep on training and achieve our personal goals. With these busy months behind us, we have now some time to plan for the near future. We as the ASC will set some goals to achieve for the coming year. With a couple months to go to Christmas, holydays and probably some hot weeks in the summer, we are looking forward to the cooler days in 2010. Around this time we will try to organise with the Trial committee our second Trial in our Club History and see if we can achieve our first Titles on our dogs. Until then we will have plenty to train for and keep on learning. For now all the best for everyone and keep on dog training! It’s not a bad hobby and it keeps yourselves and your dog mentally and physically fit! We will be back soon with some more news… Yours sincerely, Michael Secretary Adelaide Sportdog Club Inc.
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