The afternoon before the first day of the trial, the dogs were numbered and painted, and the beaglers met up at the hotel for some pizza and a rules review for the new folks. Everyone had arrived except for Bob Slack and Doug Greer from Uxbridge, Ontario. We thought maybe they had decided not to make the long trip down, but it turns out they were caught in a doozey of a snowstorm in Upstate New York, and then caught in DC rush hour traffic after that. We were all about ready to pack it in for the night when they finally rolled in to the motel. It was good to see them.
Saturday morning we cast all 60 dogs in the 140-acre pen and nine pairs of judges positioned themselves at the most common crossings and scored the dogs for four hours straight. By the end of the first day, Mike Dyal�s A H Sassy was leading the females with 735 points with Darrell Summerall�s Buttercup female following closely with 710 points. The leading male was Shane Shrieve�s Hammer Head with 550 points, followed closely with 525 points by last year�s overall winner, GBFC Happyrun Zig, owned by Dan Kane.
After Saturday�s portion of the trial, everyone returned to the clubhouse for a good lunch, and to freshen up the paint on their dogs. That evening, Pete Rhodes arrived with fresh venison and put it on the barbecue. Served with sauces on the side, that was some very tender and tasty venison.
Sunday morning presented the trailers with a bit of a situation. A local fox hounder didn�t realize there was a trial being held in the pen and he had turned out a dozen young fox hounds. We tried to catch them up as they were eventually running with the beagles, but they weren�t having any part of being caught up. We ran the trial anyway, scoring only the beagles of course, and the fox hounder told us that our beagles put on a clinic compared to his fox hounds. He�d forgotten what good track running was like. The distraction of the big hounds hurt the scoring a little that day, but the dogs were pretty consistent with their Saturday performance. Pretty much the same dogs were in the top ten both days.
When all was said and done, the winner of the females and overall winner was Summerall�s Buttercup with 1,285 points, and the male winner was Hammer Head with 1,245 points. It was a close race, even within the top ten of each sex. A tie was broken for 3rd and 4th in the males. Both had 1070 points, both had the same number of firsts in drive, but one had 1 more second in drives. The Classiest Hound was Courtney Tart�s Sweeper dog, and Best Mouth went to Bob Slack. (Well, Bob Slack�s female, Elvira actually got the trophy!)
The beaglers from both sides of the border enjoyed the camaraderie again, and discussed plans for the 2009 trial which will be hosted in Ontario, Canada. |
