News, News, News! December 2011

Hi from all at Ballarat and great to see some new members and some puppies on the ground. Welcome to Adam and Jacqui with Alira, welcome to Kazkiri Janti who lives with Karen and Graeme Brereton and it was good to catch up with Noreen & Kazkiri Jonti as well.

We all send best wishes to Graeme who is not feeling the best at the moment, we hope Janti will be good company for you and a source of enjoyment.

We have been doing some formation work in our training in the last couple of weeks and members seem to enjoy that.

 Last Sunday we had some visitors Alison,  Steve, Jack , Caitlin & Kreuze up to see us and we hope they enjoyed their day. We had some tunnels out so when the serious training finished handlers took it in turns to put their dogs through the tunnels and all dogs enjoyed that immensely ---Doug's Chloe was on automatic pilot but missed the last turn into the tunnel "whoops".

This Saturday we will be tracking in Victoria Park and members are looking forward to that as we have not done tracking for a few weeks now as due to starting a little later for the month. All members take part and even the puppies will do a very short track so they get the hang of tracking early in their life.

Members are reminded to pay their memberships before 31st December 2011 and if you would like to stand for a position on the branch committee I am sure a spot can be found. A list of committee positions available will be put up on the notice board so have a look there may be something you would like to do.

We have a catering day on November 27th for the Sovereign City Dog Club (All Breeds) so we are hoping for lots of "showies" to turn up and spend up big in our canteen. It’s always a great day watching the All Breeds people get their dogs and themselves ready for the show and we are hoping for fine weather as this will ensure most entries turn up but if rain is forecast there are usually lots of scratchings on the day, less people turning up which means we sell less. Once again we will be calling on all our members to help on the BBQ and in the canteen and have had many offers of help so far.

Have missed Carol from training some weeks recently but she has been busy being matron of honour for her sister and then minding her sister’s children while the happy couple went away for a few days. We hope she comes back this week for tracking and we hope to see Yvonne back also. Good to see Tony and Harley back again after Harley has recovered from his injured shoulders--Tony and Lauren had to teach him to stay in a crate and keep him still to help him get better. No soccer for a while now as he now needs to build up slowly after his enforced lay off.

We are planning our Christmas Break up this weekend and we are going to continue training right through just missing Christmas & New Year weeks only. This will get us off to a flying start for 2012 and help with socialisation of the puppies and keep the older dogs working up to a better standard so we can do pass ups in Feb and maybe have a few triallers ready early in the year which will be good for the branch and the members who wish to start trialing - CCD here we come.

The members of Ballarat Branch take this opportunity to wish all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Stay safe everyone and we will catch up again in February 2012.  

Team Ballarat.