Agility Dog Association of Australia Ltd

From the ADAA Chair ... August 2006

Congratulations to Keith Thomas for winning the Early Bird Entry Prize to the Grand Prix and Wendy Blakeston for being runner up. Close of Late Entries for the Grand Prix is on 12 August 2006. If you haven’t already posted your entries off, don’t procrastinate and get them out today. The 2005/2006 Medallion Stakes invitations are also being wrapped up so for those with eligible dogs, you should receive your invite shortly. This year’s Grand Prix will be the start of the 2006/2007 Medallion Stakes so there’s another reason to book a delightful weekend away with your dogs (and family).

Last month I was very remiss in not thanking the team of people who helped out at ADAA’s training camps. Both the Queensland and New South Wales camps were held on the same day so it was great to get so many offers of assistance. In Queensland there were 65 participants and 14 instructors. The majority of instructors were able to participate in two or three of the five sessions each day and take some time to train their own dog. Thanks to Marion Allen for coordinating the camp. In NSW there were 35 participants and five instructors, three travelling from Queensland. The feedback from the camps was great and we have already started planning improvements for next year.

ADAAchat is a service for members to exchange ideas, training problems and keep in touch, and the service does not contain official information. You are welcome to post thoughts and ideas to ADAAchat for other members to respond to but if you wish to receive an answer to your question from ADAA then you need to email ADAA's Secretary. This allows the Board to appropriately track and report on correspondence received and sent, ensure that the appropriate person deals with the query and reduces the possibility of conflicting information being sent.

ADAA’s webpage has a plethora of information and the various summaries of the Agility Regulations have been updated to reflect the (new) 8th Edition. So if you have a question, try that first. The Regulations are also available online (PDF 856 kb), so have a read through those too, or better still purchase a printed version for yourself so that you can read through at your leisure (perhaps while you are having a soak in the bath, or sitting in the garden with a drink in your hand. If you still aren’t sure, then do not hesitate to ask your question of ADAA’s Secretary.

Junior members are reminded that they must register their dog as a Junior Handled, Owned and Trained team if they wish to receive JHOT certificates at Competitions. This cannot be done on the day of Competition. Applications are available at the website (PDF download) and there is no fee to do so at this stage.

A huge thank you to Cecelia Woodhouse for seeing a need and filling it. Cecelia has put together a sheet that has all of the abbreviations used on entry forms, plus some hints on how to work out the abbreviation as a single sheet (PDF 20kb). This has now been loaded to ADAA’s webpage so print one off and put it with your blank entry forms.

The Board has been undertaking a variety of projects and, as previously advised to members, these include the completion and publication of our Policies. A new area of the website has been created and these can currently be accessed via the Member Notices area of the website. It is expected that these Policies will be amended and added to over the coming months. If you have experience in development and writing of organisation policies and would like to assist, please contact the writer (chairman@adaa.com.au).

May you enjoy your training with your dog and achieve your goals.

Cathy Slot
ADAA Chair

[Top]