Date Change!

The annual meeting will now be held April 27 at Big Yellow Boots Stock Dogs in Portage, WI.

Please Volunteer For Annual Trial Set Up

Be a saint! Be a Mensch! Be the hero of the sheepdoggy world!

You will be all of those things and an indispensible part the WWSDA's efforts to put on our Annual Trials if you can come to the Badlands Sno-Park on Saturday, August 18 to help set up the trial field.

Work will start at 10:00 a.m. that day where the big tent has been set up (at the very top of the big hill). Please bring any or all of these items that you have:  a pair of gloves, pliers, fence pounder, knife, and good work clothes.

If we get rained out on Saturday, please meet on Sunday, August 19. If you have questions about the rain or anything else, contact Claudia Mahon at cjmahon@sbcglobal.net or Susane Hoffman at shoffman@sheepycorner.com.

The full address for the site is Badlands Sno-Park, 772 Kinney Road, Hudson, WI 54016.

Your Wisconsin Working Stock Dog Association is strong because people like you work hard to make it so. Join your voices and energies to others at the Annual General Meeting, on Saturday, April 29, from 12:30 p.m. in the conference room at the Days Inn, Portage Wisconsin.

In fact, for even more good fun and conversation, come as early as 11:00 a.m. that day. Pick up a lunch from the next-door Petro/Subway/Dairy Queen and join others in watching "Away to Me," the documentary about the fun and quirky world of sheepdog trials, focusing on competitors at the Soldier Hollow trial.

The Portage Days Inn is at North 5781 Kinney Road, Portage. It's next to the Petro station, off of Wisconsin Route 78 and the intersection of Interstate 39, 90 and 94. Comfort Suites is across Hwy 78 near the same intersection.

We will be electing a new President and Director, reviewing finances, discussing ways of reaching out to new members, encouraging novice handlers and putting on simpler trials. Of course we will discuss the 2017 Annual Labor Day weekend trials, Year End Awards, our annual Jack Knox Clinic, and other important issues that you, the members, bring up.

If you do have agenda items for the meeting, please consider writing President John Seraphine at heatherhopefarm@gmail.com.

Hosting trials is getting complex and challenging. This deters potential hosts from starting, drives some hosts to quit, and drives up the costs of trials. The cost and scarcity of trials is a burden on competitors. Experienced competitors get discouraged and newer handlers have fewer opportunities to gain experience. Potential volunteers who might help in putting on trials lack the opportunities to learn how to do the tasks that are necessary to put on trials. We should assume there can be different kinds of trials. Some sanctioned open and nursery, some fun and novice oriented.  Some will be more complex and expensive to put on. Others can be simpler and less expensive.

Objectives:

• To gather, organize and record ideas that will help WWSDA members and others to put on both fun trials and sanctioned trials that are simpler and less stressful for hosts and less expensive and more enjoyable for new and experienced competitors.

• To put these ideas in the most easily usable forms, such as check lists, detailed instructions, directories of trained volunteers, etc.

• To provide opportunities for potential volunteers to learn how to do the tasks necessary for trials, including judging, setting out sheep, working in pens, scribing, course directing, etc.

• To gather ideas for further coordinating efforts of potential hosts in such things as scheduling trials, threading trials together, managing entries and results, etc.

• To arrange trial experiences so that it is encouraging to all handlers, especially newer ones.