I have been receiving numerous calls from people since this post has been made by Ken Delong about this matter. I do not access this cover dog site regularly, so I wasn’t aware that this tread was going on. I would like to address this issue and thank Ken Delong for his work to try to remedy this situation. I understand the work that all our field trial secretaries do to organize and run our trials and then to make sure all essential data is turned in to the proper people after a trial is completed. I also understand that as a points keeper for awards that when taking on these roles that there is some work that the point keeper must do to make sure all awards are properly given to dogs that earn them. I am a points keeper here in Michigan and I must take time to call secretaries to ensure all data is tabulated properly and each dog obtains the credit they have earned. I think it is important that we do our due diligence to make sure of this. I was notified by Brian Ralph after Hippie won her last placement in the NBOGCA trial notifying me on winning the Purina Cover dog derby award. When I had seen a post in June congratulating the winners of this award, I had a conversation with Bruce Mueller and he then notified me that the points had not been turned in by the May 31st deadline, which after several phone calls and research this was incorrect, and points needed to be turned in 30 days after the end of the trials. Ken was 5 days late with this deadline and unfortunately the dog was punished. Hippie met all the requirements to win this award, but she will not. I think this is an unfortunate situation that could have been an easy fix. By no means do I blame Ken for this as we all make mistakes and all he did was miss a deadline by 5 days and other clubs have done the same thing in the past and the dogs and owners were not punished for it. I find it unfortunate that the Purina sponsored award will not go to the dog and owner that earned it.
I appreciate all the calls and concerns over this matter and appreciate the effort of Ken Delong and Brian Wood to try to rectify this.
Richard Hollister