Retrieving Dog of the Year (to the end of May)

[Laraine Frawley]

The results to the end of May are

1 RT Ch Kadnook Tanks Aheap (R&P Tawton) Lab 55(2 firsts,2 seconds,3 thirds)
2 Grand RT Ch Kadnook King of Kanbera CM (R&P Tawton) Lab 49 (2 firsts, 3 seconds, 1 third)
3 Grand RT Ch Kaemajae All Black (J Vella) Lab 44 (4 firsts, 1 second)
4 Grand RT Ch Reveirter Jet Kite(K&N Eltringham) Lab 35 (3 firsts, 1 second)
5 RT/FT Ch Applecreek Breakn Hearts (M Fulton) GSP 34 (3 firsts, 1 third)
6 RT Ch Altiquin SternJDX CD AD (M Hankinson) Lab 33 (2 firsts, 1 second, 1 third)
7 RT Ch Bambillay Brave Heart (S & M Hall) Lab 32 (4 seconds)
8 RT Ch Kadnook Pride Ov Cork (G Tawton) Lab 31 (1 first, 1 second, 2 thirds)
9 RT Ch Winterset Moon Shadow (J Hargreaves) GR 25 (2 firsts, 1 third)
10 RT Ch Horrissapit Surprise (R Ashenden) Lab 25 (2 firsts, 1 third)

There are now 129 dogs with points on the board.

Laraine

[Prue Winkfield]

Hi Laraine - know I have mentioned the novice dogs before but is there any chance of you listing the top 4 or 5? It is a bit boring just seeing all the RtChs week after week - just jealous Seriously, I still think it would be nice to give recognition to the novice owners - hopefully there would be a few new handlers amongst them and not only the AA brigade with young dogs. Prue

[Jason Ferris]

... is there any chance of you listing the top 4 or 5

I don't think we have progressed very far with working out what a "top" novice dog is Prue. There are some novice dogs like Jack Lynch's Fern and Gareth Tawton's River that have titled in Novice in a few trials (five and nine respectively if memory serves), whereas other dogs (like mine ) that plugged away in novice for ages (24 trials) collecting a number of second and third places and possibly accruing more points. The highest number of points doesn't equate to "top" in Novice and Restricted in my opinion.

We need another way of acknowledging the Novice and Restricted dogs and also new handlers coming into the sport.

Cheers, Jason.

[Prue Winkfield]

Point taken Jason - perhaps we should exclude AA handlers from the novice list and call the others something else other than 'Top'. The excluded handlers could be those that have titled more than one dog? All probably too complicated but I think it is a shame if we can't do something.

[Joanne Hagan]

Just thinking out loud for a moment, but what about something that allows for an aggregate score? So you take the top 3 trialling scores, for the Novice dogs, given that 3 wins are required??? 3 is not exactly a great number for averages purposes however, but would expect enough variance in the ability of the dogs that hopefully the 'top' dogs would shine through. So those who ended up placing, but still had really top scores, the placings can count over the wins if those scores weren't that great??

I dunno, just having a stab in the dark