Andy Latham, Ron Jeffery and myself, Dave Field, ran on the
Society’s behalf at Chatsworth Country Fair ‘Gundog Team Event’.
Andy was running his ‘FTCh Skellorn Danty’, Ron was running his
young open dog, ‘Faircotelabs Benriach of Gablescroft’ and I was
running my ‘FTCh Artistryn Jay’.

We were the last of the thirteen teams to run on the Saturday,
which made for a very long day as we were not asked to compete
until gone 5 o’clock. The tests, when viewed from the grandstand,
looked a lot easier than when in the arena, where there were
several places where you could not see the dog.

The first test for all the team were marks over fences which were
all completed well. The next tests were a mixture of blinds and
remembered marks, both over fences and water. Andy’s dog was
running with style and precision and achieved all his retrieves with
the minimum dropping of points. Ron’s young dog also ran very well
achieving excellent scores. ‘Jay’ and I completed all our retrieves
and where I would have liked a little more pace from him, our
scores were more than adequate.

At the end of the first day we were in first position with Andy
‘top dog’ overall.

On Sunday the running order was reversed and we were the first
to go. This gave all the other reams a chance to work out a
strategy by watching our efforts.

We were all situated under the main grandstand and all of the
retrieves required a swim across the river for a variety of blinds and
marks, some over fences. Once again, as a team we performed very
well and were extremely pleased with our work with no failures.

The other teams had varying success, with some failures and we
were delighted when, after lunch, we were called through as one
of the top six teams. The ‘top individual dog’ was decided at this
point which was Andy – an excellent achievement!

A further two retrieves for each dog was required, before another
cut was made, leaving just five teams. We were still running very
well and were the top team.

We were then called first for the grand finale which involved
retrieving as many dummies as possible in twelve minutes, with
only two dogs allowed to be working at any one time. An additional
twist was that each of the retrieves gained ‘bonus points’ up to a
total available of 150. All of the retrieves again involved a swim
across the river each time.

We were very pleased with our overall effort, only having one small
slip when Andy (through operator error) picked the wrong dummy.
It was impossible to know where we would finish with this scoring
system, an in particular as one of the other teams had had an
exceptionally good run.

The result was that we were first!

Our winning team with the Duchess of Devonshire

On behalf of all of us, I would like to thank the Society for allowing
us to represent you and we were delighted that our team effort
assured that the Utility Gundog Society will be invited to run at
Chatsworth in 2010.

Dave Field

The Herts, Beds & Bucks Branch of the Utility Gundog Society
would like to thank Andy for once again captaining the team, a
welcome return to Ron Jeffery who was unable to run last year
because of an injury to his dog and delighted to have Dave Field
making up the team with his ‘FTCh Artistryn Jay’. You did us proud!

Thanks Dave as well for the excellent report!