One Step Forward...
...and two steps back - is how this trial seemed to go. Three different clubs in three weekends - we had been on the road quite a bit for these trials. This was our first time visiting the Russell County Beagle Club in Russell Springs, KY but we were excited because we knew we would be seeing some familiar faces. We knew a few new friends from other trials would be in attendance and we were also looking forward to seeing my father-in-law Donnie and our long time beagling buddy Paul come to their first ARHA trial!
After arriving at the clubhouse we soon realized that this would be largest trial we had participated in so far; it was exciting but intimidating. Paul and Donnie arrived with Gracie and Thunder in tow (Paul's hounds) and we all got the dogs entered and mentally prepared for the casts. Shortie was drawn in cast 2 (out of 6) and again placed second in his cast. Due to the large number of casts in this hunt only 4 out of the 6 dogs who placed second in their casts would get a place in the top 10 overall. Because we were relatively new to trialing it took me a little while to understand the relationship between the number of hounds and the difficulty of placing in the top 10. Let me break it down for you...
27 dogs are entered in the opens class with 3 casts of 5 dogs, and 3 casts of 4 dogs. All casts winners will go on to the final casts and will automatically place 1st - 6th overall for the opens class. That only leaves 4 places in the top 10 for the 6 dogs placing second in the casts. Dogs getting drawn in casts with fewer dogs already have a slight advantage due to the lowered level of competition and the ability of the judges to keep up with fewer hounds but drawing for casts is all luck and nobody can complain unless cheating is obvious.
It may seem simple - more dogs, more competition. But it really didn't occur to me how quickly your chance of placing in the top 10 was diminished when more dogs entered the class. If you have 50 or more hounds in the class then unless your hound wins his cast he has no chance of placing in the top 10.
That being said, after Shortie placed 2nd in his cast he was on the cusp of placing 10th or 11th and it was all decided by a coin toss! Due to both dogs in question being tied in every aspect, a coin toss was the only way to determine final places. Unfortunately we lost the flip and Shortie ended up placing 11th overall in the hunt accruing 0 points towards his rabbit championship. I did enter him into his second bench show and he came away with 2nd best male accruing 10 points toward his bench championship! That was the silver lining to our discouraging day in the hunt.
We did have a good time and made a few more new friends in the process but this hunt was the last one we decided to participate in until later in the year. In Kentucky the summer weather starts around mid-May and doesn't end until late September. We knew it would be too hot and too thick to have any good running for trials during the summer so we said au revoir and began our summer break from ARHA Little Pack field trials.
