Friday June 18, 2010

Welcome to this year's BLOG coverage of the prestigious National Amateur Retriever Championship, held in areas around beautiful Klamath Falls, Oregon. While the Klamath area can be difficult to navigate to by air or by land, the surrounding beauty seems to make up for travel woes.

In my case a very long travel day commenced at 3 a.m. on the 17th and ended about midnight at headquarters. A full slate of action looms ahead!

Friday activities included re-acclimation to the area and a search for available training groups, up to an hour-plus drive into varying types of terrain. Retriever News Editor-In-Chief Dennis Bath, Managing Editor Tina Ebner and yours truly set out to access training by camera lens. During the course of our travels, a very special little eating joint named Running Bear was discovered in Sprague River, Oregon--closed Saturdays--tiny but very clean, a limited menu but great fresh choices.

Please check back later to view uploaded training and area photos on this page for your enjoyment as we continue to prepare our coverage of this event.

A view of surrounding background as we approached a training group at T-12.

Jimmy and Debbie Darnell's Diamond "peeks" out from under the holding blind. She's anxious to get the show on the road.

Here's a pretty close-up view of the currents in some of the irrigation channels; rivers and creeks in this area offer currents as well. Flowing water can present significant challenges to dogs not used to this added swimming distraction, so handlers are anxious to introduce their dogs to this influence while others remind their dogs of it.

Sometimes a few words convey a big message.

Lanier Fogg and #14, "Dash", wait patiently for their chance to train.

Sharon Gierman launches her dog for the last bird of the training setup.