Monday morning dawned with mostly cloudy skies and a somewhat blustery wind from the south.  Temperature at the start of the test was 11 degrees Celsuis and by mid-day reached a pleasant 19 degrees.  The first series consisted of a land blind followed immediately by the second series with a stand up inverted “V” land triple.  The tests were situated in a rolling pasture of native grasses and sage and were run towards the northeast.  The gunners were sitting in place while the land blind was run between the left long and middle short gun stations.  The blind (duck) was 425 yards in length and was quite challenging, due to the fact that it was being run before the marks and also between two converging marks.  After the blind the handler moved over to a mat to the right and ran the marks.  Order of the marks was left station rooster pheasant (260 yards) throwing to the right, right station duck (205 yards) throwing to the left, and middle station duck (105 yards) throwing to the left.  Female test dog, FTCH AFTCH Meadowcreek’s AM Express, handled by Murray Murphy, ran first and showed some of the pitfalls of the blind, but stayed under control.  She had no problem with the marks.  Male test dog, Ram River Palomine, handled by Grant DePauw had some difficulty with the blind and had to be handled on the left mark, as the dog missed the mark and started working it’s way to the blind.  A wide variety of work occurred on both the blind and the marks.  For some on the blind, a good initial line was difficult.  Many dogs wanted to go left towards the gun station and needed casting into the wind.  Handlers lost sight of the dog for a few seconds at about the 300 yard point which proved to be critical for some.  The dogs would not show up on the line to the blind and needed handling, with some quite loose work at the end of the blind.  For the marks there was not too much difficulty on the go-bird and most dogs did well on the right mark.  The left mark seemed to be influenced by the blind a great deal.  Many dogs pushed away from the line to the blind and back-sided the gun-station and hunted deep on the wrong side.  Some worked their way over to the blind and needed handling.  In the morning, very few dogs got this retrieve with a good line. Later, in mid-afternoon the wind got blustery again and turned a bit more from the southwest.  Dogs did better on the left long mark, but the blind did not change.  The test was taking approximately 10 minutes per dog and was not expected to completely finish today.  By midday there were two pickups and several handles.
 

Announcer Claire Parker w/ Gord and Heather Darlington	Marilyn Hunter w/ FTCH AFTCH Rainbow's Jefferson P