The Organisation

Deb’s telling of how the trip initially came about leads on to just how we were going to do this.
With the seed of visiting Aussie to attend the ANKC Nationals in place, the thought of where to start to organize something like this was more than a little daunting. I volunteered to learn a little more about the logistics of flying the dogs etc so contacted several breed show enthusiasts I know regularly travel dogs across the ditch and thanks to them gained some useful info.
We contacted Elle at Dogtainers in Adelaide and she has been a godsend stepping us through the things we needed to do and has made it all much easier than it could have been. We also contracted Venturepet to do the outbound leg of the travel for us – one more thing to tick off the list.
Gradually over the process of talking about it all, the numbers of enthusiastic people grew and by November 2006 we were up to around 9! At about this point we had a meeting after a show and discussed the whole idea and agreed that just in case we were invited to submit a team into the State Finals, we would let everyone know via the Agility email list that the trip was taking place. That done – the final numbers were 11 handlers and 13 dogs.
In the background to all of this, the NZKC wrote to the ANKC and with the help of several people in the Agility world in Aus, got agreement for our Senior level dogs to be able to compete at Masters level for the trip. This is something we are most grateful for and even though we may well make twits of ourselves at Masters Games in particular, we are all certainly looking forward to the challenges ahead of us
So now the stage was set – the question – with 13 dogs and only a certain number of flights a week how do we get all of the dogs there in time?
Lyn Sayers went into serious talks with the Top Dogs at Air NZ freight and got an agreement for an allowance of 7 crates to be booked so now we could do it on two flights. In the end 5 of us decided to go a week earlier and take in two pre-nationals shows with the aim to learn what we have not figured out about the differences in rules before the nationals.
So that’s the short version of how we got to where we are.

Huge thanks to Reg Dwyer who has been awesome helping to find our way through what we need to do, and for championing the idea of a trans-tasman clash at some stage. Thanks also to those on the Aussie agility list who have tirelessly answered games questions and supplied sample courses for us to try………..
Of course nothing written about this trip would be complete without me singing the praises of Bron – that wonderful fabulous Test Sec you have for the Nationals. She has put up with our stupid questions, strange requests and probably oddly filled out entries. If you see her wandering around the nationals looking slightly dazed – just put it down to the wine we will be bringing for her as a thank you………….