Just Talking and Talking
Preface: I want to thank Bob Kimber for his creation of Doc Cody. Doc Cody does get me to think about my favorite activity sport. I trust we all understand Doc Cody is a fictional character, a creation, and a useful straw man to talk over and against. Doc Cody is not the author and creator of Doc Cody nor to be confused with the author and creator of Doc Cody.
Doc Cody?
It has been a good six months.
The neat thing about Doc Cody is that he gets me to think about my favorite activity sport.
The holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve and New Years Day, have been a pleasant interlude between beagling seasons. This year the holidays have been especially benefiting. You know how holidays do: they show at the right time of year and just in time: blood-pressure readings read lower, worrisome must-do-now projects seem to disappear, or, at least, appear to have been completed, family bonds even get cemented, etc.
Some folks might complain that holidays come wrapped in winter. Ive found that for most people this time of bundling up makes for kinder and more considerate judgments leveled at anything out there.
For example, six months ago I thought about talking to the talk of Grind The Line. That was that.
The Doc Cody I visualized was someone who, for years, had been a sort of popular judge, a sort of respected judge. Yet, I visualized, as well, friends who thought Doc to be very clever and skilled at getting dogs belonging to his friends and those he wanted to impress or to be friends with back into second series.
The holidays came; the snows came; and the cold, blowing winds came; together, they drove me inside to bundle up next to the fire. I re-discovered the pleasures of having a book in hand and a hot, steaming cup of chocolate on the end table next to the chair, ready to be nursed, and dreaming of spring grasses growing through melting snows.
Now and then, though, in the quiet recesses of my mind, Id hear a rattling around; I dont know that it was Doc Codys voice I heard but again and again Id hear, If you dont think the advertised judges will evaluate all the hounds properly and fairly, dont go.
Choose to not go to a trial? Thats a thought. In fact, that is a rather hard thought. Having kept brace trial dogs to campaign 25, 30, 40, 50 years and now to have suggested at me not to attend the competitive festivity that frames the very nature of the dog Ive chosen to keep, train, and enjoy--That is a hard thought, indeed.
My friends will be attending these trials. The visiting, the remembering that is always the best part of every trial, Im to choose to miss? Thats hard.
Likely, Doc Cody doesnt understand Ive not many seasons left to campaign my loved beagle hounds. Ive had two strokes; Ive had that heart attack; Ive had my gall bladder taken two summers ago. My prostate is really beginning to bother me most of the time now. Yes, there was that trial fifty miles from the house, an easy daylight driving distance, I couldnt get to four months ago because my sweet wife, Millie, fell and broke her arm. I couldnt leave her at home alone. I wouldnt. The dogs understood.
Hard thoughts?
Doc Cody, however, doesnt seem to get it: the years have taken a physical toll; no longer am I able to cheerfully drive through the night the 300 or 400 miles, after a long days work at the job, to make the 8 a.m. closing and drawing schedule. In other words, Im a beagler; Im a beagler getting old-older fast. I have no choice but to attend cheerfully the trials close up to the house and get the good out of them. I verily have this need-want to get there. Were each of my local clubs to run the two trials permitted under AKC regulations--terrific. My opportunity of having advertised judges properly and fairly evaluate all hounds entered will be increased one hundred percent.
So much for hard thoughts I dont need.
Yet, there is more; the Doc reports: All of us should keep in mind that judges are making a contribution to the sport and that most of them would probably rather be running their own hounds. Some of them even drive long distances just so beagling doesnt get totally stuck with regionalized judging.
Sure.
The suggestion the two fellows who have consented to evaluate a class of hounds on a day are making a contribution to the sport that has greater value or some special value of greater worth than that given and provided by those beaglers who have brought their hounds, entered them into the competition, and paid the advertised entry fees on their hounds is specious. Simply put, were hounds not entered into a competition there would be no need for judges to evaluate, to compare and to contrast relative tracking style and abilities. The beagler who travels, be it a short distance or a great distance, contributes no less to the occasion than does the judge who may or may not have traveled a distance. Each is equally part of the competition and necessary to it.
Regionalized Judging?
I suppose this does exist. Many beaglers have noticed for years the names of the judges advertised hasnt changed all that much, wherever. Additionally, many of these same judges do seem to travel quite lot and travel great distances. I suspect few of these gentlemen think Im traveling the distance road in my personal effort to save Brace Beagling from Regionalized Judging. I would bet most of these gentlemen are in pursuit of having a very good time with friends who share this interest of somehow bumping into a performance of superior hound-work.
Interestingly, though, trial results of our brace trials recorded and reported to the AKC demonstrate, for whatever reason, certain judges, certain handlers, certain beaglers owning a pup out of this or that certain stud dog, seem to hang out together. At least they seem to show up at places all together. Im suggesting that if regionalized judging does exist it exist in a curious traveling frame: regionalized judging that is constantly on the move.
Judging.
Doc Cody does have this right, sort of: the best judges will make sure every hound gets what it deserves, no more and no less. Of course, the possibility of having this happen in any hound trial is akin to locating that oyster growing the perfect black pearl.
Shucks, this judging thing Ive slammed up against is more than just another hard thought.
Brace Beagling these days is a sport without amateurs. The beagler standing next to you at any trial anywhere in the country has had as much experience following dogs at trials as you yourself have had. The only exceptions to this are those beaglers standing alongside of you who have had more experience. At our trials each and every beagler following a brace in competition is as caught up evaluating the pair of hounds working as are the designated days judges. Everyone following the hounds is judging. We now run trials where each competitor with a dog or dogs entered is as expert a judge of hounds as are the designated days judges.
In a time we long since have aged from out of, the people we formerly did ask to evaluate dogs placed in competition were folks who had had the greater experience with hounds, were folks who had spent a lot of time in the brush and could exercise the more mature judgment required to separate the competing hounds. At that time long ago, the young enthusiasts in our sport would tag along, follow, spend time with these experienced folks, and, over time, it would get discovered these younger fellows, too, had gained tremendous experience in following the hounds and correspondingly had matured in their judgment abilities. Some of these young enthusiasts got asked to judge alongside of their former mentors and, then, as years passed and the ancients got translated, replaced their former mentors in the field. During those days, so long ago now, the judges the sport used were reputed to have that depth of experience that lends itself to mature judgment. This is not to say the sundry judges back then all liked the same style dog; this is to say these judges were generally respected by their beagling peers and understood to have abilities they themselves didnt have time to develop. The peer group beagler knew he/she was too busy making a living, too busy working overtime hours to pay off a mortgage, too busy managing a second job to keep kids in food and clothing, too busy to spend all the time in the field he verily yearned to spend with his loved hounds.
Well, today isnt yesterday. Those of us left to brace beagling are all devotees to the sport. All of us are beaglers who have had years on years of following hounds at home and in competition. Even the dumbest brace beagler amongst us when following hounds in competition gets it at pick up points missed and pick up points taken. That beagler, who is signed on as the advertised judge for a trial, is a pure and simple fool if that beagler signed on believing the field trial committee has asked me to judge because I know dogs better, because I have the keener ability at discerning hound quality.
These days beaglers get asked by field trial secretaries, clubs, to judge upcoming trials for a wide variety of reasons; being the more expert hounds man seldom, if ever, is the large raison detre getting to the decision.
In the Oct. 03 issue of Hounds and Hunting, Mr. Price bemoans the critical shortage of good qualified judges walking about in our brace beagling sport today. In the November issue, the following month, Mr. Price explains this shortage of good judges is due to a lack of experience in the field these judges we use too frequently exhibit. He concludes: as a result, the club may suffer by losing entries because many of us refuse to run under judges who consistently place counterfeit hounds.
Maybe.
In all my years of beagling, Ive never left a trial thinking the judges together were clueless to the workings of their own decisions; nor, have I left a trial thinking those counterfeit hounds got placed due to judging inexperience. This is not to say I never left a trial thinking the judges employed to be fools and clueless given another more angry perspective. I have. It is just that the word inexperienced wasnt applicable to understanding what had happened in the field. In all cases, the applicable word tied to the judges was experienced. Mostly, they were too experienced at it.
In the December 03 issue of Hounds and Hunting, Mr. Price catches me by surprise. He writes: Todays beagler are not a group of dummies. They know what constitutes a good run and whether or not they should make second series. That is it exactly. Not one of us left to brace beagling today is an amateur. Mr. Price should have read his December column prior to turning in his November column.
Were not dummies. None of us are. Let me remind you what I said up above: The beagler standing next to you at any trial anywhere in the country has had as much experience following dogs at trials as you yourself have had. The only exceptions to this are those beaglers standing alongside of you who have had more experience.
Some time back, I cannot remember who had said this (my mother tells me I still tell stories) though I vaguely remember this beagler to have been rather successful through the years, beagling both in the north country amongst those contrary Yankees and in the south country, and, he may even have won the trial on that day I listened to him describe what he understood to be his experience of late running dogs at licensed trials: one day of judging the trial is to benefit the club member; one day of judging the trial is to benefit the handlers; one day of judging the trial is for personal paybacks; and one day of the trial is dedicated to good, honest judging.
So it goes. It is our sport.
I plan to trial my dogs with pleasure this coming trial season. I hope to pick the right day of the trial getting there. For sure, brace beagling friends will be there.
A comment that might need verbalizing respecting our brace beagling community: Brace beaglers, the lot of us, are a magically strange folk. We seem so disparate in every consideration. Individually each of us is always more or most right in our judgments and conclusions; or, if I happen not to respect you, not to like the way you look or talk, to think the dog you keep and like overly faulty, etc., of course you verily are the complete pinhead who cannot tell the front end of a dog from the back end. At the same time, I believe were any of us to have a mishap, a vehicle breakdown in any town, in any neighborhood anywhere in the country that a fellow brace beagler lived in or near, that brace beagler when contacted, because you too are a brace beagler, another fool, another pinhead who daily cheerfully feeds and cleans up after dogs, who raises pups in hopes this one pup now at the end of the lead will do better than any pup loved heretofore, that brace beagler would be immediately there to help you. Ours is a strange and good community whose members all get that
By the bye, the other day I heard even old dogs can learn new ways to track a line.
More good news?
Its nearly spring and I havent mentioned GW.