The Jubilee meeting was very well attended with about 90 participants, two evening dinners (Friday’s jubilee and Saturday’s casual dinner and auction), a CE seminar, a JGHV seminar, a Purina seminar, and an HD/OCD/ED talk by VDD’s evaluator Dr. Peter Schunk.

I brought back the 30 Jubilee books that the Chapter membership agreed to buy at the chapter meeting in Elmira. The first batch of these has already been sold at the Colliers Mills training day on June 25th. We'll have some available at upcoming training days, and will let everybody know how to obtain one when we get the chapter's merchandise distribution arm set up.

The Jubilee book costs were about $6,000. With the pre-sales to the Chapters, the 21 ads sold and an unrestricted $2500 grant from Purina, the book paid for itself and earned a $3,000 profit before any additional sales at the meeting or through GNA. The profit will be going into the "Elk Fund". (The Elk Fund was originally set up with the proceeds from the sale of a Wyoming Commissioner's License donated by Roger Green in order to support judge travel to and from Germany.)

The Chapter voting blocs broke down as follows:
AC 150
BRC 165
GLC 117
GPC 159
HLC 106
SEHC 115
WWC 168
Total votes eligible to be cast = 1156

Voting results for the motions proposed to the annual membership meeting:

• The two proposals from the GNA Executive Committee passed unanimously. These were the ROP changes to the vendor and merit awards sections.
• Atlantic Chapter proposals (as modified by the Chapter meeting):
  • Biennial audit amended to audit when position changes hands – defeated, with AC the only yea. Basically the EC was against this due to expense and the fact that we have member auditors, one other chapter thought there was no point in auditing only when the position changed hands.
  • Repeal of geographical restrictions on chapter officers passed. Basically most of the chapters were for it, and most of the EC was not. A corollary motion grew out of the discussion as a quid pro quo for passing it, to require that a candidate for chapter office must have been a chapter member for at least 3 years. That passed with only the Heartland chapter dissenting.
  • Prohibiting simultaneous EC and Chapter positions was not supported at our chapter meeting, and was withdrawn when no other chapters wanted to hear it at the BOD meeting.
  • Bring GNA ROP into compliance with VDD By-Laws by adding back in that members can make motions, not just chapters. This was withdrawn since GNA took steps to address this issue after this motion was submitted.
  • List large payees, amended to a trigger of $1,000 by the chapter meeting, failed with only 2 yea votes at the BOD meeting – me for the AC and Fred as Treasurer. Basically everybody wants to keep their reimbursements private. I should note here that Fred did a couple of really nice reports in keeping with this proposal. He offered to send them to anyone interested and stated to the members that all financial info of the club is publicly available to anybody since we are a non-profit and that he will provide any information that anybody wants.
• The two Heartland proposals to discontinue double entry fees for non-members in VGP and VSwP passed.
• The HL motion to publish OCD and ED clear results was defeated because the Executive Committee said that it constituted a change to the Rules of Procedure, there was controversy over the wording of “newsletter and website” and what that meant because the NL is published on the website, and since the information is already published in the DD Blätter. But Newsletter Editor Larry Houck already has the space reserved in the newsletter for OCD results and is just waiting for results to be submitted to him. So the bottom line is that although the motion was defeated, the results are going to be published in the GNA Newsletter anyway.
• The two GPC and WWC proposals for a breeder association and breeder accreditation were unanimously defeated because they conflict with the VDD breeding regulations. However, a breeder education committee was formed to brainstorm ideas to educate and validate breeders who meet as yet undetermined prerequisites. The committee consists of the GNA Breedwarden, and the chapter chairmen and breedwardens.
• GNA Director of Judge Development Mark Heuer proposed that judge candidates only be reimbursed for out-of-chapter practice judging if they participate during the entire weekend of testing. This was prompted by complaints from test directors and senior judges about people who fly in for a single day and leave as soon as the judging is completed. The motion passed unanimously.

GNA Website - The website committee’s recommendation to accept the bid from Stateless Software ($3,920) to overhaul GNA’s website was accepted. Money has been in the budget for the last two years, but was never used. New webmaster Bethany King will be handling day-to-day management of the site, while Dan Hicks’ Stateless Software will be doing the web design.

2012 Armbruster - Great Plains will host again, but in their “eastern region”. It will probably be in or near Watertown SD.

2012 GNA elections - Chairman Bryon Beaton, Vice-Chairman Ed Carney, and Newsletter Editor Larry Houck announced that they are not going to run for re-election to their positions.

GNA finances - Treasurer Fred Turjan announced that we are conforming very closely to our projected 2011 budget, with the exceptions being that test expenses are up by about $3,000, and VR reimbursements are up by $6,000.

News from the JGHV - Sept 2010 was the end of the first 4-year CE period for VR’s. It turns out that this requirement is not a rolling period based on individual VR participation, but a flat four-year window in which all VR’s must attend at least one CE seminar. So our people who went to a Continuing Education Seminar in 2010 will still have to attend another one before Sept 2014. And, CE attendance is the preferred method of maintaining credentials. One CE per period will allow a VR to judge all tests and test subjects for which he was approved. Presenting a seminar counts as attendance. If test handling is substituted, then a VR can only judge those subjects in which he handled, so to judge all tests a VR would have to handle in VJP, HZP, and VGP, or an HZP with hare track and a VGP. A judge who only handled in VJP would only be able to judge VJP.

Starting in 2012:

• Seminar moderators/presenters will have to be officially trained and recognized by the JGHV. Negotiations are underway for 3 German VR’s to come to the US this fall in order to “train” selected VR’s as presenters.
• The exemption for North American VR’s subscribing to the JGHV magazine has been cancelled. This is a money issue – all German judges are required to subscribe, and GNA's exemption means a loss of revenue for the JGHV. Several possible alternatives have been proposed by JGHV if GNA wants to continue to have our VRs exempted: GNA can start paying for the English translations we need (presumably in addition to the purchase price of the test regulations); GNA can pay for the German VR’s to come over and train our judges as presenters; or, our members can join JGV-USA in addition to GNA (at $40/member). These decisions will be made by the JGHV Presidium in the coming months.

Three new VR’s submitted by GNA on 6/1/11 were rejected because they had no “out-of-group” judging documented. Apparently, approval for our out-of-chapter substitution has been rescinded. GNA's Director of Judge Development, Mark Heuer, learned this just before the meeting. He is going to protest this decision. He will also be sending emails and letters to all judges and judge candidates detailing all of the current information that he has from JGHV.

Special test entry requirements - GNA Director of Testing Mike Talbot has had a couple requests from chapters wanting to know if they could set special entry requirements if they wanted to hold a late-season HZP. The GNA Executive Committee said that the chapters could not decide this themselves, but that the EC could approve such tests. So, basically the door has been opened for chapters to hold “makeup” HZP’s, and set entry requirements such as opening them only to dogs that had previously failed or scored less than “good” in duck search. Mike will accept these requests and approve them on a case-by-case basis.

Posting links to tests of other JGHV clubs on chapter and GNA websites - This was approved by the Board of Directors, with only the Big Rivers Chapter opposed.

Reimbursement of VR’s presenting seminars - The Board of Directors approved reimbursements for seminar presenters in the same manner as judging reimbursements.

Microchipping - This will be a Federal law in Germany, and is supposed to replace tattooing. VDD is campaigning hard to be allowed to continue to tattoo pups, and is also investigating the development of a programmable chip so that the VDD registration number can be used. I’ve heard several different opinions on this about whether or how the chips will be readable here in the US: a couple people say that US readers can’t be used, one person says that some will work, some people say the German scanners are really expensive, another one said that they’re inexpensive. So we’ll just have to wait and see, but in any case everybody says it won’t affect pups born here, only imports.

This is pretty much it for the high points. Let me know if you have any questions or want me to go into anything in more detail.

Nancy Bohs
Chapter Breedwarden
Chapter Representative for the 2011 Annual General Meeting

< Back