As a spectator and support crew member to Belle and a handler of Tres who Eliminated his way thru the Pre-trial and side runs, I want to echo that the Springfield location was great and NADAC did a great job with this event.
Every morning of Champs I ate breakfast at the food concession, it was a great way to start my day with a breakfast sandwich or breakfast burrito or a breakfast platter. All were good. I couldn't believe the size of the Texas "pork" tenderloin when I tried that one day for lunch.
As a pop up trailer camper without a bathroom, a walkable distance to flush toilets and warm hot showers was so much nicer than the porta johns of Sunbury.
When I watched LeeAnn unpack her swag bag I was blown away, a nice cooler for future trials, personalized mini jump bar, personalized magnet, snacks and so much more.
I went back and forth on whether I should sponsor my normal Beagle bar knowing it was going to go to Belle but it normally only applies to one Beagle every year, so when LeeAnn received it, I was impressed with it and it had my name and "in honor of Dino" applied to it. So nicely made and brought a tear to my eye remembering the beagle that led me to NADAC.
A special big THANKS to the judges and crew that manned the side runs out at the pavilion. They were out there all day in the cool Ohio weather judging all dogs, setting all the bars and building all the courses mostly on their own. Although Tres was a zoomie fool for those side runs, he always came back to me and got leashed up and certainly had fun.
Stop reading here if you only want positive.
On Thursday I was a bar setter in Pre-Elite, I enjoyed the morning session. When I showed up to do the afternoon session as I entered the ring a woman asked to talk to the bar setters and told us that we should be sure to set the bars so the writing was good for photographers, and I respond curtly "I'm not worrying about that" and went out to my seat. As I sat down I realized in the morning that the bars had no writing on them. I was half way through the afternoon session when I realized the bar did have NADAC Champs 2019 on it. BUT is was green on purple and you couldn't see it from a few feet away. In the future I highly suggest going back to bars like in Sunbury where it was a white bar with black NADAC Champs 2017 on it. In Belle's 2019 photos I can't see the writing, green on purple does not show up!
The Pre-Trial at Springfield was not as pleasant an experience as in Sunbury. Chris had told all to prioritize the Gamblers and Chances run in regards to conflict but then this made the Touch and Go ring a weird show up and run. The run order was not followed, dogs were lined up at times 10 dogs deep. The TnG should have been run in order and if you missed your run perhaps the order should have then had some empty blocks to write in your dog or those dogs should have come back after all dogs in run order had run. For those handlers with dogs that did not want to wait 10 deep it was extremely hard to estimate when you should show up to run your dog based on an order that was not followed.
