The dates and place are set for the 2008 National Field Trial. Festivities begin on Thursday, March 27 th 2008 as judges and workers arrive at the Clinton House in Clinton, S. C. The annual meeting for the BSS will begin at 4:00 pm in the board room of the Clinton House. For those members arriving early enough on Thursday, please plan on attending the annual board meeting. This is a great chance to meet your board members and to see how board business is conducted.

We will also have a presentation on Thursday evening by Dr. Mark Neff of_UCDAVIS SVM Veterinary Genetics Laboratory who will be giving us an update on their research into the Spaniel family tree, based in part on DNA samples taken from our Boykins at the 2007 Nationals. We will try to set up early on Thursday to check in handlers arriving that day hopefully eliminating the long line on Friday morning. I can’t promise that the handler’s bags will be ready for pickup on Thursday as we usually use this time to get them ready for Friday morning. Also, if you have an auction item to be donated please give it to one of the committee members on that evening.

Remember, all tests begin on FRIDAY morning. We will again utilize staggered starting times for each stake, with Novice beginning at 8:00 am, followed by Puppy, then Intermediate and finally Open. Please note that the Novice class will be closed out at 70 entries. We will again ask handlers participating in more than one class to report to Novice first, sign up to run early then move promptly to your next class. This seemed to work well last year. We will have communications between Marshalls at each stake so that the progress of each stake can be monitored and handlers can be notified that they are needed at another stake. Testing for each class may be cut off at or around 5:30 PM on Friday and will resume first thing Saturday morning. The reason for this is to give everyone, especially our judges, ample time to clean up and relax at the Banquet on Friday night. Please remember that our judges don’t get paid and are voluntarily giving up a long weekend to give us their best effort at judging our wonderful little brown dogs. In return they get a small gift and their expenses taken care of, that’s it. Let’s try to let them know how much we appreciate them.

This will be an action packed weekend with something for everyone. We will once again have the Duck Dog shootout, hot dog retrieve, Children’s Handling Stake and of course the ever popular Natural Ability stake. You may sign up for Natural Ability and the other fun stakes at the door, however please pre-register for the Roustabout on Sunday as we will need to order birds for this. We may take limited walk up entries for the Roustabout depending on the availability of birds. We have also reinstated the Confirmation Class this year for all of you who may be interested in how your dog measures against the standard.

Don’t forget to register for the Banquet in advance so that we can order the amount of food needed. Even though we always plan for a few extra we would like to have an accurate count for the caterer. We almost got in big trouble last year as I really thought we had oversold banquet tickets. Luckily the caterer, Don Odom, planned better than I did!!! Remember that our 2008 Gun of the Year will be given away at this event. Tickets are available for $50 each and only 300 will be sold. The gun this year is a L.C Smith 20 gauge side by side engraved by Rex Pedersen with metal and stock work by Steve Downes. This is the fourth in our Gun of the Year Series. Please contact the BSS office or any of your directors to purchase tickets. Last year they were all sold by the end of the first day of the event.

We are recommending the same motel as last year as they seemed to be very dog friendly. The Comfort Inn is located at exit #52 off of I-26 and is only a few miles from the Clinton House. You may make reservations by calling 864-833-5558 (Mention the Boykin Spaniel Society for a special rate). Directions to the Clinton House may be found on the BSS web site as well as the Clinton House site at www.ClintonHouse.com. There are a very limited number of camp sites available at the Clinton House. Please call Bill Crites at 803-730-7198 if you wish to reserve a spot. These will be on a first come, first served basis.

We are really looking forward to seeing old friends and making lots of new friends this year. So, come, enjoy and good luck to everyone.