Revisions to Elite Shed Dog Series Rulebook

Changes effective May 15, 2023

May 11, 2023

Source: Domenick Muoio
Job Title: Field Trial & Hunt Test Program Manager
Email: dmuoio@ukcdogs.com

We are excited about all the growth and progress in this sport and with growth comes the need for rule changes and clarifications. This year, the rule clarifications are short and sweet, and are mainly clarifications on the interpretation of existing rules or restructuring to ensure clarity! These revisions will take effect May 15, 2023.

New rules

Running rules that apply to all Classes:

• No cell phones or electronic devices carried by competitor allowed on the course for any ESDS event.
• Video recording of runs forbidden for any ESD event

Both of these rules have been an understanding in the sport for some time and were held as a standard by many clubs, but were not in the current version of the rulebook, so they have been added. We want to ensure fairness in the sport, and preventing video recording or GPS recording of runs helps to maintain this. Judges, be sure to check with competitors as they come to the line and folks in the gallery be sure to remind others if you notice them recording official runs.

Champion and elite class rules:

• No physical contact can be made with your dog to aid or assist in the run.

With Champion class being the highest level of competition, we want to ensure competitors are performing at the same standard which should require less handler intervention during runs as compared to working. This rule was initiated by judges noticing an increate in some handlers in the champion class grabbing collars, ears, ect and pushing dogs in certain directions or using them to regain control of a dog during the delivery. It will be at the discretion of the judges as to what constitutes assisting in the run so if you have questions about if an aspect of your handling is questionable, bring it up during the handlers meeting to ensure you and the judge are on the same page.

Host/ Club information:

• 19) A host club should have adequate ground to host an event. (Adequate ground is defined as enough space for working and champion to be run on separate courses)

With the growth in clubs booming, we also want to ensure there is a standard for events that does not skew results. Ensuring clubs have enough space for events means that the dogs should be able to see some changes in the courses over the duration of the event other than just changing plants on one course and dogs seeing the same 50 to 100 yard block for two or three days in a row.

Changes:

Judge requirements:

• 10) Judges/Planters are permitted to run a dog provided there is another licensed Judge or Planter in attendance who can take over their responsibility.
  • a) A Judge/Planter handling his/her own dog must be the first to run on any course they will be judging thereby prohibiting them from running a female in season.
  • b) A Judge may not judge his or her own dog even if it is being handled by someone else.
  • c) Judges/Planters cannot run more than 2 dogs in the class they are judging/planting.

Rule 10 used to read like a paragraph, so to ensure clarity we have broken it up into sub-sections. You will also notice section C is new to this rule. Since judge/planter dogs run first, we wanted to ensure that there were not an extreme number of dogs being run before other competitors could take the course.

Host/ Club information:

• 10) An event must have a minimum of 35 dogs per flight across all classes before closing the event prior to the entry deadline. New clubs may request a lower limit for their inaugural event.

You will see the boldfaced sections are the changes to this rule. We have recently gathered data on events and found that even on the shortest days of the year, clubs have been able to run through as many as 50 dogs in a class. When the minimum was 20, we noticed many events still filling up quickly. This inadvertently left little room for some of our newer competitors to get into events and limited the competition for dogs. In order to ensure opportunity and fairness, we have bumped up this minimum. For clarification, an event can still be held if it does not meet the minimum, this only affects an events ability to close entries before the entry deadline. We also recognize that the thought of the possibility of 70 dogs for a brand-new club could be daunting. Because of this, if a new club would like to request a lower limit for their first event to get new apprentices in and get their feet under them, we will examine each request and may approve a lower limit depending on the circumstances.

• 11) Host/club may set an entry limit per class and entry limit per handler.

Removed "overall entry limit," which was redundant and added some confusion.

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