EDUCATIONAL DAY
HELD BY
THE SOUTH EASTERN WELSH SPRINGER SPANIEL CLUB
AND
THE
SOUTHERN ENGLISH SPRINGER SPANIEL SOCIETY
9TH
OCTOBER 2011
The idea of this joint day began way back
in July 2010 following a discussion at the SESSS Open Show. Over the next year or so a number of meetings
were held between representatives of both Clubs and a Joint Educational Day was
born.
This was finally held on 9th
October 2011 at New Haw in Surrey with 32 Students in attendance and a number
of spectators. The day began with
‘presentations’ by Steve Pick for the Welsh Springer Spaniels and Anne Corbett for
the English Springer Spaniels, some use of acetates showing outline profiles of
the WSS were very interesting and initiated a lot of discussion, particularly
with regard to toplines. Anne kindly brought her top winning dogs so
that the students and spectators had a chance to see the ‘very best’ of the
ESS.
A lovely lunch was provided by a
combination of both Clubs, and the banoffee pie and
lime cheesecake were particularly wonderful (thank you
SESSS!).
The afternoon was for the Students
although the spectators were able to stay to watch if they wished. Four WSS and four ESS were available for the
students to go over and write down their comments on the sheet provided, these were purely for their own use and not
broadcast at all. The dogs all behaved
impeccably although they must have been very tired with so many going over
them, waggy tails were in abundance, which was good
to see. Following on from this the two speakers gave their own impressions of
the dogs so that students could compare with their own views, and a couple of
the dogs were moved up and down outside for the benefit of the students.
After this the students were able to sit
the examinations, it was completely up to them whether they took just one
breed, or both, or none – good luck if you tried both!! The examination was
purely on the Breed Standard and with the many similarities between the breeds I am sure those who chose to do both, may have become
somewhat confused! The results of these
examinations will be posted to the Students within a couple of weeks.
Whilst this was going on we took
photographs of the males and females in both breeds
together so that the differences can be easily seen, see gallery for these
and also other photos taken on the day.
From the feedback received it would
appear that the day was a great success and it is possible that we may run
something similar at some stage in the future.
Julie Revill
Secretary
SEWSSC