I just received my Purina "Today's Breeder" magazine, and it has a great article about the new Center. I encourage everyone to read it, it is certainly filling up already with future events, and quickly. The Golden Retriever Club of America plans to hold their 2012 National Specialty at the new facility. (a weeklong event just like ours) Their last National (2000) at Purina was an outdoor venue and they had more than 2000 entries. (They also do tracking and have field trial events, and had that at nearby locations). The reason I'm mentioning this is, if they can hold a weeklong event with over 2000 entries, I would think that the GSDCA should certainly look at this. They do all the obedience, rally etc. that we do, along with the tracking. The only difference would be field trial vs. herding, and I believe that Purina would be able to handle our herding needs or perhaps use the wonderful herding farm that was used at the last National in St. Louis. Now believe me, Topeka is a lot closer to me than St. Louis, but there are several reasons I think our organization should look long at hard considering this wonderful opportunity. First and foremost, this facility is build with with one thing in mind, DOGS!!!! Not horse competitions, cattle shows or other livestock venues, but dogs. How much better can this get????? Second, Purina has been a HUGE sponsor for our organization for years. I kind of scratch my head when something seems so obvious and is not being considered. Is it not being able to see the forest for the trees? I'm not trying to be disrespectful here, I'm just really tyring to make sense out of it. It's like the big corporations that loose sight of the real issues at hand. Hopefully our board is planning on at least considering this awesome facility and we just don't know it's in the plans. If they are not, I hope there are board members that are reading these posts and will reconsider. As has been posted a couple of times now, at the MW Futurity there will be a walk thru for this new facility, I hope those attending will take the time and advantage to see all this in person. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Chris Chris S. (Jolley) Kimerer www.tanbarkgsd.com Ch. Trotwood's Emerald v Tanbark Joelle Aramist AOE Sel.Ex.Ch.Carousel Farms Samantha, PT, TC OFA H/E Ch. CaralonQED JD Drew Bleibtreu, RN OFA H/E ============================================================================ POST is Copyrighted 2009. All material remains the property of the original author and of GSD Communication, Inc. NO REPRODUCTIONS or FORWARDS of any kind are permitted without prior permission of the original author AND of the Showgsd-l Management. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL PERSONS ARE ON NOTICE THAT THE FORWARDING, REPRODUCTION OR USE IN ANY MANNER OF ANY MATERIAL WHICH APPEARS ON SHOWGSD-L WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF ALL PARTIES TO THE POST AND THE LIST MANAGEMENT IS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN, AND IS A VIOLATION OF LAW. VIOLATORS OF THIS PROHIBITION WILL BE PROSECUTED. For assistance, please contact the List Management at admin@xxxxxxxxxxxx VISIT OUR WEBSITE - http://showgsd.org NATIONAL BLOG - http://gsdnational.blogspot.com/ ============================================================================