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Dates to remember:
Well what dates now? We have had our AGM, a new committee was installed, lets hope even better than last year. Next dates are the June 1 & 2 shows, double obedience and double Dog jumping. Where are your entries??? June 15 & 16 are our double working trials dates. You all come to train on a Thursday, why not come and see what you are aiming for, contact Gladys or Ilse to find out where the venue is. Bring your dog as you might want to do some training as well, catering will be in the capable hands of Gladys with her helpers.

 
Raena
Have just had an E-mail with the sad news that Ems Wallman has lost her beloved Raena, a wonderful working bitch who entered several times in IPO. Unfortunately Raena had her own thoughts, while competing, when she saw some passing persons. She was a lovely coloured sable bitch and the saying goes that sables do work. It is interesting that many dogs overseas that compete seriously in IPO are sables. WTA members do send their love and hope that your other dogs may help to get over this sad time.

Marlene
One of our members' wives has gone into hospital for an operation. We wish Marlene a speedy recovery. Have heard that the operation is now behind her. Get well soon!

Memories of past achievements
I am running out with these memories, who might know more for this column? What I am doing at the moment is looking at old videotapes Peter and Rosemary made of the various aspects in the dog world. I looked at the World Sieger in 1984 in Manheim. Well you do not really have to go to a show like that if you have the tape, as each top dog gets a great deal coverage on it. There I saw the well know Arminius and Wienerau dogs and many others as well as the Younghund Sieger etc. It is typical that when they do show a dog or bitch, only its father gets mentioned.
To change the scene from the above, there was also a tape about the week's training Johan Gallant came to do here in 1989, organised an exam for 7 assailants and in the end judged the IPO Championship show of the GSD League.
It was an eye opener for me to see it all again and how our dogs worked then and how they are training and working now. I am sure Johan did not have the time to guide us in better ways, time was far too short and he came for passing assailants. Various people came to bring their dogs, which were needed to train the assailants, and I saw young dogs and some more advanced dogs participating. A pity Peter did not comment on the dogs names and handlers, as some I could not remember, but a few to name were Ethel Williams and Jamie and her friend was there too, Jenny with Venus, Rosemary with Amy, Peter with Dingo, Daphne with Jutta, Ilse with Gero [kom jong], Ursula with one of her cockroaches, Gladys with Glen, Gerry with his Sherman and even Ian had a dog to help training the assailants.
The 7 assailants were: John Daffue from Mutare, Kirsten from Bulawayo, Owen and Wade Armand, Ian Grierson and Gerry and one of his security people. On the day of the exam for the assailants, they had to run around the big field at the GSD Club in full gear carrying the arm as well. They then had to work various dogs in the different grades and all these dogs were very happy to oblige for the physical exam, afterwards they had to answer a written questionnaire. All were passed, five as assistant assailant, two were given the full pass of Assailant. It was great to see us all there, much younger and full of serious working. The end of the tape was the IPO Championship with various dogs participating. Particular pleasing as I do not have a Dish to see any other TV Programs but the local station.

Just a little green snake:
Green Garden Grass snakes can be dangerous, Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. A couple in Sweetwater, Texas had a lot of potted plants and, during a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa.

She let out a very loud scream. The husband who was taking a shower ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him in the butt. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he fainted.

 
His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she called an ambulance. The attendants rushed in and loaded him on the stretcher and started carrying him out. About that time the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is in the hospital.

The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But in relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around.

She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa, and the neighbor man seeing her laying there passed out tried to use CPR to revive her. The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping sees her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches. An ambulance was called and it was determined that he required hospitalization.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed he had been bitten by the snake. She went to the kitchen, brought back a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat. By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the two women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake. They called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.

Just then the little snake crawled out from under the couch. One of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table that was on one side of the sofa. The table fell over and the lamp on it shattered and as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes. The other policeman tried to beat out the flames and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog, who startled, jumped up and raced out into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car and set it on fire.

Meanwhile the burning drapes had spread to the walls and the entire house was blazing. Neighbors had called the fire department and the arriving fire-truck had started raising his ladder as they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and put out the electricity and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area.

Time passed - Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was rebuilt, the police acquired a new car, and all was right with their world. About a year later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband asked his wife if she thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

She shot him.