 What's in a report?
While reports may not seem to be very detailed, in actuality they really are quite comprehensive. A Hunt Report, for instance, contains almost every essential piece of information that is required to keep accurate and precise records of every Beagle Hunt throughout any given year. A typical report that is filled out and completed properly would contain the following information: name and signature of the event official for each day; names and signatures of two other club officers; total number of dogs in each category; and, of course, the name of each dog that placed in the event, along with its UKC number and the owner’s personal information. From this relatively small, but very important bit of information, we can not only process your club’s Hunt Reports, we can also catch errors that are made. This is where you come in.
In order for us to do our job well, and record the results of your hunt accurately, we need you to do the same. In a lot of cases we can catch the mistakes, though it is not always possible. We need you to record your club’s hunt results accurately. After a long day that has the potential to contain several rounds of competition, it is no doubt the last thing on the mind of most of the competitors. This is when the event officials and club officers need to take those extra couple of minutes and make sure that all the details of the results and winners’ information have been recorded on the Hunt Report fully and correctly. When they are not, the event participants at your club are usually the ones that end up frustrated. This can be for any number of reasons, a big one being that the Championship degree they have been expecting in the mail never shows up because the club did not record the number of dogs in each category correctly, or only had two signatures on the Hunt Report. Whenever an event official or club officer leaves out either of those two valuable pieces of information, we hold the report and will not process it until we have acquired all of the information.
Reports that are missing the required information go into a problem basket and stay there until we have all of the necessary information. This process, simply put, is a waste of time and can be avoided. In order to get the required information, we have to write a letter and send it to either the event official or the Corresponding Officer of the club, and sometimes both. Then upon receiving the letter they have to respond in writing with the missing signature or information to us.
If we don’t hear from the club or event official in writing, we then wait an allotted number of days and write to them again, requesting the same information over again. This process can be repeated a third and final time, at which point, if no response is received, we are forced to put a block on the host club. Once that happens, we will not confirm any more events for the club until they resolve the issue. Meanwhile the winners from the “problem report” are getting frustrated because their dog’s placement or win from that event is not showing up on their dog’s win record at UKC. Quite frankly, they have a reason to be agitated about the club’s failure to follow through with sending in a completed report. It’s really not that difficult in the big picture of things to take those extra couple of minutes at the end of the day to make sure that it’s done right.
Since we have covered most of the details that pertain to the standard Hunt Report, let’s take a quick look at the State Race and Total Dog report. This report also contains valuable information that is required to keep accurate records of State Race and Total Dog points every year. We commonly see several different things on these that either are filled out incorrectly or not filled out at all. Once again, when that happens we have to put a hold on the report until the situation can be resolved in writing. That, as we talked about above, is a waste of time and can be frustrating to the owners of those placing dogs.
In order for any dog to receive State Race points they must have competition and must be plus-point cast winners. If there is no competition in any given class, or no plus-point cast winners, then there will not be any points awarded for that class. Additionally, in order for any second place State Race points to be awarded in any category, there must be at least two plus-point cast winners.
Some of the most common mistakes that we see on the State Race Reports are in relation to one of the above mentioned rules not being followed. It’s usually either that the dog is not listed on the form for second through fourth place, and should have been because he won his first round cast with plus points, or dogs are listed for second through fourth place but there were not enough dogs to make up the casts required for all of them to be plus-point cast winners.
Another common hold-up is the lack of signatures, and illegible writing. Just a little extra attention to the details of these forms at the end of a long day can save so much time for the clubs, UKC and the owners of those dogs involved. In reality, it’s as simple as that when it comes to reports and making things easy on everyone involved. If you serve as the event official at your club, or are a club officer, then please take the extra time to make sure they are filled out right. If you do, I can assure you that it will save you time in the end.
If you have a question or a scenario that you would like to see covered in Full Circle please send it in writing to Beagle Field Operations or e-mail to Jed Nichols at jnichols@ukcdogs.com
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