To Our Obedience Trial Exhibitors:
This is an unprecedented event in our nation and our club and as such we want to do our very best for all exhibitors within our abilities and resources. First, we are all aware of the AKC rules that exhibitors agree to when they sign their entry form. The rule states ” if because of riots, civil disturbances or other acts beyond the control of the management it is impossible to open or complete the show, no refund of Entry fees will be made”. This is printed in our premium list as it is in most clubs.
However, we don’t want things to end with that – we are not that kind of a club! We feel our exhibitors deserve an explanation of what has transpired and what we would like to do to reach out in fairness to all our exhibitors. Please know that we are human too and we are doing our best at a difficult time for us all. We are a volunteer organization with each of us dealing with our own private issues during this trying time. We profusely apologize for the delay in getting this statement out to our exhibitors.
Let us try to explain what has been going on. In March the governor of Pennsylvania closed the farm Show down for the entire month of March. The presidents of the Blue and Gray cluster were proactive and cancelled our conformation shows. This show financially supports the Mason and Dixon Kennel Club for the entire year. Since entries had not closed yet all fees were refunded including the vendor fees. We are still working on getting refunds from all the contracts we have made with various businesses in the area to run the show. We will have to pay for services that have already been rendered so instead of having a profit from the show we will operate at a loss.
We tried our best to hold the obedience trial with concerns of safety for participants. This was taken out of our hands by the state of Maryland when the Ag Center was closed.
To date the expenses for this obedience trial total $3976.60 this includes the Rau fees, AKC fees, trophies and the banner update. We think there are some other expenses also. These are expenses for services already rendered so no refund can be received by the club.
Our classes have also been postponed even though we don’t make a large profit off of them we have absolutely no income coming in this year but continue to have bills to pay. Therefore after much thought about what could be done we decided not to refund obedience entries at this time.
We do want to help our exhibitors and here are some of our ideas. We welcome other positive suggestions
Some of our ideas are to have a grand opening when we can resume our dog life . We are thinking of having agility run-throughs, practice sessions in obedience, sniff and goes, show and goes, and rally practices, anything that we can come up with that are exhibitors may like. These would be offered free of charge to our exhibitors. We could also offer discounts to any of our obedience exhibitors who would like to take any of our new classes. We have been asked if we could rent out our building to individuals to use for practice for obedience. We are not allowed to do this because of our arrangement with the Ag Center, however, we could have a club event where time slots are available. This would be no charge to the trial exhibitors. Please share with us your ideas – we are very open to constructive, positive recommendations.
Please know that the cancelling of the Trial was not made by Rau Dog Shows but because of our local situation. Please don’t blame them or contact them about this decision. I’m sure you can imagine Rau as been overwhelmed with all of the shows canceling and their business has also been closed. They have been great to work with, especially under these circumstances.
We’re trying to think of as many ideas as we can to make this a positive experience for everyone. again we apologize for the delay in this statement.