Cartoon by John Wilkins of Maclean & Co.
1 April 2007
Happy 10th Anniversary to the Beardie Agility Diehards! We have grown from 33 members and 38 Beardies in 1997 to 220 members and 332 Beardies in 2007.
Our Beardie Agility On-Line Group started on March 14, 1997. It grew out of the search for our NADAC and USDAA Beardies. In the process, many of those I contacted felt that they would like to be in touch with one another. There was such interest, that we wanted to form our own group identity as Beardie Agility Enthusiasts.
Within a week we held a contest to "Name That Line." On March 18 Karen Drummond suggested BAD as our name and Gretchen Blackburn improvised on the theme with about 20 possible ways to define ourselves. We loved the acronym and decided to call ourselves BEARDIE AGILITY DIEHARDS. We adoped the name and began our BAD lives on 1 April 1997. It seems very apt that April Fools' Day is our Name Day! Gretchen then offered to design us a Logo, which is what greets you on the BAD Home Page.
Though we are international in our scope, we work closely with the BCCA Agility Committee and Awards Chair. We also send in Agility Stories and Statistics to the BCCA Bulletin, where we receive great support for our activities from Lillian Esposito, the editor.
In September of 1997 we unveiled our Logo at the National Specialty by sporting our new BAD T-shirts, designed, printed, and distributed by Gretchen "the Grape" Blackburn, who will be forever christened in our minds by the grape juice which purpled her from head to foot after our Specialty Grape Stomp. Also at the Specialty I met with Karen Norteman of Sun Microsystems who who designed this incredible Website for us before turning it over to me as "my life's work!"
The BAD Website was launched on 1 January 1998. Currently 475 Agility Beardies are hosted on the BAD Website. Of these 280 are BAD Beardies from the USA and Canada and 52 are BAD Beardies from Abroad. We enjoy learning from our International members.
Since we premiered our Website, we have received several "star site" awards:
Mary Jo Sminkey of the Dog Agility Page-On 1 January 1998, after only 12 hours on the Web, we received the following message from Mary Jo Sminkey: "I love it! What a great site, you should be very proud! Right now I have it marked with a "New" icon so people will know it's a new page, but it will get a Star once the New icon comes off. Which also qualifies you to display the Dogpatch Star Site award, which is attached to this message. Congrats on your first site award, you deserve it!"
Bud Houston of Clean Run--"I've found the coolest agility web site in cyberspace. You MUST go check it out!" "You have a great web site. I hope more performance dog sites approach their web presence with such creativity and humor. . . . I've known for a long time that Beardies are quite special. I had an agility student about ten year ago with a Beardie that weaved so very fast, and learned to do so in only about two weeks. In those days we didn't realize how fast weave poles could be done. But these days when I train my dog I train for the performance of that Beardie so many years ago. I'm waiting for one of this breed to take it all in national competition." (Which Leslie Dawson-North did in 1998 at the AKC Nationals with Chase!)
Sandi Dremel of the Dog Infomat--"BAD was founded by Libby Myers-Buhite, out of a desire to network Beardie people who were active in agility. While geared toward Beardie owners and enthusiasts, the site provides a nice model for other clubs and organizations who may want to develop user friendly and informative websites. 3 Stars."
Our BAD Website won first place at the 1999 BCCA Nationals both from the Specialty Website Judge, Scott Gormley, and in Peoples' Choice. Many thanks to Karen Norteman who designed the prototype and Gretchen Blackburn for our outstanding Logo! Scott Gormley, Art Director of Internet World, a weekly publication devoted to news of the Internet computer community, judged the site from New York City. Before he assumed the Art Director's position in 1997, Scott worked as a Special Editor/Graphic Designer for Gannett Suburban Newspapers, and was Acting Assistant Art Director for USA Weekend.
Since the 1999 Specialty in Olympia Washington, we have held annual BAD Awards dinners to honor the accomplishments of our BAD Members.
BAD continues to be an on-line group, On 13 January 2000 we started an E-mail List for the Beardie Agility Diehards (both for dues paying members and affiliate members). This is hosted by Yahoo, which currently is the server for the Beardie Line, the Herding Line, and various other Beardie interest groups. I am the List Administrator for the Beardie Agility Diehard E-mail list. I am inviting all the Diehards to join this list for our Diehard discussions. On the whole, our correspondence is focused on Agility, such as experiences in competition, brags, new titles, and questions and discussion about training and equipment.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BeardieAgility/join
Since the 2002 National Specialty in Monterey, California we have presented the Diehard Trophy each year at the annual BCCA Awards dinner to the agility Beardie with the highest accomplishments in AKC agility for the previous year.
We are known to several of the AKC Reps and to USDAA, NADAC, and CPE, who are now very aware of and appreciative of our Agility Beardies.
Over the last ten years I have really enjoyed coming to know so many of you and look forward to many more years of being BAD!
Founder of BAD
Bearded Collie Club of America Agility Co-Chair
Northern California Bearded Collie Fanciers, Agility Chair
AKC National Agility Championships 2005
AKC National Agility Championships 2004
AKC National Agility Championships 2003
AKC National Agility Championships 2002
AKC National Agility Championships 2001
AKC National Agility Championships 2000
AKC National Agility Championships 1998
AKC National Agility Championships 1997
BCCA Agility Awards - 2005
BCCA Agility Awards - 2004
BCCA Agility Awards - 2003
BCCA Agility Awards - 2002
BCCA Agility Awards - 2001
BCCA Agility Awards - 2000
BCCA Agility Awards - 1999
BCCA Agility Awards - 1998
BCCA Agility Awards - 1997
BCCA Agility Awards - 1996
