January 2003 Secretarys Report

This report details the day to day activities of the ASCA Board of Directors and includes issues brought before the ASCA Board and communications done by mail, fax, e-mail and/or phone.

January 1 - 31, 2003

Re: 98:02 MVA COMMITTE - EVALUATION SHEET- REVISED 
Motion by Warren.
I move to accept the following MVA recommendation:
Add to the top of the Conformation Evaluation Score Sheet a box to indicate the dog or bitch entered is Altered.
COMMENT: This was a specific request by the 2002 MVA Conformation Evaluation judge. The information is easily added and does not affect any other data with regard to the evaluation.
Judge's  COMMENTS:  "I, basically, started my evaluation when the dog was walking up into position to stand for the evaluation. At that point I like to ask myself "does he/she look masculine/feminine" - which the breed standard says should be "well defined"(page 15 under "General Appearance"). I found myself checking the top of the evaluation paper sometimes to make sure, before I had my hands on the animal, to see if it was a male or female. A dog (especially) may not look as masculine when neutered."

VOTING FOR: Lori Acierto, Terry Tomascik, Beth MacLehose, Anne Shope, Andrea Hoffman, Monica Barger, Allison Bryant  VOTING AGAINST: Sandra Case, Dee Dee Baldwin NOT VOTING: Sandra Katzen, Chris Davies, Renee Reschenthaler

Board voting: Approve: Unanimous. Motion is approved.

Re: 98:02 MVA COMMITTEE - PARTICIPATION RIBBONS SEC. 4 
Motion by Warren.
I move to accept the following MVA recommendation: Add to Section 4 under MVA Rules: (** and bold is the change**)

4.  All entrants shall be presented with a participant ribbon during the conformation evaluation. **The participant ribbon at Nationals is to be given immediately upon completion of the individual conformation evaluation.  Immediately thereafter the participant may be allowed to leave the ring.** All entrants who successfully earned qualifying scores in the conformation evaluation, Stockdog trials and obedience and/or agility and/or tracking events as required by these rules shall be presented with a qualifying strip ribbon at the MVA awards presentation with the top ten qualifiers receiving placement ribbons.

COMMENT: Feedback from many of the MVA competitors indicated that doing MVA in groups and handing out the participant ribbon in a group setting was costly in time. The evaluation takes approximately six to seven minutes to do but if done in a group setting can cost a contestant 36 to 60+ minutes.  Handing out the participant ribbon immediately following the individual evaluation allows the contestant to leave the ring, thus alleviating many ring conflicts. The motion is specific to Nationals MVA competition only.

VOTING FOR: Sandy Case, Beth MacLehose, Lori Acierto, Anne Shope, Chris Davies, Renee Reschenthaler, Monica Barger, Allison Bryant, Terry Tomascik  VOTING AGAINST: Dee Dee Baldwin NOT VOTING: Sandra Katzen, Andrea Hoffman

Board voting:  Approve: Unanimous. Motion is approved.

Re: 93:17 STOCK DOG RULES - Greater Swiss Mountain Dog 
Motion by Warren
I move to accept the following recommendation from the SDC to add the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog to the breeds eligible to compete in the ASCA Stockdog  Trials.
Motion by Marc Bailie (10-19-2002), 2nd by Dana MacKenzie (11-1-2002)
RE:  To add the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog to the ASCA Approved Herding Breeds List, Appendix 1 of the Stockdog Rulebook. 

Voting Results:  APPROVED (9) - Schvaneveldt, Mahoney, Myrick, Robinson,
Simmons, Kelly, Vest, Davies, Moe DISAPPROVED (3) - Walker, Baker, Harris

Approved Comments: 1. other breeds of similar herding history have been added to the list  previously, 2. the GSMD has some history of herding/droving in the breed, 3.  breeds that are similar have been found to be kind to  their stock and willing to accept training

Disapproved comments: 1. Is not a working dog that is felt to be safe for our program, 2. shouldn't jeopardize our program considering the animal activist issues that we have today,  3. their history does not describe them as "primarily a herding breed" but instead as a "guardian dog"

Board voting: Approve: Gray, Hollen, Walter, DeChant, Aufox & Berryessa. Disapprove:  Hellmeister, Warren & Davenport. Motion is approved.

Re: 90:38 AGILITY COMMITTEE - Ch. 8 

Motion by Hellmeister

I move to accept the attached recommendation of the Agility committee. For your information you will find a comment from the chair Marj Vincent below as well as a letter of dissent attached to this email.

Moved by Pam Kaye and seconded by Marj Vincent

Judging and Scoring the Agility Finals

The Agility Committee recommends to the Board that the current wording of Chapter 8, Section 6 in the Agility Rulebook be deleted and the new wording for Section 6 below be inserted into the June 2003 rulebook.

Section 6 Judging and Scoring
1.  One judge will be used to judge all four rounds of each division of the agility finals.  This judge may be the same judge that judges the Agility Nationals Trial.  The courses for the finals shall not be the same as the ones used for the National Trial.

2.  Each division will be scored separately. A champion from each division will be awarded (ASCA Standard Agility Champion, ASCA Veteran Agility Champion, and ASCA Junior Agility Champion). There will be four rounds used to determine the champions of each division. One Jumpers, one Gamblers and two Regular rounds will be used.  All Finals qualifiers will compete in all four rounds.

3.  Dogs entered in the Veteran and Junior divisions will jump at their appropriate jump height in Regular, Jumpers and Gamblers, which will be one height lower than their standard division jump height would be. All dogs entered in the Standard Agility division will jump their Standard division jump height.

4.  There will be a Standard Course Time set by the judge for each division. All Standard division dogs, regardless of jump height, will use the Large Dog Standard Course Time. The Veteran and Junior division dogs, regardless of height, will use the Large Dog Veteran/Junior Course Time.  For Gamblers, all dogs, regardless of jump height or division will have 40 seconds for their opening sequence time. The closing sequence "gamble" time will be set by the judge. All Standard division gamble dogs will use Standard division large dog gamble time and all Veteran and Junior division dogs will use Veteran division large dog gamble time. In the Gamblers class the Junior handlers will run in the Junior division for the Finals.

5.  Faults will be assessed in accordance with the current ASCA program rules for agility.

6.  Determination of Agility Champions

Each faultless qualifying run in Regular, Gamblers and Jumpers will be given seven  (7) "Q" points. Each faulted  (.01 to 5 faults) qualifying run in Regular agility will be given one-half the value of the "Q" points, or 3.5 "Q" points. Dogs in each division will be ranked by the most Q points, then if necessary, by the further ranking procedures below.

A) Rankings for ASCA Agility Champions:

1.   First, sort by number of "Q" points (a faulted Regular Agility Q counts one-  half)

2.   Then sort by each dog's total of the number of dogs beaten.(Placement    points)  For example, if twenty dogs are entered in a class such as    Jumpers, the first place dog would receive 19 placements points (in other   words, beat 19 dogs), the second place dog would receive 18 placement   points, the third place dog would receive 17 placement points, etc.  Dogs   that are eliminated or are scratched receive zero placement points, but   still count as dogs defeated.

 3. Then sort by the most points in Gamblers.

 4. Then sort by Jumpers. First rank the dogs by considering whether the dog  qualified and then by the dog's run time.

7.  The Jumpers class will run first, followed by the Gamblers class and then by the two Regular Classes. In each class, all Standard dogs run first, then Veterans, then Juniors. Jumpers will be run according to random draw within each division, drawing first for the order of jump heights, and then for the order of dogs within each height.  Each subsequent class will be run in reverse order of placement based on cumulative scores within each division, with the exception of bitches in heat, who will run last in each class.

8. Scores will be posted when they are available. It is required that two different people NOT entered in the finals check the computation of the scores before they are posted.

9. Qualifying scores will not be applied towards ASCA certifications, the Agility Merit program or the Agility Finals program.

Committee vote: Approved:  Pete Dolan, Marj Vincent, Pam Kaye, Annelise Allan, Jean Janotta, Shelly Malan, Judy Boone Opposed:  Ron Schumann, Allison Bryant

Abstain: Lynne Fickett and Sue Graham  Motion is Approved.

Committee comments about this motion:

The Committee carefully reviewed the results of the 2002 Agility Finals and came to the conclusion that while there was no debate about the dog declared the winner under the rules used to judge the 2002 Agility Finals, a substantial majority of the Committee believed there were flaws in the system used to rank the dogs below the winning dog.

The Committees proposed system is based on Qs (Qualifying Scores), a concept strongly embraced by the Agility competitors. The ranking of dogs with an equal number of Qs (Qualifying Scores) is based on the number of dogs beaten, which is based upon the dogs speed and accuracy as performed in each class, a fundamental concept also embraced by the Agility competitors.

The Committee carefully looked at several alternative systems proposed by the Committee members. Each system was separately evaluated by inserting the 2002 Finals data into it or creating new data and carefully scrutinizing the results. Except for the above system, all other proposed scoring systems were discarded due to the serious flaws found in the results.

The Qualifying Scores in the Finals are not counted towards titles or towards standings because it does not seem fair to give an advantage to these dogs for future standings based on the fact that they were selected for the current Finals. In terms of each new year, all dogs should be on the same footing for an opportunity to earn qualifying scores for the entrance to the next years Finals. 

The Committee is putting forward what they believe to be the best scoring system proposed to date for scoring the Agility Finals and they heartily embrace it and recommend the Board to pass it.

In opposition to the Motion:  Allison Bryant wrote:
I vote no on this motion.  My letter of dissent is below and I would like it to be included with the motion if it passes and goes to the board.

I believe that this motion, in particular section #6, determination of agility champions, is not the ideal way of determining which dog is the agility champion.

My reasons are:  1. No other organization uses a 'number of dogs beaten' method to reward points for a class.  All other organizations use faults and time as a way of ranking the performances of the dogs.  This would be comparable to deciding which dog was High Combined Stockdog for the national trial by looking at how many dogs he beat, NOT his actual scores received for each class.  2. By using 'number of dogs beaten' the quality of the runs are not taken into account.  By this, I mean, if one dog beats the rest of the pack by a large margin, this is not taken into account.  He simply gets credit for being first place.  It doesn't matter if the dog is in first place by .01 seconds or 10.  While this may not seem like a big deal, it is when you have to figure the best dog over four classes.  3.  The committee had a good alternative solution that incorporated qualifying scores and faults and time in the determination of the champion.  This system rewarded dogs that qualified (which the committee thought was important) but in addition; it used the dog's faults and times to further rank the dogs.  For some reason it was abandoned.
4.  There was the argument that this system should be used because it is used to determine HIT for the National Agility trial. However, it must be pointed out that the HIT for the nationals has the unique problem of determining a HIT from different levels of competition.  So it is very difficult to compare faults and time when the dogs are at two different levels (and therefore different courses and different difficulty levels.)  For this reason, the 'number of dogs beaten method' was chosen to determine HIT at the National Agility Trial.

However, we do not have that same issue with the finals.  All the dogs are competing at the same level and in the same four classes.  So we have the luxury of being able to compare them head to head.
5.  The number of dogs beaten is more prone to having tie breakers.  There are several levels of tie breakers that must be used to determine the rankings.  It is rather arbitrary. If you apply the system in this motion to the results of the 2002 Agility finals, you will see that there are several dogs that are tied (for several different placements.)
With the other system we were working on, since faults and time was used it would be highly unlikely that there would be any ties (since we time to the 100th of a second and dogs beaten are in whole numbers.)

For these reasons, I believe that the proposed method below is not the best method.
Allison Bryant

I, Ron Schumann, vote "no" on this motion, and I also heartily concur in Ally's very cogent letter of dissent.  Please add my name as endorsing the dissent letter when forwarding to the board. 

In support of the Motion: Marj Vincent

Hi Peter

It has been a long struggle for this scoring motion. Have you already had your meeting with the BOD. Is it going to be possible to bring up this motion quickly. Or are we too late for this month? Let me know and I will either wait until the committee responds about the comment section or I will just have you take it to the board without their response.  Attached is the motion and also Ally's letter of dissent attached separately.

Peter,

I want you to fully understand the reasons we are not electing Ally's scoring method or any of the other proposed methods.  So you can fully explain to the board if they ask questions. Please feel free to read this to the board if you so choose, to help clarify the misleading comments in Ally's dissent letter.

Ally states that all other organizations use time and faults to determine their winners. This is true but none of the United States organizations (AKC,USDAA or NADAC) use the Gamblers class in their Championships. And for a good reason. There is no fair way to convert the positive gamble score points  into a time and faults score that is needed to score it fairly against the other time/fault classes(Regular and Jumpers). It is why NADAC has chosen to drop the separate Gamblers class in their championships because of this very issue. (NADAC tried for years and failed, with many exhibitors complaining about the unfair scoring system at the NADAC Championships). AKC does not have a gamblers class and USDAA never has used Gamblers in the Championships. The committee tried for months to come up with a viable solution to incorporate the gamble scores. Each time the results were flawed. We believe the elected method which uses Qualifying points, & the # of dogs beaten is a much fairer scoring method which puts all classes on an equal basis. The first ranking of Qualifying points, then # of dogs beaten, then gambler points is not arbitrary. It was thoroughly thought out and agreed upon whole heartily by the majority of the committee.  The committee chose to discard Ally's method and many others that were proposed because we could not fairly convert the gamble scores into usable time & faults scores. The committee calculated multiple spread sheet after spread sheet, putting many hours of our time to try and make all suggestions work toward a fair and viable solution. It just couldn't be done fairly, and to everyone's satisfaction.

Ally's proposed method and our recommended method are similar in one aspect. We both agree that the Qualifying scores are utmost and both scoring methods rank the Qualifying scores first. It is the second and third rankings that differ. Ally claims that our recommended method has too many tie breakers. But both methods have a primary ranking, followed by two other ranking methods.In reality, the Finals results showed Ally's method to use more third ranking tie breakers than our recommended method.Using the Finals results showed our recommended method to have four dogs tied at the second ranking; two at 11th place and two at 17th place.  The tie was broken by the third ranking which is the # of gamble points earned in the Gamblers class.  Ally's proposed method showed the Finals results to have 10 dogs tied at the second ranking; 5 dogs in first place, 3 dogs in second place and 2 dogs in 5th place.  These 10 ties were then broken by Ally's third ranking method the dogs cumulative time.

The committee worked long and hard on coming up with the best solution to be fair to all exhibitors. We believe this has been achieved with our recommended motion.

One final note: We had 5 dogs this year run clean in all 4 rounds. The first and second place dogs in each round were within 1 second of each other. Not 10 seconds like Ally may be suggesting.  The Finals is a grouping of dogs that are ranked the top in the Nation. There will not be a huge variance of scores in the upper placements. The best of the best are competing. And the scores and times in each class did reflect this in the 2002 Final's results as it should!  Marj

Board voting: Approve:  Gray, Hellmeister, Warren, Hollen, Walter, Aufox & Davenport.

Abstain:  DeChant. Non-Voting:  Berryessa. Motion is approved.

Re: Re:98:12 ASCA FORMS - ASCA Lease form 
Motion by Gray
I move to accept the following motion from the DNA and Genetics Committee:

Motion by C.A second by Joan:
Motion to add the statement below to the ASCA lease form:
I (we) as owner(s) of the above named ASCA registered Australian Shepherd agree to allow this animal to be DNA profiled for parentage verification through the ASCA DNA Program.  Initialing this box.............signifies the owners consent.

Yes: C.A., Laura, Marilyn, Kim, George, Chris, Joan, Jamie, Kelli. Non-voting : Sally and Susan

Board voting:  Approve:  Gray, Walter, Hollen, Hellmeister & DeChant. Disapprove:  Warren, Aufox, Davenport & Berryessa. Motion is approved.

 Re: 90:03 SHOW RULES CHANGE - 4.14 

Motion by Davenport.

I move the following Conformation Committee motion:

Liaison comment: I updated the rulebook to include this date as we discussed but this motion also adds the list of classes which you have to search for now.

Current rule 4.14 - "The Altered Conformation Program shall be a regular, mandatory program held in conjunction with all ASCA Conformation events for a minimum of two years from effective date..."

Change to - "The Altered Conformation Program shall be a regular, mandatory program held in conjunction with all ASCA Conformation events through May 31st, 2004..."

[Note - this is to reflect the approved extension of the program until the membership is surveyed regarding it.]

Also, replace the following current wording -  "CLASSES - Mandatory Regular Classes shall be: 6-9 mo., 9-12 mo., 12-18 mo., Nov., Am. Bred, BBX, Open Blue Merle, Open Red Merle, Open Black, Open Red"

With the following -  "CLASSES - Until May 31st, 2004, Hosting clubs have the option of offering a full slate of regular classes or selecting the reduced class division for the Altered Program only: 6-12 mo., Am. Bred, BBX, Open."

[Note: Currently the option of offering the reduced slate of classes is mentioned in at the beginning of Ch. 4, but not in 4.14.]

Approve: Peter Kontos, Denise Creelman, Kim Cochran, Gemi Sasson-Brickson, Joni Johnson, Liz Gibson, Beth Ellen Peterson, Celeste Telles, Wendy Finsterwald, and Teena Meadors. Oppose: Mary Hellmeister. MOTION PASSES

Board voting: Approve:  Hollen, Gray, Davenport, Aufox, DeChant, Berryessa & Walter.  

Disapprove:  Hellmeister. Non-Voting: Warren. Motion is approved.

Re: 00:12 2002 OBEDIENCE FINALS BUDGET 
Motion by Warren Second by Gray
I move to approve the attached 2002 Obedience Finals budget and send a check for $1957 to CVASC to cover the expenses.

Board voting: Approve:  Hollen, Gray, Warren, Davenport, Walter, DeChant & Aufox. Non-Voting:  Berryessa. Motion is approved.