A couple of items for this edition. Some trial updates and a bit of background on how I scan for things.
Trial Updates
Tampa Bay Agility Club (TBAC) has moved their trials to the Dog Training Club of St. Petersburg facility for 2020. The first trial remains on the first weekend of February and the second trial moves to the first weekend of April.
The Greater Panama City Dog Fanciers Association, Inc. (GPCDFA) AKC trials are now on the AKC calendar. This give those in the Panhandle some more trials to attend. These trials will be held at Baker - Baker Area Recreation Association (Baker Arena). The trials will be held in April and October.
Surprise, Surprise!
I have a number of things that I use to find premiums. The first is a spreadsheet that keeps track of when I generally expect a premium to be published (Florida Premium Dates). This date is generally calculated by the opening date or the first trial date. For example, AKC requires premiums to be made available at least two weeks prior to the opening date so the expected date is the opening date minus fourteen. The Premium Posted Date column either has the date I published the premium (with a link to the premium page) or a color code. No color indicates that it is greater than a month out. Yellow indicates less than a month. Orange indicates less than a week away and red indicates past due.
Then there are the bookmarks. I have three active sets of bookmarks. The first is for the trial secretaries and organizations like CPE that publish premiums. The second set is for individual trials that have a unique URL. These are mostly UKI and USDAA trials. The set got so big with all of the Punta Gorda UKI trials defined well in advance that I created a second set with links to those that are greater than four months out. This is where the surprise came into play today. I loaded up the trials greater than four months out and found a premium. Dog-on-It had their November premium available! Usually the UKI and USDAA are published much closer to the opening/trial date. The next set have bookmarks that are for clubs hosting trials soon.
Looking up the premium involves loading and entire folder of bookmarks, putting my cursor on the “x” to close the tab and then doing a scan of the page and click to get to the next page, etc. It actually goes pretty fast (I do click faster than my mind sees things sometimes and have to reload the page when I realize there was something there after all).