It was Friday October 10, 2003 and Vibeke and I were on our way to Solon and Hira Rhode’s place in Bennington, Vermont. The weather was gorgeous, sun was up and Vermont showed itself in its beautiful Indian summer colors. We arrived late afternoon and after the first greeting by humans and dogs, we took the dogs for a walk in the fields and woods. After we came back, the dogs had a great swim in the watering pond near the house. Next to arrive was Pete and Susan Eising from Maine (and Austria).

After all the dogs had been walked and fed, we all went inside and sat down at a succulent New England game dinner. We stayed around the dinner table in the eat-in kitchen and we were still there when Mark Bulvanoski arrived from New York. He had brought with him 40 chukars that we were going to use for our hunt test on Saturday.

Everybody was up bright and early Saturday morning because we wanted to get some hunting in before the rest of the group arrived. So after a great American breakfast, we took to the woods. Unfortunately we didn’t find much game but both the dogs and we handlers had a great walk in the woods. The temperature had risen and when we came back to the house, we were all quite warm and the dogs took advantage of the pond to cool off. While the dogs were having a jolly good time, Melissa and Ron Coffin arrived from Massachusetts and then in short order the Stephens (Olin and Carol) arrived from Vermont, Filippo and Catherine Goodrich Nencioni from Connecticut, Alan and Kathy Poulin from Connecticut and David and Charlotte Thibodeau from Massachusetts.

After everybody had had time to visit and get to know each other, we enjoyed a great lunch after which Pete Eising gave a demonstration of how blood tracking is performed in Germany and Austria. Pete laid several tracks and several dogs got an opportunity to find the "deer." Later in the afternoon we had a friendly shoot to retrieve competition with our dogs in the field. Three chukars were planted for each dog and each handler had 15 minutes to try to harvest the birds. 15 minutes and six shells were allowed and the time was stopped after the third bird was brought to hand. Points were given for each bird pointed and retrieved. The winner was Melissa with Emma. No. 2 was Pete with Rosie, No 3 was Paul with Appi, No. 4 Charlotte with Stark, No. 5 was Alan with Heidi, No 6 was Carol with Lizzie, No 7 was Filippo with Ugo, No 8 was Alan with Ego, and No 9 through 11 was a tie with Solon and Emmy, Mark with Bou, and Mark with Caja.

Everyone washed up for supper and we congregated in the kitchen/family room of the Rhode’s house, the wine bottles were opened, and the talk just flowed. Julia Rhode had also arrived and it was late when we sat down to the most marvelous game dinner. At that time, we presented Solon and Hira with a framed lithograph of the Danish dog Daffy and a flushing pheasant for their effort in bringing us together for this first gathering of Small Munsterlander owners in New England. We have already started talking about expanding to more people next year; we will keep you posted. It became a late evening.

Sunday morning was started with the great American breakfast again and the talk just wouldn’t end but we did manage to get people out to the pole barn where a training table was set up. We did normal training table work; Melissa and Paul demonstrated force-train-retrieve and all that wanted it got a chance to work with the table, the dummies and birds. Pete obliged to take a few more people on a blood tracking exercise and the last three dogs that we didn’t run in the field on Saturday were run before we all headed in to lunch. As you can understand, we made sure that nobody went away hungry. During the afternoon most people headed home but Mark and I took a long hunt into the hills around the Rhode’s place. We did manage to find one of the chukars that had flown out of the field area. Later we heard a vigorous barking at the edge of the woods, it was Emmy and Solon and I ran across the field to the edge because we were afraid that she had run into coyotes or something else nasty! Emmy kept on barking and we found that she was excited about a chukar that had perched on a branch up in a tree. Solon threw up his hat and I had a chance to shoot at it. After being hit lightly it sailed away into the thicket, but after about five minutes, Emmy brought the bird to hand. A great job for a young dog. Fantastic way to end the afternoon and the weekend.