2008 Tibor Reiter Award

Barben’s Wild Hydrangea ‘Saga’

BPIS, Can/Am/UKC CH Barben’s Wild Hydrangea CKC: AGI, AIJ, FD, RN, TD; AKC: AXJ, CD, MH, OA, RA; AAC: SGDC, MJDC, AADC; CARO: RN; NAVHDA: NA; VCA: VC; St. J’s Amb: TDC (altered)

Since Saga herself has no opinion or grateful feelings about being awarded the Tibor Reiter Trophy, we would like to act as proxy for her and at the same time acknowledge her achievement.

Our thanks also go to Mr. Tibor Reiter, the donor of the trophy. He made it possible for so many dogs before Saga to be honoured and inspire the owners of other dogs to prove the versatility of our breed by working them hard to also join the distinguished circle of talented canines.
Saga most certainly is in great company, which includes the past winners as well as all competitors past and present.

Little did we know what lay before us at the time I submitted “A Vizsla goes North” to the editor of Vizsla Canada (Vol.6, # 5 & # 6, 2002), how the handful of fur would turn out and take over a good part of our life. Baldur and Maia the Rottweiler accepted her with more or less good grace and the way to a multi-Vizsla house was open.
Saga likes just about every activity — the faster the better — which to nobody’s surprise puts Obedience pretty far down the line in excitement generation. Since her demand on human performance and endurance more and more outstrips our abilities, we had to resort to help, very much so as of late in Agility. Chad Marquis, a very good choice as it turned out, is running her in three Agility venues (CKC, AKC and AAC) leading to quite a variety of titles, and yes, we will be back at least for the AAC Ontario Regionals in Ottawa, hoping to match last years performance.
It is good to have competition and competitors around who make winning this trophy all the more rewarding and we congratulate all of them for their achievements.
Thank you VSO, Barbara, Rick, Chad, the others that advised and of course Saga.
Oh, by the way, we have another Barben girl at home.
—Hans & Johanna Handke, Burlington, Ontario,
hans.handke@sympatico.ca