Fall Heartland Club Members! 2004
proved to be a very busy year – 2005 is looking like it will be as
busy, if not more. I need event ideas from you. More
importantly, I need volunteers to chair the various events already
planned this year. If you have a little bit of time to
dedicate to the club, get in touch with me and I will find something
for you to do.
We are sad to announce that two of our members
are leaving the Midwest for greener pastures. Paul and Terry
Menken have relocated to North Carolina. We will miss them and
wish them only the best.
The annual meeting was scheduled to be held in
Abingdon, IL at our fall weight pull. Unfortunately, due to a
poor showing by Heartland Members, it was decided that we should
postpone the meeting to better accommodate the membership.
Please get in touch with me ASAP to give me your input on where and
when this should happen.
Below are some issues that were going to be
presented to the membership at the meeting, so I thought it best to
go ahead and give you the information now. Let me know if you
have any questions or concerns.
Website Rebuild
As you are all well aware, the club’s web page
has been down for months. The board is happy to announce that
Susan Justice from Talequah, OK will be rebuilding the site.
She is an amazing person and has lots of ideas, but we need your
help to make it a complete success. We want the new page to be
more informational – including historical breed information, current
and past health issues and training topics are all some of the
things that will be included on the new page. Search the web,
find stuff (get permission from the page owners) and send these to
Susan. I personally have many dog related pages ear marked
(not just swissy pages) that I refer to often and it’s not until
someone asks that I think to share. These are the kind of
things that we want to offer on the webpage.
We also need more personal pictures. Fun
shot, show pictures…anything you want to share.
Additionally, and most important, I’m asking
that each member submit one article this year on a topic of their
choice. It can be something that you wrote yourself, an
article you found in a magazine (or on-line) or even an interview
with a breeder that you find particularly interesting – heck,
interview yourself if that’s appealing to you! If we all take
the time now and submit one item, we will have enough to get the
ball rolling.
These items will be stored and added to the
page, one at a time, each month. This will allow the web site
to change regularly and give everyone something new to look at.
When you submit items, Susan asks only that the
subject line reflect the content (i.e., historical or photos or
article or event) so she can filter through the messages quickly.
The new website is being put together at
www.gsmd.us. This isn’t a public page yet, so please no
sharing with non-members. It will be up and running soon
though. Our goal is to eventually have it back under the
domain name
www.swissmountaindogclub.com .
Volunteers
In an attempt to get more volunteers, the club
would like to offer discounted entry fees to our events for anyone
that volunteers to help. Free entry fees will be given to those
individuals that volunteer to be the event chairperson.
Membership Renewal
Renewal time is here. This is when we are
supposed to renew, so even though I’ve failed miserably in the past
I want to get us back on track. Please fill out the attached
renewal information and mail it to me by January 31, 2005.
[See next item for more renewal information]. As in the past,
any member that joined after September 1, 2004 is considered paid in
full for 2005.
On-line breeder list fees
Anyone that paid for on-line breeder listing in
2004 will NOT be required to pay again for 2005. We understand
that since the page was down, it was not useful to many of our
breeders. Our hope is to prove to you that the new page will
be an even better form of advertising than the old.
Thank you for your support at our various
functions this year. I hope to see you all again soon.
Take care,
Amy Pisarik
Secretary, Heartland SMDC
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