ESAA President's Message

Greetings, My English Setter Friends!

Your Board has been busy working on your behalf since the ESAA elections. We have met three times and have an upcoming meeting set for early March. Understanding we all have families, jobs, dogs, cats, life and other responsibilities, I am setting a pace for meetings about every other month or as needed. Keep in mind, some months are busier than others in our general cycle. But never fear! In between our meetings, we accomplish a lot of good works through email. Fortunately, the smart, forward-thinking folks who revised our Bylaws several years ago included the now-common provision allowing entities like ESAA to conduct business outside of a meeting. These actions are all captured and recorded in our records, sent to the Regional VPs for further distribution as is done with our meeting minutes, and are available to members. These are all actions considered routine or unremarkable and are fully briefed with an opportunity for questions. And, as a failsafe, our Bylaws allow any two Board members to ask that any matter be set instead for a meeting if they think the issue is something that requires debate and discussion. 

Just in case some of you missed information from your Regional VPs, some of the things we have been able to move on timely in this manner include approving a plan to digitize and preserve 27 National Specialty videotapes from 1983 to 2005, approving the return of an ESAA Regional Specialty in Orlando this December (thank you Amy Duncan!), approving a new event to encourage and recognize our juniors that will debut at the National this year as a Juniors Showcase, continuing to support the National Invitational with special medallions, supporting a revision to the Annual Awards process to eliminate the need for folks to apply for an award when the winner can easily be confirmed statistically, and gratefully approving Larry Coldiron as our new webmaster, Kayla Fink as our new website committee chair and Harvey Wooding as chair of the finance committee. 

You may have noticed a small new line item on the form to renew your dues this year. It asks if you want to be sent a paper ballot. For years (since the Bylaws revisions mentioned above), all ESAA communications have been designated as electronic, including emailing ballots for the election of officers. If a member did not provide an email address, the secretary mailed a paper ballot. Tabulation was done manually. When the Board approved the acquisition of the electronic balloting service Election Buddy several years ago, the only thing that changed was Election Buddy stepping in to send and tabulate ballots. This was a nice benefit to members, who no longer had to print out and mail back their ballots. As a result, participation in our elections has skyrocketed! The election committee chair, Cindy Rice, made sure the few members without email addresses on file were contacted to provide emails and asked whether they wanted a paper ballot. Cindy also managed member questions or concerns. Through her dedicated effort, the elections have gone smoothly. When AKC advised parent clubs of new desirable language on services like Election Buddy to include in-club Bylaws, we asked AKC to check our language for compliance. AKC advised we were good, no action required. AKC did suggest that we could strengthen our already satisfactory efforts at inclusion and equity of member participation in elections by adding the new line item you now see on the renewal form. 

The collection of feedback on ESAA bowls and our National Specialty is close to wrapping up with the last few regions reporting in by the end of this month. The National Specialty feedback will go to the National Specialty Committee to aid in their report regarding the plans for 2026 (and beyond) and provide written guidance for our new model where ESAA manages the event. Sadly, but not surprisingly I guess, the model we have used for decades of a "host club" running the show is no longer feasible. The feedback on ESAA bowls will be summarized, passed by Bowl Czar Mary Nowak and then set up for discussion by the Board. But never fear! Regional clubs should go ahead with bowl business as usual for 2025. Any changes would not take effect until 2026. 

Finally, your Board will continue its commitment to member check-ins by publishing questionnaires, asking for feedback on subjects we know are important to you, and soliciting your views on any trending industry changes we want to evaluate for improvement in our practice or to support our shared mission. (Spoiler Alert: surveys coming on publications and health and genetics. 



Thank you for listening! 

Julie