Ingrid & Rob Schmidt aus den Niederlanden
We are Rob and Ingrid Schmidt, both 57 years old. In daily life we run a dairy farm with 70 cows. We have four children, three sons and one daughter, all grown up now.
At home we have 5 black labradors. Rob has three dogs: two retired ones of 14 and 9 years old and one of 3 years old, with whom he’s competing now. Ingrid has two bitches: one retired one of 9 years old and a young bitch, which is 21 months now and still learning how to work properly.
Rob: I really love working with dogs. In 1993 I got my hunting license and since than I have worked with dogs. At first only for fun and for the hunting, but since 2008 the dogwork became more serious! I have ran a lot of working tests and field trials myself, and received a high level with my dogs, but having fun with your dog is the most important thing. When I am not working at my farm, you can find me out in my fields, with or without gun, but always with my dogs.
Ingrid: Rob started to work with labradors in 2008 and he also started to compete with them in working tests and field trials. In almost all the tests I have joined him, because I really love to see the dogs work. In 2015 we have bred our own litter and we kept two pups. One of them is my retired bitch. With her I also started to compete in working tests and field trials and noticed that competing was even more fun than only watching it.
In 2016 Rob became an official judge for working tests and field trials. Again I have joined him a lot of times and during that time I have learned an awful lot about the tests, the trials, the rules and the dogs.
In 2019 I was asked to become a working test judge myself. Due to the covid it was not possible to do the exams in that year, so I had to postpone that til 2020/2021. But now, since 2021, I am also an official working test judge and I really like it. It is so nice to see all the dogs doing your test, everyone in his or her own way. I have met a lot of nice people and I still love to see nice dogwork.
We are really honoured that we were asked to judge this Working Test weekend and we will do our best to set up some nice tests for the competitors.
We would like to thank Club for the nice invitation and wish everybody a very nice dog-weekend with a lot of good dogwork an sportsmanship!