Welcome to the April May issue of Bird Dog & Retriever News. A ton of things have happened since we last talked. Starting with the bad things... Dave Duffey's long time companion Julia Lutzewitz passed away a few days ago. Julia was a friend of all in our family and always a fun and great hostess. She was full of life and would bring a smile to your face with an unexpected comment. She will be missed by all that knew her. Our sympathy goes out to Dave and everyone that she touched.
What else is new? I spent a few days in Vegas at the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Travel (SHOT) show in mid February. It was a wild few days. I went out on Wednesday for the Thursday show opening and Ron & Ellen came out on Friday. Vegas is.. well Vegas. On Wednesday night I walked for six hours, twelve miles up and down the strip and stayed outa trouble in sin city. On Thursday morning, armed with my new digital camera, I walked another 12 miles, spoke with about 120 vendors and shot about 1200 pictures of great hunting stuff at the show. I was four rows from being done when the show closed down at 5 PM. Yea it was a power day, but I have some great things that we will be bringing to you on Guldans.com in the upcoming months.
So what is new this issue? Well I am working with a new printer on hopes of getting you a better magazine. It may be an issue or so before we work out all the bugs. As I mentioned earlier we have some great new stuff for you that we will be featuring in our magazine. I continue to see magazines fail as they refuse to evolve with the times. We are seeing some great stresses on our business. I am seeing printing costs increases of about 20% a year. Which would mean every year we would need to raise the price of your favorite magazine about $4 a year. We haven't raised prices in about 5 years... and don't expect to. I hope that offering great products, some found no where else, at a great price, we can fill the void caused by the increased cost of doing business. Since we last chatted I added some 1000 web pages on Guldans.com in great new stuff.
New on the web... we moved all our webpages to a new server. It should be much faster and have greater security. So in case you saw some strange things in mid March, it was part of moving thousands of webpages to a new home... if all goes well I won't do that again for about ten years.
So what's in this issue. First of all I am going to tell you a little about what I saw in the way of dog stuff at the SHOT show. That will be continued next issue with what Bill Hanus saw in new gun stuff. Also since I get calls all the time about what collar or GPS to buy I will do a page on some of the tools, some may call it toys of the industry. Since I'm doing two pieces this issue, I'll hold off my "Run The Event" column, which many of you said you liked, for one issue.
So what else is in this issue. Dave Duffey will chat with us about making sure our dogs get enough water in the winter and on the road. Ron Guldan will take a look at Golden Retrievers. Jerry Thoms talks about uses for the versatile one gallon water jug. Bob and Jody Iler teaches us about e-collars. David Krassler takes us further down the Spaniel training course. Bill Hanus looks at 28 Gauges. This issues book review is: A Dog For All Seasons a series of stories about the Labrador Retriever. That, news and a whole lot more in this issue.
That's it for now... I have a new digital camera so I'm gonna try to make a lot of trials and tests this spring, see you there.
Dennis Guldan, publisher Bird Dog & Retriever News