APLA TRIPLE CROWN: DOG DAYS ARRIVE THIS WEEK

Ten years ago, Kim Krull discovered a new hobby: breeding and training Labrador Retrievers with his son, Josh. Who would have thought that, a decade later, he would be organizing and hosting a competition that draws Pointing Labrador enthusiasts from across the country? Well, he is. Guess you can’t take the ‘administrator’ out of an administrator. 

Kim Krull’s introduction to the Freeman community came in 2003 when he was hired to serve as secondary principal at Freeman Public Schools. He worked in that capacity through the spring of 2014 when he retired from a career in education and, in the years since, has maintained his residence with his wife, Brenda, in their home a mile west of Freeman.

Now that Krull is nearing 70 years old, he admits he is getting to the end of his administrative prowess. But he’s got at least one big project left in him, and that is set to play out in Freeman this weekend and into next week when the fourth annual American Pointing Labrador Association (APLA) Triple Crown comes to town.

The event — the highest-level hunt test offered by the APLA — will take place all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Aug. 31, Sept. 1 and 2 and will be headquartered at the Robert and Vicky Huber property located about 3 miles southwest of Freeman. Additional testing will take place at the Howard Knodel farm closer to the Wolf Creek area.

Testing will begin at 7:30 a.m. all three days; Krull says this is a spectator sport and the public is invited to attend.

The APLA Triple Crown is attracting 65 Pointing Labrador Retrievers registered in 19 states. All participants are expected to have arrived by Friday evening for a social at The Fringe at Valley View Golf Course.

Krull said he is expecting close to 100 guests at the banquet to be held at The Barn at Graber Vineyards south of Freeman Saturday night.

Other locations that will be used will be Don Beier land just northeast of town for practice purposes and the Ben Friesen farm and Freeman Prairie Arboretum as a water training area.

“This is the gold standard for breeders,” Krull says of the Triple Crown hunt test, which will use six judges to score dogs in areas like intensity of point, nose work and how well they cooperate with their handlers. They will be tested in three different geographic areas: water, land and upland.

“It’s a three-day event where the totality of the work determines whether your dog passes or fails,” Krull says, who notes that dead mallards raised specifically for this purpose will be used. “If a dog fails any part of the test, they’re out.”

Coming to Freeman

Krull got his start breeding and training dogs as a hobby about 10 years ago and has since established his business, Diamond K Kennels, with his son, Josh.

The opportunity for the Freeman community to host the event grew out both a logistical opportunity and the right people coming together at the right time. Krull said he has hosted private hunt tests for years and was aware of the Triple Crown event since its founding in 2001, “and like-minded people from the Midwest were thinking the same thing.”

With registered dogs from closer to the East Coast traveling all the way to places like Oregon and Idaho, for example, why not centralize the event?

Besides, Krull said, most of these registered Pointing Labrador Retrievers are located in the central part of the United States anyway.

“You go from Wisconsin to Colorado and down the center of the country, 65 to 70 percent of the dogs are located there,” he said. “We just thought, ‘Hey, in order to make this thing grow and get more involvement, let’s try the Midwest.’”

That’s when Krull’s administrative instincts kicked in.

“I realized someone needed to step up,” he said. “I’m a doer, so I took on the challenge.”

While some of the groundwork was laid two years ago, things really kicked into high gear a year ago with monthly meetings of a local committee — and by “local,” Krull means handlers and APLA members from South Dakota and Minnesota.

Krull had experience with Robert and Vicky Huber and their property, which he had used for his own training purposes and other organized test hunts, and he said they jumped at the chance to host this large-scale event.

“Robert and Vicki Huber have been great people to work with,” he said. “I just can’t say enough wonderful things about them.”

The same holds true with Knodel’s property located west of the Huber land.

“It’s in CRP and is just a beautiful area,” he said, noting that without the cooperation of the landowners, “this absolutely could not happen.”

The committee ultimately filed an application to host the 2024 Triple Crown and was accepted over Michigan — which is hosting next year — and that’s when the work really began.

From securing sponsorships to help offset the costs; to making sure the proper testing equipment is here and in working order; to gathering information and putting together the program booklet; to ordering T-shirts and caps, ribbons and plaques; to putting together a list of hotel options, bed and breakfasts and Airbnbs within a 30-45-mile radius; to arranging for food accommodations — “it’s been intense.”

Through it all Krull said he has had nothing but the unwavering support of his wife, Brenda, who he said he couldn’t have done this without.

“And there are a ton of other people who have pitched in to help get this done.”

And, at the end of the day, the Triple Crown is a celebration of the American Pointing Labrador Association, which was established in the early 1980s to recognize that Pointing Labrador Retrievers were distinctly different from Labrador Retrievers.

They’re the same breed, Krull clarifies, but through genetics an emphasis has been placed on an ability to locate a bird and show its location.

“It’s similar to seeing a pointing breed dog point, where they will point the bird and wait for the hunter to flush the bird for them,” Krull says. “With this, we get the best of both worlds. We get a dog that’ll go out and point the bird for us, and we get a great retriever who will go get the bird, because ultimately that’s what the Labrador does.”

And this entire event is about the dogs.

“Our dogs do so much for us,” Krull said. “They have created a circle of friends that I wouldn’t have had I not been involved with this and I want this event to be worthy of what the dogs have done for us.”

And when it comes to “man’s best friend,” Krull says it doesn’t get much better than a Lab.

“Seldom do you find one with a mean bone in its body,” he said. “They’re the greatest family dog there is and there’s a reason they’re the most popular breed in the world, and have been for many years running.”:

And you know that, for Krull, all the work leading up to this weekend has been worth it.

“I told somebody just recently that, when I was a school administrator, I had a lot of big projects that I worked on,” Krull says. “I said, I don’t know how many more big projects I’ve got left in me, but this was one of them.”