Bearded Collie Club of Maine

Home of the BeardieMainiacs!

Bounce & BBQ Postponed to October 6!

July 12, 2024 /

Postponed! Due to the dire weather and other factors, we’ve postponed the BBQ until October!

The 2024 edition of the BCCME Bounce & BBQ will now take place on Sunday, October 6 from 12 noon – 4 PM at Val’s house in Westbrook. Mark your calendars!

This year marks our 19th annual Bounce & BBQ! (Wow — time to start thinking about what to do to mark our 20th!)

We have a special attraction this year! Deb King (who has a Beardie, Emma) is our special guest for this year’s BBQ. Deb will do a demo of the Happy Ratters games. Happy Ratters and Barn Hunt are two growing dog sports where your dog tries to locate a (safely caged) rat using his/her nose. The rat cage is hidden in a maze of obstacles (Happy Ratters) or hay bales (Barn Hunt). Happy Ratters and Barn Hunt promote teamwork between you and your dog — your dog learns to take signals from you, and you learn to read your dog’s body language to know when s/he’s found the rat. There are Happy Ratters events around Maine multiple times per year.

Every year at the BBQ, we also hold our Annual meeting and elections. We’re always looking for folks to help out, so if you want to chair a new committee, join an existing committee, or are considering running for an office or the Board, just say the word. Even if you’d just like to host an event and invite the Beardies to bounce around your yard, that would be wonderful.

Membership Renewal Time!

The BBQ marks the time for all good Mainiacs to renew their club memberships! Hustle on over to the Join Us! page to download the printable form or renew online.

NOTE: Please plan to re-up again this year. We didn’t make any money last year, and we still need to pay our event insurance, our annual tribute to BCCA, and other expenses. Only a few folks renewed last year. We run a couple of fundraisers each year, but those make just enough to pay a few of the bills. Kathy can take renewals at the BBQ.

BCCME 19th Annual Bounce & BBQ, July 13

June 29, 2024 /

The 2024 edition of the BCCME Bounce & BBQ will take place on Saturday, July 13 from 12 noon – 4 PM at Val’s house in Westbrook. Mark your calendars!

This year marks our 19th annual Bounce & BBQ! (Wow — time to start thinking about what to do to mark our 20th!)

We have a special attraction this year! Deb King (who has a Beardie, Emma) is our special guest for this year’s BBQ. Deb will do a demo of the Happy Ratters games. Happy Ratters and Barn Hunt are two growing dog sports where your dog tries to locate a (safely caged) rat using his/her nose. The rat cage is hidden in a maze of obstacles (Happy Ratters) or hay bales (Barn Hunt). Happy Ratters and Barn Hunt promote teamwork between you and your dog — your dog learns to take signals from you, and you learn to read your dog’s body language to know when s/he’s found the rat. There are Happy Ratters events around Maine multiple times per year.

Every year at the BBQ, we also hold our Annual meeting and elections. We’re always looking for folks to help out, so if you want to chair a new committee, join an existing committee, or are considering running for an office or the Board, just say the word. Even if you’d just like to host an event and invite the Beardies to bounce around your yard, that would be wonderful.

Membership Renewal Time!

The BBQ marks the time for all good Mainiacs to renew their club memberships! Hustle on over to the Join Us! page to download the printable form or renew online.

2024 Events and Specialty News!

April 9, 2024 /

Check out our 2024 event calendar here!

Specialty News!

The premium list is out for our Bearded Collie Club of Maine Specialty and Supported Entry at the Ladies’ Dog Club shows in Wrentham, MA. Dates are June 1 (Specialty) and June 2 (Supported Entry). Come enjoy our Saturday breeder judges, our traditional buffet lunch for exhibitors, goodies, camaraderie, and Beardies!

Regular Classes: Mary Murphy-East (Marjac)
Sweeps: Diane Banks (Liberty)
Sunday: Sulie Greendale-Paveza

MB-F is the super. Closing date is May 15. It’ll be here before you know it! Here’s the premium: https://pdf.infodog.com/prm/126/prm126.pdf

Bounce & BBQ News!

Our annual Bounce & BBQ is scheduled for Saturday, July 13. A short while ago, we rasied a question on the BeardieMainiacs email list: Do you want to keep the July date, move it to August, or have two Bounces this year? We received 2 responses, but would like to know what everybody thinks! Let us know.

Our 2023 Event Calendar!

March 1, 2023 /

Our 2023 events are here, so check them out on our Events page.

This doesn’t have to be the complete and exhaustive list, however. If any member would like to host an event, just say the word. The Board will be happy to lend whatever suport you might need, including refreshments, paperwork, or whatever you’ll need to host a successful event.

June Specialty and Supported Entry at Ladies’, June 4-5, 2022

April 7, 2022 /

Great news! The Premium List is available for our Specialty and Supported Entry (hosted under the BCCA umbrella) at the Ladies’ Dog Club shows.

Here’s the link to the Premium List.

For all the details about our judges, deadline dates, and other things, come visit our event page.

Have Fun! Win Lobstah!

May 16, 2021 /

BCCME is hosting not one, but TWO fundraising raffles with gift certificates to GetMaineLobster.com! If yours is the winning ticket, you could end up with something like this:

We have other Wicked Decent raffles, too &mash; including a Noz2Noz soft crate hand-painted by Val!

Tickets for each drawing are $5 each or 5 for $20. The drawing date is Sunday, June 13.

Want to learn more? Want to get your tickets? Check out our Fundraising page!

BCCME Specialty at Ladies’, June 5-6

April 20, 2021 /

The show must go on!

We’ve just had word that the Ladies’ Dog Club show will take place in the usual location, on June 5 & 6, 2021. Please plan to join us!

Because of COVID restrictions and AKC rules, we won’t have our Party Tent this year. We’re still trying to figure out what we can do about food, but the AKC rules still say that you must eave if you don’t win your class — so we realy won’t be able to socialize very much at the site anyway. Please plan to wear masks and adhere to their social distancing guidelines. More details will likely be in the Premium List, when it comes out.

For our Saturday Specialty, Pat Colombo (Burlesque) will judge Sweeps and Veteran Sweeps. Bob Lamm (Raintree) will judge Regular Classes and also the NOHS Herding Group. There will not be a 4-6 month Beginner Puppy class at the show this year.

On Sunday, Joe Reno will judge our Supported Entry.

MB-F is the super, www.infodog.com. Closing date is noontime on May 19. Here’s a link to the premium list.

NOTE: This year, the Ladies’ shows are limited entry shows, with a maximum number of 1250 dogs per day. Entries open on April 22. If you’re thinking of coming to the show, better enter soon!

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to have spectators at the show this year — plus we won’t be able to have the buffet lunch and raffle in the party tent. Plan to groom at your car, since we probably won’t have a groomng tent either.

Happy Spring, Mainiacs!

March 21, 2021 /

Hi Folks!

I hope you’ve all been keeping safe and well. Now that we’re emerging from winter hibernation and from the pandemic lockdown, it’s time to talk about what 2021 brings for BCCME.

The Board met this afternoon via Zoom to discuss our events. Here’s what’s going on:

  1. The May shows in Cumberland, ME have been canceled.
  2. It took a while for the official word to come from the town, but the Ladies’ Dog Club shows in Wrentham — where we hold our regional Specialty — *will* be taking place on June 5 and 6. The show format will be drastically stripped down from previous years: no party tent, no lunches, no spectators. If you don’t win your class, leave. (Sounds like a blast, right?) Anyway, we’re still holding the event. Pat Colombo is our Saturday Sweeps judge, Bob Lamm will judge regular classes. Our Sunday judge is (I think) Jon Cole. Entries will open mid-May, and MB-F is the super.
  3. The June shows in Cumberland *will* take place on June 24-27 at the Cumberland Fairgrounds. We have supported entries on Saturday and Sunday. MB-F s the super for that show as well.
  4. The event you’ve all been waiting for: The BCCME Bounce & BBQ! Tentative date is Saturday, July 10 from 12 noon – 4 PM. We’re still figuring out the logistics, such as whether people should bring their own picnic lunches. Sme of us will have been vaccinated by then and some of us won’t be yet, so we’ll have to mask and distance ourselves — but we’ll still be able to get together. Anyway, the Bounce will take place at Val’s new digs in Westbrook.

We’ll send more information as we get it. In the meantime, why don’t you folks tell us how you’ve been? We can’t wait to see you!

New BeardieMainiacs Email List!

December 2, 2019 /

We have a new Email List!

Yes, you’ve read that right. Yahoo has decided to shut down its Groups functions this month, so BeardieMainiacs has a new home now on Google Groups.

Current members of the Yahoo group have been migrated to Google already. If you’ve received an email from Google Groups, then you’re a current email list subscriber.

If you’re not on the list and want to be, just drop me an email at saltysheepdog@gmail.com. If you’re on the list and don’t want to be, you can unsubscribe — no hard feelings. We still have the website and Facebook page as well.

Anyway, welcome aboard! Post to BeardieMainiacs@googlegroups.com.

–karen, listowner

Membership Renewal Time!

July 14, 2019 /

Look at this sad face. You wouldn’t want to disappoint Famous Seamus, would you?


Listen up, Mainiacs! Now that the Bounce & BBQ has been and gone, it’s time for folks to renew their club memberships!

You might ask, “Well, what do I get for the price of my dues?” Admittedly, we don’t hold a huge number of events per year, but if you like going to the BBQ or having priority entry to our special events such as herding clinics, it’ll be worth it. Not only that, but we can’t live forever on the monies we made from hosting the National Specialty — last time we did it was in 2016 — and if you like having a club, now’s your chance to support it. Just our club event insurance alone costs us hundreds of dollars per year. Without it, we’re destined to go the way of the club-asaurus.

What’s that you say? “Yes, dammit — I want to go to next year’s BBQ!” Well, then, you know what to do… Go here and renew your membership! We even have a PayPal button for online renewals.

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