At the national US Complete annual meeting held in late June in Gettysburg, PA, Thor Kain accepted the recognition as his success in placing his bird dogs in US Compete field trials over the previous season. This is the second consecutive year that Thor has earned this honor.
Wins with Thor as the handler were earned by Super Storm, Super Storm Liz, Super Storm Cliff, No Limit and Super Storm Hank.
The field trial year runs from August until May of the following year. It’s a long slog of keeping dogs healthy, in condition and sharp in their hunting and bird handling. It’s a marathon of caring, conditioning, training and traveling to have dogs that are prepared to demonstrate their innate best week after week. It takes tremendous physical effort to not only prepare but then show a string of dogs at a series of field trials sufficient to win more than anyone else to earn this Handler of the Year recognition.
Thor Kain has put in this kind of effort and coupled it with superior training skills to earn this Handler of the Year award again, repeating this same outcome from the ’20-’21 trial season. I know that he has done this hard work as I, Bob Watts, am his partner and I’ve witnessed of what I write firsthand.
Thor is up before 5 am every day. 5 or more days per week he is out with the dogs at daybreak getting them ready to do yard work training, roading on the 4-wheeler for conditioning or doing work so they are sharp on their pointing, backing and on being intense, steady-to-wing and shot and composed throughout the pointing and flushing process. He does this for half dozen or so dogs that he campaigned during the season.
When the morning’s work is done, Thor is off to work–usually among the first to get to the office at the home health agency.
Most afternoons Thor is out there, not just caring for the dogs, but often engaged in some yard work to keep the dogs sharp and building his relationship with each of them.
There’s a lot of just plain hard work (which Thor loves to do) that goes on behind the scenes to win an award of this stature.