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FROM THE PRESIDENT Fall is here and many of us are enjoying cooler weather and a new crop of Suri crias. Hopefully, we're all excited about the promise they offer for improved quality and marketability. Your breed association, The Suri Network, is here to support you as we work together to improve our national herd and is dedicated to offering programs and services that help you succeed. Each year the Suri Network presents an outstanding educational event, the annual Suri Symposium. The Board of Trustees would like to thank everyone who contributed to and participated in making "Creating Superior Suris" an extremely successful event. A special thanks goes out to our sponsors and many of our outstanding speakers who willingly paid their own travel expenses and devoted the time and effort to prepare presentations without receiving speaker compensation. A long-time crowd favorite of the symposium is the Live Auction. This year's auction featured some outstanding Suri herdsires as well as some great products and services. Brett Kaysen once again helped generate a lot of excitement and frequent bidding. By the end of the night, we had raised over $24,000 to help fund SN programs in the coming year! See the article for more about this year's symposium. A personal highlight of the symposium was the presentation of the Jim Barker Suri Ambassador Award. Jim was a great friend of mine and to the entire Suri industry and he is deeply missed. Jim was always a fixture of the Suri Symposium and this award was presented to keep his legacy alive. I was pleased to present the award to another long-time advocate of the Suri industry, Dick Walker. Dick has contributed so much to advance our breed and I'm sure Jim would be very pleased with his selection. You can read more about the award here. A focus of the Suri Network in the coming year is the Suri Network Herd Improvement Program or S.H.I.P. As many of you are aware, the BOT temporarily suspended herd classifications last spring so that we could re-evaluate the program. We put together an advisory panel of industry and livestock experts to make recommendations on moving forward. We have implemented many of these recommendations and we are pleased to announce that new classifiers have been selected and we will restart herd classifications in early 2014. You can read more about S.H.I.P. in this article in the newsletter. Election results were announced at the symposium. I was re-elected and we welcomed new Board of Trustee member Joyce White of Tinker's Creek Alpacas in Ohio. A special thanks goes to outgoing Board member and two-year president, Linda Kondris. Linda worked tirelessly on your behalf to strengthen the association and to make sure we continue to focus on adding value to our members. The new Board elected officers as follows and agreed to the following assignments of primary responsibility. Your Suri Network Board of Trustees is a hardworking group of dedicated Suri breeders volunteering their time to implement programs to support all Suri Network members while advancing the recognition of Suris. We have many plans for the year and are always looking for volunteers to serve in any of these areas. If you are interested in becoming involved, or have ideas you would like to share, please contact the appropriate Board member. This is a membership-focused organization and the more we are engaged, the more we can accomplish together.
- President: Tim Sheets, (Marketing, SHIP, Website)
- Vice President: Kristie Smoker, (Symposium, PDC, Education)
- Treasurer: Patty Hasselbring, (Membership, Website, Funding)
- Secretary: Cindy Harris, (PurelySuri, Communication)
- Trustee: Joyce White, (Youth Programs, Communication, Symposium)
I'm as excited as ever about the Suri industry and look forward to what we can accomplish as a breed association in the coming year.The Board is committed to our membership and we welcome your comments and suggestions for better serving you and your Suris. Warm Regards, Tim Sheets, President
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