Kim Krull and his son Josh are pictured with their three-year-old Labrador retriever, Pete, outside Diamond K Kennels, a mile west of Freeman. The Krulls have been breeding and training dogs for ten years and are hosting the American Pointing Labrador Association’s fourth annual Triple Crown Invitational this week. Sixty-five dogs from 19 states are entered. PHOTO BY JEREMY WALTNER
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 Labrador fans from all over the country? Well, he does. I guess you can’t take the “administrator” out of an administrator.
Kim Krull became acquainted with the Freeman community in 2003 when he was hired as superintendent of Freeman Public Schools. He served in that role until spring 2014, when he retired from education. Since then, he has lived with his wife, Brenda, in their home one mile west of Freeman.
Now that Krull is nearly 70, he admits his administrative skills are starting to wear thin. But he has at least one big project left in him, and that will play out this weekend and next week in Freeman, when the fourth annual American Pointing Labrador Association (APLA) Triple Crown comes to town.
The event – the highest hunting test offered by the APLA – runs all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday, August 31, September 1 and 2 and will be held on the property of Robert and Vicky Huber, about 3 miles southwest of Freeman. Additional testing will be held on the Howard Knodel Farm near the Wolf Creek area.
Testing begins at 7:30 a.m. on all three days. Krull said it is a spectator sport and the public is welcome to attend.
The APLA Triple Crown attracts 65 Labrador Retrievers registered in 19 states. All competitors are expected to arrive by Friday evening for a social gathering at The Fringe at Valley View Golf Course.
Krull said he expects nearly 100 guests at the banquet, which will be held Saturday night at The Barn at Graber Vineyards south of Freeman.
Other sites used include the Don Beier land northeast of the city for training 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 hunting test, in which six judges evaluate the dogs in areas such as intensity of pointing, nose work and cooperation with their handlers. They are tested in three different geographic areas: water, land and upland.
“It’s a three-day event where overall performance determines whether your dog passes or fails,” says Krull, who points out that dead mallards bred specifically for the purpose are used. “If a dog fails any part of the test, he’s out.”
Arrival in Freeman
Krull began breeding and training dogs as a hobby about 10 years ago and has since founded his company Diamond K Kennels with his son Josh.
The opportunity for the Freeman community to host the event came from both a logistical opportunity and the right people coming together at the right time. Krull said he had hosted private hunting trials for years and had been familiar with the Triple Crown event since its inception in 2001, “and like-minded people from the Midwest thought the same thing.”
With registered dogs from areas closer to the East Coast traveling all the way to Oregon and Idaho, the question becomes: Why not centralize the event?
Besides, Krull said, most of these registered Labrador Retrievers are found in the central part of the United States anyway.
“If you go from Wisconsin to Colorado and then to the middle of the country, 65 to 70 percent of the dogs live there,” he said. “We just thought, ‘Hey, to grow this thing and get more participation, let’s try the Midwest.'”
This is where Krull’s administrative instincts came to the fore.
“I realized someone had to step in,” he said. “I’m a doer, so I accepted the challenge.”
While some of the groundwork was already done two years ago, things really got going a year ago with the monthly meetings of a local committee – and by “local,” Krull means dog 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 major event.
“Robert and Vicki Huber have been great to work with,” he said. “I can’t say enough good things about them.”
The same applies to Knodel’s property west of the Huber property.
“It’s in the CRP and it’s just a beautiful area,” he said, noting that without the cooperation of the landowners, “it absolutely wouldn’t be possible.”
The committee eventually submitted an application to host the 2024 Triple Crown and was awarded the bid over Michigan, which will host next year. That’s when the real work began.
From securing sponsors to cover costs, to making sure the right testing equipment was in place and working, to gathering information and putting together the program booklet, to ordering T-shirts and hats, ribbons and plaques, to compiling a list of hotel options, bed and breakfasts and Airbnbs within a 30- to 45-mile radius, and arranging food accommodations, “it was intense.”
Krull said that throughout this process, he had nothing but the unwavering support of his wife, Brenda, without whom he could not have done it.
“And there are a lot of other people who helped make this happen.”
And finally, the Triple Crown is a tribute to the American Pointing Labrador Association, which was founded in the early 1980s to recognize that Pointing Labrador Retrievers are significantly different from Labrador Retrievers.
It is the same breed, Krull clarifies, but genetics have placed emphasis on the ability to locate a bird and indicate its location.
“It’s similar to a pointer that points the animal and waits for the hunter to flush it out for him,” Krull says. “This gives us the best of both worlds. We get a dog that goes out and points the animal for us, and we get a great retriever that retrieves the animal, because ultimately that’s the Labrador’s job.”
And this whole event is about the dogs.
“Our dogs do so much for us,” Krull said. “They have built a circle of friends that I wouldn’t have without my involvement, and I want this event to be a tribute to what the dogs have done for us.”
And when it comes to “man’s best friend,” Krull says there are few better than a Labrador.
“It’s rare to find a dog that has even one bad link in the chain,” he said. “They are the greatest family dogs there are, and there’s a reason they have been the most popular breed of dog in the world for many years.”
And you know that all of Krull’s work leading up to this weekend has paid off.
“I was telling someone recently that I worked on a lot of big projects as a school administrator,” Krull says. “I said, I don’t know how many big projects I have left in me, but this was one of them.”
