I thought I had seen it all in the last few weeks, with Wall Street financiers bankrupting their own companies and then demanding that the public fork over $850 billion dollars in tax money, with no strings attached, because only they, the well-pressed and the perfectly manicured, knew how to handle finance.
"Mea culpa," said Wall Street and the bankers, "Yes, we erred. Yes we were greedy. Yes we crashed the economy on the rocks. But now hand over your wallet or the Dust Bowl will return, and End Times will be upon us!!
It was a jaw-dropping level of hubris; arrogance on stilts.
So you will pardon me if I thought I had seen it all.
But I had not.
From the U.K. tonight comes the latest missive from the Kennel Club.
It seems the folks that have stood by for 100 years as defect, disease and deformity have been elevated to a "standard" say they have now woken up and smelled the coffee. They write:
The Kennel Club is launching a complete review of every pedigree dog breed in the UK in a move that will have far-reaching benefits for the health of many breeds. It has also called on the government to give it the statutory powers to clamp down on breeders who fail to make a dog’s health their top priority.
A breed health plan will be coordinated for each of the UK’s 209 pedigree breeds and will benefit from the extensive research that has been funded by the Kennel Club in conjunction with renowned veterinary research centres over the past 40 years. This will include updated breed standards to ensure that no dog is bred for features that might prevent it from seeing, walking and breathing freely. Judges will be fully briefed on the new breed standards so that only the healthiest dogs are rewarded in the show ring.
The Kennel Club is releasing the first of these new breed standards today, for the Pekingese, and has taken a tough line with the breed following extensive and abortive consultations. This is set to radically improve the health of the Pekingese which for nearly a hundred years was bred to have a flat face; a feature which can lead to breathing problems; under the new health plan the breed will be required to have a defined muzzle.
The breed health plans, which are scheduled to be completed by early next year, will also incorporate the results of a thorough, ongoing analysis of the health status and genetic diversity of each breed, drawing on results from the world’s largest dog health survey, conducted by the Animal Health Trust and funded by the Kennel Club Charitable Trust in 2004. This will ensure that breeders and buyers are aware of the health tests that should be carried out for each breed. The final part of the plans will look at ways breeders can expand the gene pool of the breed.
Well that certainly sounds very promising doesn't it?! It reads as a Mea culpa, apologia.
"Yes, the dogs are royally screwed up, and we accept that, and we are going to start down the road to (maybe) setting things right."
It would all be excellent if the Kennel Club had stopped there.
We would be ordering balloons and cake if the Kennel Club had stopped there.
But, of course, they did not.
No, instead, they have taken a page from Wall Street financier Henry Paulson who looted $700 million from Goldman Sach accounts before deciding to come to Washington for an even larger power-and-money grab. The Kennel Club missive continues:
In order to ensure that the plans are effective and reach all dogs, the Kennel Club has called on the government to give it statutory powers to make its established Accredited Breeder Scheme compulsory throughout the country. If successful, this would mean that all breeders who are not part of the scheme and who have not officially confirmed their willingness to follow the health standards set by the Kennel Club would be unable to produce or sell puppies within the law.
Eh? What's that?
Read that again.
Are they mad??!!!
The Kennel Club is a private club. They can change the rules and conditions of their Club anytime they want; they do not need government authority to do so.
Under no circumstances should statutory power ever be given to the Kennel Club.
Never.
Read what they have suggested in the paragraph above:
"All dog breeders who are not part of the scheme and who have not officially confirmed their willingness to follow the health standards set by the Kennel Club would be unable to produce or sell puppies within the law."
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.
The lurcher is not a Kennel Club breed, and neither is the Fell terrier, the Plummer Terrier or the Patterdale.
Does the Kennel Club think it will have power over those dogs?
It is a laughable assertion.
Fat ladies who have never dug to a dog will decide what a working Teckel looks like, and it will be about the paper not the dog?
Old men in wing tips and monogrammed hankies will decide what a border collie is, and it will have nothing to do with sheep on a hill?
Nameless faceless people meeting in secret will decide if you can sell your bandog, or if your Fox Hound is up to snuff (and never mind it's four seasons of honest work)?
Fair warning to Ronnie Irving, head of the Kennel Club and Caroline Kisko, chief spokesperson for the Kennel Club. Nothing will kill the Kennel Club quicker than this kind of arrogance. Nothing.
The largest protests in the history of Great Britain occured over the fox hunting ban, and those will be nothing as compared to the rise up over this offensive statement.
The breeding practices of your Club have positively wrecked every breed that has been brought into it, and now you say you are on a reform mission (not yet started) that requires you to have complete control over all dogs in the the U.K.?
Be careful there!
You have names and addresses, property to lose, and skin that I assume you want to preserve. You live in the country Ms. Kisko? Be careful there!
Fair warning.
Reform your own Club as outlined in the first part of your letter and move quickly to delete the offending paragraph and all thought associated with it.
Do it now before anyone hears of this bit of stupidity.
Deny it was ever written. Expunge it from the record with a footnote saying a few sentences were mistranscribed, or poorly edited, or misinterpreted.
Whatever. But take action.
You have been given fair warning.
And then get on with the commendable job of actually reforming your own Club so that, instead of being an embarassment it is a pride; instead of wrecking dogs, it is taking honest action to preserve working breeds and maintain canine health and diversity.
You do not need more control over anything to do that.
You only need true willingness and honest action, a swift pen and a firm hand.
Get on with it Ronnie Irving. You are writing your own history now. Make it about the dogs, and it will last. Make it about anything else, and it will not.
- Related Links
** BBC: Pedigree Dogs Exposed
** Making and Breaking Dogs in the Show Ring
** Inbred Thinking
** The Kennel Club: When Truth is Incovenient, Lie
** BBC Considers Cutting Crufts Coverage
** Kennel Club Inbreeding: Data Revealed
** The AKC, Facing Extinction, Banks on Misery Pups .
Protests against the ban will be nothing compared to the anti-Kennel Club rallies if the KC persists in their attempts to control all dogs in the U.K.
.
4 comments:
In regards to the Pekinese, has anyone considered extinction as the best option, rather than trying to "improve" this lost cause? Perhaps the Chinese had just realized this when the English were storming the Imperial Palace, and tried to kill off all the wretched little dogs--not to keep the outside world from aquiring a canine treasure, but out of embarrassment and in an effort to keep the outside world from discovering their dog-breeding blunder!....L.B.
The arrogance is so unbelievable as to make one reel. Is the KC now populated by born-again dog welfare advocates? I doubt it.
This is the animal rights dream - totalitarian control over who breeds what and who gets what. I'll bet Ingrid & Wayne are seething because they didn't think of it first.
Hate to use the old cliche but this really is hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.
Hopefully they will be laughed down, and soon.
The Pekingese is basically a mutated Tibetan Spaniel. If you look at early Pekingese and compare them to modern Tibetans, they are very similar.
If any kind of 'rehab' was going to be done on the Peke, I'm assuming outcrossing to those would be the most logical step.
From what I've read Pekingese (Beijing dogs) are common today in China. They look like this. There's a place for small companion dogs which fit into urban spaces and have moderate exercise requirements. The Pekingese, Tibetan Spaniel, Shih Tzu and Lhasa Apso were all breeds that were important in Lamaistic Buddhism and were exchanged between monasteries. The Japanese Chin is another related dog breed.
Recent research suggests that these are amongst the most ancient of dog breeds. There's absolutely no reason that they shouldn't be bred to a healthy and moderate standard.
Amanda
Post a Comment