[ SHOWGSD-L ] Continental Kennel Club/PAWS
- From: RihadinK9@xxxxxxx
- To: showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 03:25:09 EDT
I have been saying this for years!
PERMISSION TO CROSSPOST.
I just received a phone call from a local Fancy member who has been active
in breeding/showing for more than twenty years. She called because she was
looking in our local paper and could only find three listings for AKC dogs
among hundreds of CAC listings. She said that she had not looked at the ads
in
the paper for some time and what she saw shocked her. â??What happened to
all
the AKC breeders?â?? she asked. I told her I was aware of the problem and
had been seeing it get worse for many years.
Then, I asked if she remembered the presentations that I had made to our
kennel club on this very issue. The point of my presentations was that the
Fancy was killing itself by being so choosy about whom they sold dogs to and
by
charging so much for pets. She remembered. She said that she had no idea
that the situation was this bad. She added that AKCâ??s inspections were
also a problem and said the inspectors were like â??Nazis.â?? She also
disliked
the AKC rule requiring that each dog wear a collar with its name on it. She
said she knew all her dogsâ?? names and did not need a collar to remind her.
Over the years this woman and I have discussed the Fancy and animal rights.
She is a bit â??AR-fuzzy.â?? For example, she rarely breeds. I have never
known her to have more than one litter every couple of years. She is very
proud of who gets her dogs but does not, however, charge exorbitant prices
for
them. She told me today that she thought I had exaggerated the problem â??
until
now.
What problem? It is that the AKC has been committing a slow suicide for
years. It has done so in an attempt to placate philosophical extremists.
Did
these extremists march, armed, in the front door and demand anything of the
AKC? No. Instead, they read â??The Art of War.â?? Not only did they read
it, they studied it. They plotted, they planned and they went into action.
They
propagandized and perpetrated misrepresentations and lies. They did it by
speaking to the hearts of dog lovers, not their minds. Ultimately, they
infiltrated. Inserting actual dissidents was not necessary. They had
sycophants sympathetic to their cause. These sycophants, some of them in the
Dog
Fancy, urged the AKC to change. Members of the Fancy who helped convince the
AKC were not even aware of the AR influence. Yet, the result was that the
AKC slowly morphed away from being merely a registry and into an
â??all-purposeâ??
organization.
How did this happen? When animal rightsâ?? extremists accused the AKC of
irresponsible breeding, the Fancy got more â??responsible.â?? When AR
extremists
accused the Fancy of being â??puppy millers,â?? the Fancy bred fewer litters.
When AR extremists accused the Fancy of breeding for profit and not caring
who got their puppies, the Fancy began treating the sale of puppies like â??
adoptions.â?? When AR extremists accused the Fancy of breeding for
â??vanity,â??
the Fancy started testing for all the potential genetic problems for which
they could possibly test. When the AR extremists accused the Fancy of not
caring what happened to dogs they had bred, the Fancy started purebred rescue
and taking back dogs when â??adoptionsâ?? failed. Nevertheless, no matter
what
the Fancy
did, it was not enough. What the Fancy failed to realize was that nothing
it did, or could ever do, short of stopping breeding entirely, would make
animal rights extremists happy.
In other words, whenever extremists attacked them, the Fancy â??fought backâ??
by trying to become a kinder, gentler AKC. The more it gave on issues, the
more its registration numbers decline, while registrations with the â??third
worldâ?? registries have grown exponentially. The AKC has already moved as
far as it can afford to move.
Two forces drive the AKC now, whether the current board understands the
fact or not. One is the continual public criticism of the AKC by animal
rightsâ??
extremists, and their sycophants, who want to eliminate all breeding.
While this minority is small, they are extremely successful at framing
issues,
using isolated examples to denigrate all breeders, and selling their views
to the
masses. They, also, take any incremental change in law, or philosophy,
which furthers their extremist agenda. The AKC is apparently totally blind
to
how seriously this affects and effects them.
The other driving force is declining registrations. The AKC is, no doubt,
growing increasingly desperate to reverse this trend. It has to affect
every decision that the Board of Directorsâ?? makes. Blaming the decline on
bad
publicity and so-called â??puppy millers,â?? who have moved to other
registries
to avoid the AKC rules and regulations, is so easy. Both, no doubt,
negatively affected registrations. For instance, bad publicity probably
served to
open
some potential ownersâ?? minds to getting dogs registered with other
registries.
Pandoraâ??s box, thus opened, provided ample opportunity for puppy mill
breeders sick of AKCâ??s new policies to go to other registries and they did.
The AKC is just now awakening to these facts and, in a desperate effort to
right past wrongs and inaction, it is endorsing PAWS. The problem is that
damage is already done. Animal rightsâ?? extremists defeated the AKC in
â??round
one.â?? The enactment of PAWS will not â??revampâ?? AKCâ??s image like it
hopes
and it will not increase registrations. What it will do is give round two
to the extremists by default.
The only way that AKC can effectively address the continued decline in
registrations is to abandon its useless attempts to garner the approval of an
extremist group. Animal rights extremists will never, under any
circumstances,
ever approve of what the AKC does, i.e., register dogs. The AKC absolutely
cannot afford to get this one wrong; however, if PAWS is any indication of
what they have planned, the Fancy is in very deep trouble.
PAWS will contribute to a further decline in registrations. What the AKC
fails to see is that: The fewer dogs registered with AKC, the more dogs
registered with the third-world kennel clubs. The more registered with
third-world kennel clubs, the fewer ads there are with AKC dogs in them. The
ads
are how most people learn about the AKC. One is not born knowing what A-K-C
stands
for. Most people, even if they know someone who shows dogs, could not tell
which registry was behind the shows if their lives depended on it. If the
AKC does not appear in ads, it will fade still further from the publicâ??s
awareness. Ultimately, AKC will be a sad echo of things past, the fond
memory
of old timers who like to share stories of the grand old days.
The AKC is a dog registry. Any illusions it may have that it can
â??recreateâ??
itself in the image of an organization like HSUS need to be rethought.
Nothing would be a more fatal blow to AKC than such an attempt. Those groups
are not registries. They can and will thrive whatever happens to the AKC.
Those organizations are parasites that profit from continuous negative
assaults on the AKC, knowing it to be the â??flag shipâ?? of the registry
fleet. If
they
take it down, they doom the Fancy but all they have to do is start
attacking another registry.
AKC is at a pivotal point in its history. When training dogs, if one has a
problem, one â??returns to the basics,â?? and that is exactly what AKC needs
to do. RETURN TO THE BASICS!
Donna Malone
Vice President, Responsible Animal Owners of Tennessee - a nonprofit
organization promoting the humane treatment of animals and responsible animal
ownership - Because Love is Not Enough!
Ginger Cleary, Rome, GA
"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not
have, nor do they deserve, either one." Benjamin Franklin.
_http://www.rihadin.com_ (http://www.rihadin.com/)
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