Opinions on this article? - Page 1

Would be interested to know what those of you involved with the AKC think of this article. The article about dobermans is particularily troubling! 

http://www.thedogpress.com/ClubNews/Breed-Clubs-Attack_Byer-149.asp

Well I would guess there is a grain of truth in the article, going by similar concerns with the British

Kennel Club.  I think maybe it is over-egging the pudding a bit, though.  Won't comment on the

Doberman Club stuff, as I'm unfamiliar with the nuances of breed club c/f AKC finance etc -

but I would like to point out one area in which I think the linked article is a wee bit veering towards

the hysterical :

It is a much more linked-up world nowadays than when KCs in general came into being, & show-judging

is an international pastime for those qualified to do it.  We ask Judges to have the Standard in mind

when they go over a dog.  That sometime means looking differently at the version of the Standard, from

country to country. Tail docking has become increasingly unpopular in modern times.  Natural

tails make a definite difference to the look and balance of a dog's outline.  It is only sensible for Standards

to give Judges some idea of what the better full length tails should look like,  especially in a mixed class

of docked & undocked entries.  Judges will see an increasing amount of undocked dogs - fact.  They ought 

to know what to look for.  Breeders changing course mid-stream need to know what tails to breed for.

Such amendments do not, of themselves, encourage nationalities to ban docking.

Hundmutter, it wasn't the attitude towards docking that bothered me, but the attitude towards changing the dog's TEMPERAMENT that bothered me!

It would be like insisting the GSD change its basic nature so there were no longer any dogs that acted aloof towards strangers, or no longer any dogs that used their own brains when a blind person told them to walk out into traffic! THAT'S what bothered me!  Changing the dog's basic nature to suit the consumer.

Not that this hasn't happened already in some of the lines. In 30 years experience with our breed, I've yet to own a GSD that was truly aloof with strangers.  Tasha didn't like you getting right in her face on first meeting, but she'd also stick her nose in your crotch with no hesitation whatsoever, and she's the closest I've come to having an aloof dog.

I've never heard of AKC intitating any breed standard changes; all changes first come from the parent breed club at the request of 2/3 of the membership. And I've never heard of AKC disallowing any revisions that were requested by a parent club unless that change would put that club in violation of it's by laws and/or AKC rules. In the past when I served on the board of a breed club, AKC did "suggest" that standard be revised using certain terms so that there was more consistency from breed to breed, but they didn't suggest any revisions to the breed itself. We were asked to consider removing the color description "wolf gray" because it suggested there is wolf ancestry in the dogs' pedigree, but that was it. The members did vote to remove that.

I would consider the source/writer. ??

SS, look for similar behavior from the CKC, there is already a committee addressing the issue as we speak. 

Sunny, forgive me for missing the point.  It really wasn't all that obvious.  Even if you read the Dobies

link in full, comment on general  training, and that FOR POLICE WORK, is hardly given much precedence,

and there is NO mention of 'bitework' at all, so the reader is left to be able to know about that for themself.

I confess that it is now so long since Dobermanns were regularly used in a security capacity, this was not

the thought uppermost in my mind.

Like Blitzen I am not convinced that AKC will take out references from Standards to training and substitute more

about producing 'customers' dogs ,  rather than working dogs;  it is normally not regarded

 as a Kennel Club function in most places to concern themselves with altering specifics inside

breed standards,  they tend to leave those matters to the Breed Clubs - and I can see nothing in the article that

really COMMITS them to breaking that habit in the case of Dobes  (much less GSDs).  And as Nans says,

consider the source.  This all seems rather like the Pedigree Dogs Exposed stuff Jemima Harrison got up to, a few

years back;  the GSD community in the UK ended up irritated about her zeroing in on conformational faults with no

obvious health detriment, but thanking its lucky stars the reporters and their allies were not shouting about Manwork ! 

Although along with the kneejerk, breed-specific Dangerous Dogs legislation, there were certainly mutterings in some

quarters !