An Answer to Roy Allan’s WUSV Article by Malcolm Griffiths

Roy Allan’s article in the Breed Council Magazine March 1998 certainly came as something of a shock as I had not seen his earlier publication in Dog World. I have been asked by several people for my opinion and thought I would contribute to the debate publicly.
     I was not aware that the WUSV had in effect decided upon more stringent adherence to its rules, and I doubt very much if most GSD people in Britain had any idea that the BAGSD or League or both had, by virtue of the fact that they have signed up, committed their members to the WUSV ideals. My first reaction was to question whether or not a referendum of members should have been instigated prior to the unilateral decision to sign was made.
                   Mr. Allan quite rightly comments on these two clubs’ position in relation to our Kennel Club, as I doubt the KC would be very much in favour of this move and wonder if there is a clause within the constitution of the League and BAGSD which prevented them joining any federation of clubs at all, certainly one used to be in the rule book of BGSDTC when I was secretary.
                   Be that as it may, the whole question of trying to implement the German system here needs        consideration. I should state at the outset that I am in favour of breed improvement through more control of breeding practices however the chances of any such controls being implemented in this Country are at best slim.
        Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see Britain put back on the map as a leading force on the world-wide GSD scene, and yes I do mean put back! The fact is that Britain has fallen from grace, been left behind and falls ever further down the league table year on year. Compare us to the likes of Australia, a country geographically disadvantaged, which has operated a strict breed survey system for several years. Their         National shows Open classes for each sex contain virtually 100% breed surveyed, and in the case of males haemophilia tested stock.
                They do not however implement a test of courage through German methods within their breed survey or at shows. Until the late 60’s Australia could not even import dogs from Europe and now they have a National show which in terms of quality would rank in the top 5 in the world. Its hip scheme is an integral part of its breed survey scheme and so on.
                   How did they achieve this in such a short space of time? Well I can tell you it was not by asking if exhibitors would accept compulsory surveys, hip scoring and the like. They made the rules and you had to follow them, simple as that. I have personal experience of several other countries having judged in them.
              Argentina has a Sieger show with 1000 plus GSD’s, they have Schutzhund and a courage test at their Sieger show. Uruguay a small South American Country has the same controls, Chile the same. Even Spain, a country which I used to visit as a handler 15 years ago, has controls through breed surveys and has a well recognised Sieger show with courage tests. Twenty years ago the President of the Spanish GSD Club was showing British Imports from kennels such as Eveley, Flawforth and Hendrawens. He is now President of the Spanish Kennel Club and the GSD Club in Spain is world recognised as are their dogs. Several Spanish bred animals have taken top youth titles and VA places at the German Sieger show. This demonstrates how other Countries are leaving us behind, in this Country we still run round a small ring in Novice looking for the red card or the CC. It was that way in 1968 when I started and remains the same today.
               Perhaps some analysis is called for. Why have we made little progress in world-wide terms? The reasons you may think are complex on the other hand you may think them very simple. Firstly we are British and have the inherent attitude of the dislike of being "Ordered" to do anything, we have paid lip service to the ideals from Germany. Yes, we have a hip scheme, breed survey, tattooing and we are now starting to train judges. Yet  with all this in place you can still win a top award at our National Two Day show with a cringing coward with a hip score of 106 who, if he ran away from the showground, the police may not be able to identity him because he  wasn’t tattooed. You can mate any bitch you like to him at any age, she can be white, Iongcoated have to suck her food because she has no teeth to chew with and you can sell the pups with the recognised KC registration   paper which to most pet owners is the sign of a well bred dog.
             If you as a breeder were told you should not breed from that" you would be quite within your rights to say ‘who are you to tell me?" and that attitude is the very crux of the matter in Britain. I doubt we will ever accept any such forced control UNLESS we HAVE to.
               Such control does not have to apply to everyone, although the ideal would be that it should. They have a white and Long Coats club in Germany. The people who would be controlled are those who breed for the showring or for working dogs. Those who set themselves up as "breeders", those who "want to improve the breed", those who want the most Champions the most CC’s. If you do breed for the showring, and incidentally   everyone who shows dogs did not get involved in the first instance to set about improving it they simply wanted to win something with their dog, then you are targeted. You must hip score, tattoo and breed survey, now you must test of haemophilia, sign the breeders charter etc. etc. if you don’t you WILL be talked about. In short if you are a semi-professional breeder and wish to be ‘In" then you are almost at a disadvantage to those who do not  choose to do the right things. Be that as it may the people who show are the ones required to carry out the breed improvement schemes.
             These same people are club members, committee members, club representatives to the Breed Council. A relatively small group. It is up to them to make some pretty historic decisions if the WUSV rules are to be applied in this Country. Not forgetting of course our judges. Leaving to one side for a moment the huge problem we have in this Country with our governing body the Kennel Club, let us suppose that the KC had agreed to us implementing all the schemes we wanted, all the rules and regulations which would bring us in line with the WUSV. I would suggest the following as a way of quickly bringing about real change.
                            1. At the next Judges conference, instead of talking about what we are going to do about handlers who won’t do what the judge asks, pass the following rules for judges.

                                                        a) All dogs will be checked for tattoo numbers.

                                                        b) All judges will not award a CC or Excellent rating to a dog which is not in possession of a breed survey class 1.

                                                   2. The League and BAGSD give over the WUSV vote to the Breed Council.

                                                   3. Registration of puppies will be controlled by the Breed Council, the KC will endorse such registrations issued with official pedigrees.

                                                   4. Puppies will only be registered from parents which are hip scored, identified and breed surveyed.

                                                   5. Animals are only allowed a breed survey when hip scored, identified and have passed a working and or courage test.

                                                   6. Admission to the open class at any premier level show will be on the basis that they adhere to 5 above.

                                                   7. Schutzhund degrees will be necessary before a dog can obtain a breed survey.

                 Radical? Yes! Likely to bring about change? For sure! Pie in the sky? Absolutely! Yet these are the sort of changes that would have to be implemented before we would be fully integrated with the WUSV guidelines. I almost forgot the Kennel Club. The chances of their treating the GSD fraternity as anything special  or different is simply not going to happen. So it seems on the face of it that we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand we want to be members of the WUSV, to play on the world stage. On the other we cannot implement the WUSV will, even if we could would we want too?
             Let us look at the practicality of implementation of the above "Changes". Let us go through the scenario of an existing breeder and exhibitor who has up to this point been very successful. He has won lots of CC’s is a judge, and has bred champions. On January 1st 2000 the new rules are to be implemented. He has five bitches in his kennels all of breeding age. He is pretty conscientious so that all his stock are tattooed, hip scored and worthy of being rated excellent at existing breed shows. He is thinking of entering two bitches at the forthcoming breed speciality show in March 2000. None of his animals have even been trained to walk to heel, track, do agility let alone face a "criminal". What does he do now? He has no idea about training because he has never had to, so the following problems face him.
            1. How and where does he train his dog? Taking into account we do not have in this Country town clubs where training for Schutzhund has been practised for very long.
           2. Then he thinks "I’ll employ a professional trainer to do the SCH degrees for me". Fine, but where are they, how much will it cost and how long will it take?
           3. Are his dogs, several of which are 2 years of age and never had any training apart from running around in circles, going to accept the pressures of having to work and use their brains for a change?
         All of a sudden our successful "show" breeder is at a disadvantage because he has not worked his dogs. He is interested in breed improvement as long as that does not involve him in training 4 nights a week for his SCH degrees and now he cannot win the top award at the forthcoming show in March because time is too short his bitch may not do the courage test on the day and so on. What a great leveller you may be thinking!
         Looking a little deeper, and when you come to think about it us show people having been going the "German way" for 15-20 years, our dogs look "German", the SV judges from Germany tell us "yes the animals I have seen today could win anywhere in the world including Germany", we are all interested in breed       improvement up to a point but all of a sudden  we have hit a brick wall. Our dogs don’t work.
        What are we going to do? Panic sets in as Mr. & Mrs. "Showdogs" suddenly realise that they could be kicked off the top of the pile by him down the road, whose dogs could never beat theirs normally but they have been trained for work and can demonstrate it!
        Now whilst I have written the above with more than a little "tongue in cheek" the reality is exactly as described. The fact is though that 90% of our showdogs could pass schutzhund degrees, if in the right hands, however I am not sure that those "hands" exist in Britain yet. To become fully integrated on the world
 scene this is what you as a showgoer will be faced with. I’m all for it, if it can be achieved, but the practicalities of the situation seem to me to be almost insurmountable if for no other reason than that The Kennel Club will not permit it.
       After having said all this British dogs have achieved good results at the Sieger show, been trained for Schutzhund both in Germany and in Britain. The Irish and British Schutzhund clubs are doing a great job but      this leads me to another question. Why do people who join the Schutzhund clubs tend to turn their backs on the show world? Now I understand this does not apply to all those who are interested in Schutzhund but it does      seem that its either one or the other show OR work. From my own experience it seems that the general consensus amongst the Working people is that modern show lines are mostly not suitable for competitive schutzhund. I do not accept the fact that to be a top working  dog the animal should be of "old" breeding and be so anatomically faulty as to remind one of pictures of shepherds of the 20’s. It can be done, the balance can be struck between a good looking dog and a working dog, it has to be that way, for as much as Von Stephanitz decreed that the shepherd dog is a working dog he also laid down a standard of physical attributes which encompassed his ideal of how the dogs should look. This same situation exists in Germany you have the         "show" people and the "working people". If this situation is to continue then there needs to be a rethink by those who control the world of Schutzhund both here and abroad.
             I am just being practical. Mr. Allan mentions that a special situation exists in the U.S. and Britain. However the American Schutzhund Club gained access to the WUSV at a time when it was not, I believe, recognised by its Kennel Club. The movement started with Schutzhund and now also operates breed shows and so the Shepherd scene in the states has taken a recent upsurge of interest again. It lay in the doldrums during the 70’s and 80’s held in the shadow of the AKC  "American" type Shepherd and shows, now it is          becoming more European again through the Schutzhund clubs. The amount of imports from Germany to America is rapidly increasing and the amount of US involvement with German dogs based in Germany has also increased. The 1997 Sieger Lasso Neuen Berg  is American owned.
               Mr. Allan touches on Dr. Willis’ involvement and he talks about breaking away from the Kennel Club. Mr. Allan is, I understand, president of the British Schutzhund Association a body unapproved of by the Kennel Club and to which it gives no recognition roughly along the lines that they do not agree with encouraging aggression in dogs. Which is a sound enough reason it if is true. There was some years ago a lot of pressure on the SV  itself to stop training dogs to "attack" a criminal. A body of "Antis" were very vocal and the SV had to combat bad publicity with press releasing showing the positive aspects of our breed.
   Breaking away from the Kennel club is not an option. It will not work, co-operation and mutual understanding is the only possibility but I would not like to be the one to try and negotiate such a deal with the Kennel club. If  you are finally committed to going down the road of true European integration and putting Britain back on the map then a clear strategy would have to be planned. There are several other subjects to consider. I have heard rumours about the FCI forming some sort of a body in Britain or at least forcing our Kennel Club to become members of the FCI  along the lines of greater European Union.
         Quarantine may be a thing of the past soon. Will our exhibitors simply take their dogs to continental Europe and employ trainers there to train their dogs for Schutzhund? Will there be greater numbers of continental exhibitors interested in showing in Britain? Will Britain be ready to stage the International Competitions referred to in the constitution of the WUSV. Never thought about it? Well better start.
        Perhaps the Breed Council could put its time  and now, I notice, not inconsiderable funds  towards better use. To quote Mr. Allan’s comment: - "While this engenders fierce local pride in the achievements of those particular clubs, it also provides the seeds of dissent, so that much of the activity in the GSD world has been concerned with factional strife. Energies have been taken up with these sorts of  problems often to the greater extent that the energies devoted to the improvement of the breed". Never a truer word written! We do have a habit within our breed, through clubs, committees and more recently breed councils of dealing with the petty rather than the important. Buying computers rather than clubhouse, fighting each other rather than joining forces towards improvement at all levels. I put it to the breed council that those who see themselves as the "elite" have plenty to think about now. Make Britain’s return to the first division of the GSD world your priority  instead of scoring points at the expense of others.
          Yes I agree with all the requirements of the WUSV they are good sense, and yes I think the average British GSD exhibitor would benefit and actually enjoy training his show dogs. The sooner the focus is diverted from the Kennel Club CC to a grading system the better. It is a far greater pleasure to say that you were Excellent 5 from 35 in Open at the British National than 5th in Open at the Champ show last weekend. If this comes about, the so called bad losers, lack of atmosphere and declining entries our ‘Breed note’ columnists harp on about will decline. The exhibitors will have more to think about than their petty jealousy, they will be too busy training their dogs!!
          If the foregoing frightens you don’t let it. We British are also Europeans, we are capable of bringing about certain changes. We are just as capable, given the correct training, to Schutzhund train our dogs. Couple this with the acknowledged British flare for producing the right kind of dogs In terms of conformation, we too can breed dogs capable of competing at the highest level, ANYWHERE. But if you think "no it could never happen here" then you might as well resign yourself to being under the label "romp along doing your own thing".