Thursday, October 23, 2008

AKC BOD minutes - 10/13/2008 - AKC FSS Ridiculousness

How do you keep the best working dogs out of your registry as you accept a "new" breed into your system? Talk out of both sides of your mouth.

This will be the last of the AKC Board Minutes posts for today. I'll comment specifically on the group realignment report contained in the previous post at a later date. But I'll briefly comment on this gem today because it speaks volumes:

"Irish Red & White Setter Request - The Board reviewed a request from the Irish Red & White Setter Association, Inc. Following a motion by Mr.Merriam, seconded by Mrs. Strand, it was VOTED (unanimously) to not accept American Field Dog StudBook (FDSD) or North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association (NAVHDA) pedigrees for Irish Red andWhite Setters."

Can you hear them? "We don't want those UGLY working dogs in our stud books... but we can't just say that. We have to find another excuse. What's to do? Hey, I've got it! We must preserve the integrity of the registry! Those working lines might be 'tainted', how do we know? For over 100 years we've never had any breedings which were undocumented, falsely documented, or otherwise erroneous. Yeah, that's it... that sounds credible, people will buy that, won't they?"

Later in the minutes we find this:

"During the month of September the DNA program resulted in the correction of 190 litter registrations, affecting 237 registered dogs. Additionally, the registrations of 98 litters, including 144 registered dogs, were converted to conditional registration and the registrations of 22 litters were canceled, affecting 36registered dogs."

That's from just -one- month of applying DNA research to the AKC's unsullied, infallible registry. Good thing they aren't going to ruin it all by admitting the FDSD and/or NAVHDA stud books to help establish the Irish Red & White Setter as it gains full AKC recognition.

We wouldn't want to broaden the foundational gene pool with field proven stock... that would be crazy!!!