Well, I really hate to dispel the good times so many people were having on the various chat rooms claiming that Carmen Battaglia had sponsored Andrew Hunt for membership in the GSD Club of America, and that Jimmy Moses had seconded the nomination. Truth be told, any owner of a German Shepherd may apply for membership without a sponsor or a second! Spin that one out, those of you so intent upon seeing Carmen lose in the upcoming board election. (By the way, I haven't made up my mind as to whom I would support, were I to belong to a member club and able to instruct my delegate.) But I know one thing—don't oppose Carmen on that point, for sure. It's just not the case. Now, let's take the GSD Club's procedures a step further. When a person applies, he/she is elected to membership in the club, unless a complaint comes in about the individual applicant. If a complaint is made, it goes to the board of directors of the club, as it was explained to me, who then vote on the individual in question in Executive Session. Any proceedings that take place in Executive Session are secretive, to the point that anything declared publicly in “ES” can cause the exposer to be expelled from the board! In this case, it was the board member of the GSD who did the “leaking.” In the case of the Petland leak, if indeed it came from a board member, that person could have been thrown off that board as well.
For your information, the GSD Club has no Code of Ethics requirement for membership but does have a Breeder Practice Code. Now for the case in point. Hunt applies for membership, and people within the club begin to complain. The board has to vote. It was supposed to have come up during the club's National but was postponed until last week. While the vote is being taken in “ES,” a member of the GSD Club's board who is sitting in the meeting with a laptop computer messages the results of the vote to another member, who immediately puts it on the Internet. A terrible thing to do, particularly because it was done during Executive Session, but even if the member had waited, it would still have been taboo. The ironic thing about this use of immediate messaging is that Carmen is said to do the same thing during regular board meetings at AKC. Which, while legal and permissible, is most questionable—to my mind, at any rate. Well, the vote is illegally announced, and it is 9-8—no one bothered to say, though, that there was one abstention and one form of absentee. Well, the world goes wild blaming Carmen for Hunt's admission. How does anyone know how he voted? These were secret votes, with an abstention to boot!
Quite frankly, I also have mixed emotions about Hunt's admission to any AKC member club, but unless there is a specific reference or violation of a club's rule, I'm not too sure how you even enforce such a feeling. Nonetheless, he is elected a member, and the proverbial stuff hits the fan. Not only that, it is assumed and stated (note what the first three letters of assume spell) that Carmen voted for Hunt. Well, two things on that point. I made it a pretty good presumption, too, how he voted, until I heard there was an abstention in the vote. Even without the abstention, unless you know for sure, how can you accuse someone when you don't have the actual vote in front of you? You just can't operate using those standards. If you decide not to support Carmen, believe me, it should be done on a basis other than the Hunt vote. That's what I think anyway.
The PETA court decision in North Carolina was anything but a slam-dunkvictory. The PETA employees were found guilty of an improper disposal of their victims'—some 30 or so dogs and cats—bodies. In effect, they were acquitted of animal cruelty but were found guilty of littering. The trial accomplished, at the very least, an awareness and an awakening to people throughout the nation that PETA is not the “holier than thou” organization it holds itself out as being. Vulnerable they are, and this point should be stressed over and over again.
Certainly, it was astounding to open Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE to find it devoted to designer dogs. Giving this kind of breeding a credibility it certainly does not deserve, the article was not one-sided but destructive, in the sense that it gave publicity to a less-than-worthwhile practice. Come the loonies now following the TIMES. USA TODAY, on Tuesday, runs a complimentary-type article full of obvious misquotes and misstatements. Reads as though they were prompted by the TIMES, but what prompted the TIMES, one must ask. Was it the nearness of Westminster? Ennui with Bush and Iraq, or an undercurrent planted by Mark Derr? He's no friend of AKC, and was favorably mentioned in this article, and is someone upon whom the TIMES depends as an authority of sorts. The credibility of the writer Jon Mooallem's background, and his authority in the field, is questionable at most. Oh, well, we've withstood stronger and tougher criticism, but it does not help when our own constituents in the Pug Club come off sounding as though they were scripted from the movie “Best in Show.”
Many of you will be reading this after Westminster; others before it. Whatever the case, I hope you had a good time at the “Big W,” a winning time at the “Big W” and the specialties, and enjoyed not only this issue of DOG NEWS but also the others to come throughout the year as well. •