Open Letter To The French Kennel Club
by Ludmilla Koslow on Monday, March 7, 2011 at 11:18am
I’m not a writer, and it’s not every day that I write to the French Kennel Club. But this time I just can’t sit still and not take some kind of action, but express my frustration over the situation in SLAG and the discussion about changing the Azawakh standard.
I live in Norway, and see the world from a Norwegian point of view. Here, official websites usually contain facts about the breed(s), information about activities, photos from dog show and other things in relation to dogs. In other words, the websites are democratic and neutral. I don’t know how this is in other parts of the world, but this is what we’re used to in the Nordic Countries. I might be naïve, and this might not apply to other places, so I need some help to understand several things.Is it normal for a Vice President of a club to link to his private blog from the Club’s official website? Is it normal to encourage the members of a Club to take sides and declare a member “enemy of the breed”? Is it normal to terrorize and harass a well known breeder in a private blog that is linked from the official website of the Club? Is it room for totalitarianism in a breed club? And last, shouldn’t there be any kind of ethical guidelines that the leaders of a breed club have to respect? Maybe this is how democracy works?
We are all humans and we all have our strengths and weaknesses, but there are moral and ethical rules about how a discussion about the breed standards should be done. We live in the 21st Century and should act like it. Azawakh is a numerously small breed, but well represented with academically very knowledgeable enthusiasts. There is no room for ignoring the expertise of genetic doctorates and veterinarians, or to sweep away academic arguments about a breed where all individual dogs are descendants from only 13 specific dogs. What does one gain by attacking a person who has dedicated her life to the breed Azawakh, giving her ultimatums and threatening to exclude her from the Breed Club? Is this war in Iraq, where you are “either with us or against us”?
I urge the French Kennel Club to investigate if the leaders of SLAG are acting in a democratic and ethical correct way.
Yours sincerely,
Ludmilla Koslow
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The war on color in the Azawakh in the European show circles has escalated to a hysterical level. Color is cosmetic. Color is superficial. To become obsessed with superficial, cosmetic issues is ridiculous. Human racial bias based on color differences are becoming a matter of history. Similarly, one should redirect attention away from prejudices against an Azawakh due to its color, and focus on the more serious business of protecting this rare creature by preserving its precious genetic resources. Most important of all, we should focus on ISSUES, and not be so low class as to be attacking a person due to jealousy or some other hidden agenda. That an officer of SLAG would create a blog dedicated to disseminate such vitriolic personal attacks is an abuse of his office.
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