Ask not what your club can do for you......

I have asked around and talked to old timers and searched the AKC website and what I have come up with is the goal or mission of a Parent Club is to Promote the breed. Light bulb moment, I did not know that. I have also discovered it is to Protect and Preserve the breed. I am pretty sure those objectives have been around for a long time and should not be arbitrarily tossed out the window in favor of developing a pet following HOWEVER...... We can add to those phrases and we can figure out how including ALL of our puppy people in fact,  does help to promote and protect and preserve.

Here is some food for thought.... 

**there is only so many ready willing and able volunteers per 100 members. We have just over 200. That gives us a finite amount of help. Imagine if we had 400.   We would double our ability to bring value to all members.   We are talking about 1214 puppies from 2018.    The club is not going to be for all of them, we know that.    But what about 100, that is less than 10%.   We are now including a bit of an intro with all new members.  Thank you Dianne!   This is a huge ice breaker.   We need to get to know these people and put our club arm around them in.   Members in their area can step up and say "hi, you come here often?"  or better yet “hi, ever been to a Fast Cat”?   

**Ever feel like you are preaching to the choir?   I have heard a 100 times on FB “my dog’s friendly” followed by “that is fine but mine is not”    I have heard say no to dog parks over and over.   I know we ALL would love new people to share our experiences with, to help thru tough times, and teach about one of our biggest passions, Staffordshire Bull Terriers.    I know for a fact WE all love to share knowledge and offer advice.   I see it every day. 

**We have a magazine and multiple events all around the country.     There is plenty of room there for pet families to have value.   I love the Pet Corner idea in the Magazine.    We are planning a “Meet the Member” for the next issue and all subsequent issues.  I would love more information on after purchase support of your new puppy.  First 1 ½ years of puppy activities.    How many of your new homes were shocked when their dog social puppy became a sharp with other dogs when he/she hit two.    Not every breeder has time for every new needy puppy owner, but guess what, WE DO!!

**The Magazine needs help.    I would like to see a team instead of one person.   This is a lot of work to put together and extremely costly for the club.   We need to breathe some new life into it.   We are working on it, but we need help. 

**The Website needs a facelift.   Just know, we are ON IT DOT COM!! 

The fact of the matter remains we need more members.  We need breeders to feel safe and comfortable and trusting about referring their new owners which means ensuring all puppies are registered and that we play nice with ALL breeders and all new owners.   We need to bring back people we lost.   We need to add value to our club for these people.  We need a reason to stay when things are not soft and fluffy.  Having members who are purely pet people can also fill the void for volunteers at trials and shows.    Those are also gateway drugs to entering said shows and trials and getting another Stafford.    Being better support to all Stafford owners, not just your own, is to me what it is all about. 

When we were campaigning this last fall you all asked a ton of questions.    I have not forgotten.    From those questions and my answers I came up with these goals for my term.   I believe working on these 3 goals will cover most of membership concerns.  

Improve Finances:  Hold revenue generating performance events which makes us financially healthier and also highlights and includes performance people and their dogs as vital and important to us.     Getting more members will increase our pool of potential volunteers and also increases our financial health.   Those volunteers bring ideas and elbow grease with them.    More members mean more volunteers.   Seriously, what is more enthusiastic than a new puppy owner, other than their puppy?

Be better Educators:   The Judges Education is on fire right now.   They have also been tasked with educating membership right up with the judges.  They have been given a beefy list of goals and objectives.  From now on whatever judges get we get.   This absolutely leaves a hole for Pet and Training and General Stafford husbandry but it is part of the education plan.   

Faster Information / Communication:  The dissemination of information and how we do it is perhaps the most important.  Do what we say and say what we do!  The magazine is great and has an important purpose but we are missing so much time sensitive information because it will be too late to us.  We have had 3 pseudo club newsletters since my term began.    This newsletter will evolve over time.  People and regions can and should submit things for us to include.   We may make a judgement that something should be in the magazine but the odds are high we can get it out to members right away.    As President I want to get your show and event information, out to members.    I want to get that educational seminar we are having at a show out to all of you before it fills up and especially before it is an article in the SS about its success.  You all need to know what's up as soon as possible.

All of these things will make us a more value added club.  I am sure the board will tell you that we are working at light speed behind the scenes.     There is a chicken or the egg thing going on here, though.   We can’t attract and keep members until we do certain things but we can’t do certain things until we have more participation and volunteers (members).    This is not to discount the volunteers who are working tirelessly now.  They are doing amazing with the resources we have in place.    Imagine doubling it!!  

We need this AKC Pilot Program.   Really we do.  We will give them stats from last year and they will provide a program with our breed specific advice and then when the year is over we will have the stats to compare its success.    It costs us nothing except to register our puppies which we should be doing anyway.   As Judith says in today’s world a person needs proof of ownership.    Thanks Judith, spot on!

Ask not what your club can do for you but what can you do for your club!   We do need help right now. 

Raising Health Consciousness

Health testing and health consciousness is not about today and the litter you bred that is all grown up that has not had any issues, or at least any that you know of.   Breeder health consciousness is about what we don’t know;

• The 10 year old dog who has trouble in his shoulders because he jumped out of the SUV too many times before his puppy joints were properly closed.    Now he spends the next 4 years in pain before he dies because pet home says "oh he is just old".
•  The young dog who needs knee surgery and the pet home who does not understand the importance of being super diligent with post surgery therapy.
•  The family with a broken heart because their beloved dog has LP that they have spent years and lots of money and heart break because the vets thought it was a heart lung issue.   Turns out LP is in the lines. 
•  The pet home whose puppy is deaf and they have no idea and believe the puppy has behavior problems.
•  The 7 year old from a previous litter that dropped dead during the day while no one was home and the owners tell no one and do not find out why to give feedback to their breeder. 
•  Pet homes who do not understand about the signs that your dog is unwell and suffering. 
•  The two independent families with litter mates whose dogs are acting strange and are each spending more money than they have for diagnostics leaving the vets stumped and referring to them to a expensive Neurologist when the breeder has the answers but did not test the adults for a known heritable disease.  
• The 1000s of dollars spent on a 4 year old because the dog has early onset glaucoma.   This would have been discovered in eye tests as a puppy according to the canine ophthalmologist.

The stories above are very true.  I know more.  Some of them are very close to me and some happened to me.   I think I have forgotten more than I remember.  I can go on.    Breeders need to be hyper sensitive to health issues.    Breeders need to learn everything they can to educate themselves to be in tune and close to canine health and their lines as is humanly possible.     

The SBTCA recommendations are not pulled from thin air to frustrate us or make anyone look bad or less of a breeder anymore than watching a dog in the ring with a bad front or light eyes or any other fault does.  Getting a CHIC # does not cost anymore time or money than one out of state specialty weekend.   The CHIC program is not something created to give you some smug bragging rights but it is worthy of putting the # at the end of your dogs name like a title.   OFA is a free but valuable tool.  I am thrilled to use OFA every day.   How LUCKY are we to have this great database.   Unfortunately it speaks more about who is not using it than who is, at this time.  It costs money to send your tests in but basically it is free to look up dogs and kennels and breed wide statistics.   I check breed stats all the time.    It is so much easier than keeping paper documents in a folder or worse a pile of papers we never get round to filing.   

Unfortunately today not enough people use the tools.  It is a challenge to find stud dogs or lines who are like minded in health consciousness.   So we have to take chances at times.   It is what happens after that chance is taken that tells the mettle of a breeder.   I know we all care, but it is not about caring it is about doing too.    Even I still worry when a pet home calls with a problem on their 7 year old dog.    I wonder if I am going to be a shoulder to cry on or if I will have answers and suggestions, will they be angry and frustrated or heart broken.    I love that my concern about health travels down the line to most of my owners who then also care.   Health is not just DNA testing, it is a start but not enough.    It is about having your finger on the pulse of health in general.     

I was in the sport of pure bred dogs when health problems were hush hush and kept secret.  I remember when the breeds starting having issues and there were organized blood draws to send to labs to try to find a marker.  Even then there were breeders who did not want to participate.   We have come a long way but when it comes to health, complacency is not our friend.   One thing that really bothers me is when local vets are not supportive of the databases of information we are creating.  When your local vet looks at your hip xrays and says that they are good but does not send them in to OFA.    When our vets do not encourage the scientific value of data collecting.    My father was a scientist from 1959 to his retirement.   I imprinted on the importance of scientific data and its value for the future.

I love what Jane Killion says about Puppy Culture.   It goes something like you may be doing a good job rearing puppies but could you do better?   We can say the same thing about breeding dogs and health, can we do better?   If we are here to protect and preserve how can we do it without concentrating on health as much as we concentrate on type?

Today I am afraid that we are still concentrating why test and why bother rather than looking at all the good information we have on our dogs and their families.   Building the databases today is a tool for tomorrow.