The Show
Actually, this edition of
the BU Blog is more a review of the progress made by our parent club since July
1, 2015 (when the new officers & board took office) than a critique of the
show, which was as always, the greatest Boxer show on earth! There was only one
glitch to detract from the usual seamless transition from one part of the
week-long ABC spectacle to the next, but it was a pretty notable one: The Sunday specialty, which was supposed to
be a limited-entry show, ended up with 289 entries (BOB didn’t start till 6:30
pm Sunday evening!). As a result, the popular Sunday afternoon Greater
Cincinnati Boxer Club puppy match had to be canceled, the Top 20 handlers’
planning meeting had to be rescheduled, and many exhibitors and handlers had to
forego the ABC hospitality/karaoke event scheduled for Sunday evening in order
to feed and exercise their dogs after an exhausting 10+ hours in the ring. Hopefully,
that won’t happen again, but since being tapped for one of the pre-ABC
specialty slots boosts an ABC member club’s prestige as well as its treasury,
the ABC Board might consider rotating that privilege among all the member clubs
that would like to have a shot at putting on the pre-ABC Saturday or Sunday
show. Perhaps the Greater Cincinnati BC should be given first dibs on the
Sunday slot next year.
The Rest of the Story
When the new officers and
board assumed their positions on July 1st of 2015, there were a
number of controversies, large and small, that had been swirling around the
annual show for literally decades. And it’s no secret that there has been an
ongoing battle between “traditionalist” and “modernist” factions in the club
for many years, too. For example, the issue of whether performance events and
exhibitors (obedience, agility, etc) should be as integral a part of the ABC as
conformation competition was settled only a few years ago when a big majority
of the membership who responded to the ABC Boxer Herding Survey supported the
addition of AKC Herding to the events in which Boxers could officially compete.
After the results of the survey were made public, the ABC Board voted to apply
for the official admission of Boxers to AKC Herding events over only a few objections
from dissenting board members, and performance exhibitors are now taking their
rightful place as an important part of what is, after all, a working dog club.
Then in 2015/16, a new ABC
President and Board took another giant step toward acknowledging working Boxers
by giving the membership a vote on changing the ABC Bylaws to allow people that
compete in performance events with an ILP/PAL number rather than an AKC
registration to become ABC members. In the days before the ABC Code of Ethics
allowed white Boxers to be registered with an AKC Limited Registration, many
performance people had to resort to an ILP (now PAL) listing to be able to
compete with their dogs in AKC Obedience & Agility, even when their dogs
were purebred Boxers from show breeders. ABC members approved that bylaws
change by a big majority.
The 2015/16 board took another
giant step toward the 21st Century by proposing a change in the ABC
Code of Ethics that gave complete equity to colored and white pet puppies.
Happily, that change was also approved by a big majority of the ABC membership.
But perhaps the biggest 2015/16 ABC achievement, particularly in light of the ABC’s reputation as a very
secretive organization, was the creation of In
The Know, an online ABC newsletter that has completely revolutionized how
the ABC communicates with its membership. IMO, In
The Know is the best thing that’s happened to the ABC in ages, and goes a
long way toward making the club a more open, progressive organization capable
of confronting and beating back the anti-animal fanatics who have had such a
negative effect on local and state laws and policies that govern hobby breeders.
Of course, there were a few
decisions that weren’t unequivocally positive OR negative, like the board vote
to keep the annual show in Indiana
Finally, there are a few
other inequities – like the $400 apiece bistro tables that take up one whole
long side of the show ring and appear to be available only on a sort of
quasi-hereditary basis – but if the board continues to be more responsive to its
general membership, issues like that may go the way of the dodo. Again, we can
hope…
