The Kennel Club and the Bulldog Breed Standard

Quote from Dog World / 24th September 2009

Dog World - 39 new standards: "The KC is urging breed clubs to unite with them ‘in order to safeguard the health of pedigree dogs’.
“We would be very sad if any breed was to walk away from the KC,” said spokesman Caroline Kisko. “We believe that by working together we can all best achieve our joint aim of improving the long-term health and welfare of dogs.
“However, in the face of resistance to changes that we believe are in the breed’s best interest, we will not be swayed and will be forced to allow those breed clubs to walk away."

The emergency meeting is tomorrow, so if you have anything to say about this, say so now! To be honest, my personal feeling is that the KC want us to walk away so they can dis-associate themselves with the public opinion of the unhealthy bulldog. To not take into account any of the points raised with them at the meeting the sub committee attended and to then make the comment "we beleive that by working together we can all best acheive our joint aim ...." when they are clearly NOT working with the Bulldog Breed Council; to say "we will not be swayed and will be forced to allow those breed clubs to walk away" to me says that is what they've wanted from the start. Face it, whenever the Mail, or the BBC or anyone who has an axe to grind with pedigree dogs it's always the bulldog that comes under fire so it makes sense that they wish to distance themselves from it. However, although there is still the breed standard that is owned by the Bulldog Club incorporated that would be easy to revert back to, from a rescue point of view, having no KC registration to check back on to ensure that what we are rehoming is infact a pure bred bulldog could make our life very difficult in the future. We will see the outcome from the meeting tomorrow - but we will see.

For update see comments

And the 1000th Bulldog is ..........

Our Dogs article 2 October 2009 / Dog World article 8 October 2009

It kept changing all over the weekend, in the running were Buster, Nelly, Dutchess, Floydd and Sampson - Buster did move but came back because (get this) he had a tail!!!! but that's another story for another time as several hundred miles later, a sleepless night and me controlling my temper (almost) his new family decided that they couldn't love him based on what he looks like.

Nelly and Dutchess both moved, Sampson was due to move and Floydd was on his way to Brighton. Any of these dogs were worthy of the prize but Floydd did it and his new daddies have a certificate to prove it LOL. The local paper want to run a story on it which will be good publicity for the rescue and dear old Floydd who was hours from being put to sleep when we found him notched up another day in Bulldog Rescue's history.

You can read Floydds Story here

Over the past 1000 bulldogs, there's been many highs and many lows, people always ask me how I can part with them, but it's a very mixed emotion - you're glad for the dog who's got a new family to love him, but there is always a part of you that will miss them. Keep everything crossed for Floydd, it would appear he's been moved about an awful lot over the years, let this be his last move! Thanks to Syd and Kev for giving him that chance

Floydd

If you get a moment, pop along to our rehoming page and take a look at the wonderful Floydd, if this chap could talk he'd have a very very sad tale to tell I'm sure. Picked up as a stray in Wales he found him self in council kennels and a council policy that stated that all unclaimed strays were to be put to sleep after 9 days, we found out about him on day 9!!! Our fabulous volunteer Georgia drove all the way from Birmingham to Wales to get him (Despite being heavily pregnant), kept him over night and met me the next day at Oxford. The first thing we noticed was that he drank like a fish, this went on for 2 days, having to fill the water bowl up every 5 minutes or so, he drank so much in one go that it just came back up again. I'm thinking there's a kidney issue here which is why he's been abandoned, so off to the vet we went for blood tests, nothing. Urine test - nothing, but then after a few days his excessive drinking settled down which leads us to the conclusion that he was simply deprived of water wherever he was before and it's taken him almost a week to realise that there is water down for him all the time and that he doesn't have to drink the lot in case there's none there in a minute. The other thing that really upset me was on the second night I didn't get out to shut the kennel doors until after dark - he went beserk, throwing himself at the walls in panic, yet if you close him in whilst it's still light he's fine, shut in a shed maybe??? He did make us laugh though when he got annoyed with Sue when she was cleaning out his kennel, after she'd taken everything out of the hut so she could mop it out he actually took everything back in again an item at a time, toys, blankets - everything carefully placed back where it should be. I'd love to know what he's been through, or maybe I wouldn't, but someone somewhere is going to get a beautiful sweet old gent and boy does he deserve it!

.... Floydd get's his new home and becomes the 1000th bulldog

Children's Farms

Although completely non bulldog related, this has been bugging me over the course of the week, and now they are looking at reviewing these places and even talking about banning under 5s from petting farm animals, I can't help but wonder if this has been brought on by ourselves? I have the same theory about MSRA and other super bugs in hospitals. When I was a child, my mum cleaned the house with furniture polish and ajax, if I had chocolate or ice cream round my chops she washed my face with the dishcloth from the sink or she spat on a tissue. A sharp intake of breath had more suction than the hoover and the only thing that every saw bleach was the toilet bowl. We were exposed to germs on a daily basis, we sat in the dog bed, ate dirt from the garden and no one ever had a super bug because we all had decent immune systems. These days everything is disinfected, no one has carpets but clinically clean laminate flooring, our children are exposed to no germs whatsoever and the result is that no one has a decent immune system any more. I'm sure that these superbugs were around in hospitals long before they became headlines, but we had good immune systems so they never affected anyone. Bulldogs are coming into rescue with the excuse "I'm pregnant so obviously the dog has to go", I used to crawl around the floor with our family dog.
Kids raised on farms always had the best immune systems, now you send a kid to a farm for a fun day out and he gets sick, parents scream "close the farms they are unhealthy!", the government begin reviewing the "safety" of petting farms.
And while I'm on my soap box - 2000 people A DAY visited the farm in Godstone - 5o something are sick over the course of a month and I bet every single one of those children lives in a home where there isn't a single germ to be seen!

Breed Standard Debate

An emergency meeting has been called for the end of this month by the Breed Council to discuss if the new standard should be accepted or not. Although we (Bulldog Rescue) don't get a vote, we will be in attendance so would like to know what readers of this blog feel about the farce that was supposed to be a "discussion" between the KC and the Breed Council regarding the changes

Kennel Club

It is almost a year since the original programme was shown on TV that ignited the furious debate regarding the proposed changes to our breed standard, and despite the many many meetings held between both by the delegates of the breed council and the representives of the breed council and the KC pointing out which of the proposed changes were acceptable and which weren't, a letter received by the Kennel Club to all existing breed club secretaries arrived dated 3rd September stating that ALL proposed changes would go ahead regardless.
I'm sure that every single person that was involved in the discussions feel as if they've been kicked in the head, especially as the sub committee that was responsible for liasing with the Kennel Club had been given the impression that they were actually being listened to. At no time did anyone just throw their hands in the air and scream "leave my breed standard alone", instead sensible discussion was instigated and every effort was made to work with the KC on, what is essentially, changes to our very long standing history. There isn't another Breed Council meeting until October so I won't hear anything first hand until I attend that meeting, but I'm sure there is a flurry of activity already going on within the sub committee.
Press releases are published as they occur on the Bulldog Breed Council Web site

Please tell me what you think

Facebook Buddies

Isn't Facebook a wonderful thing. What started out almost as a joke when I found the number plate BR59 BDR was available on the DVLA web site and thought how great it would look on the new van, became a reality when my facebook buddies all clubbed together and allowed us to purchase it as a present to me for rehoming 1000 bulldogs. As I said, I should have asked for something useful ....

1000 Bulldogs!

I've spent the entire day going through all the dogs in the system and listing all those that are available (www.bulldogrescue.co.uk/homes_needed.htm) and realised that we are only 7 dogs away from our 1000 dog in the system since Dizzy and I took over in 2001. We will mark it in some way (not sure how yet as the dog could be anywhere in the country) but it's quite an amazing number of dogs through don't you think?

See who became the 1000th bulldog through rescue Here

An apology ....

.... to everyone that is waiting for me to confirm their application form, sort out their homecheck or call them back. It is just manic here, never again will I take a week off work the week before the picnic. As you probably know, the rescue is run along side the family business and the work that has accumulated over the past 2 weeks is simply mind blowing. Bear with me, I am getting a little rescue work done each day in amongst the mile high pile of orders that I need to process. Spare a thought for poor Jason too, as he's the poor soul that has to get all these orders parcelled up and mailed out so again, if you are waiting on a Reggie's Den order - the same reason applies if it's not arrived yet.

The 12th Annual Bulldog Picnic

Well, what can I say? I think this was the biggest and the best bulldog picnic ever. I had such a great time and everything went so smoothly. We have no idea how many people turned up but we had 300 entry badges done and they'd gone by the end of the first hour so we guess somewhere between 400 and 500 people. If I had one complaint it would be that people turn up an hour early and then leave an hour early, it would make much more sense to turn up on time and leave on time as that way you don't miss out on the draws at the end of the day and the auction, which this year we did live from the stage inside the hall and it was brilliant fun, a big thank you to my little helper who very professionally held up each item for the audience to see.
During the course of this week, photos will go up at www.bulldogrescue.co.uk/Picnic.htm but I can tell you that the day took £2334.65 so we are looking at a good £2,000 clear profit which is just brilliant.
We did a fancy dress for the first time this year which seemed to go down really well, the winner was Max and Ella who made a fabulous bride and groom, Joanne Good the actress that judge the competition said it was really difficult to choose the best one and I certainly didn't envy her in the slightest as all the cosumes were just brilliant! Oh and the Mail Newspaper came along too and took lots of photos and did lots of interviews, the photographer had his bulldog with him so fingers crossed it comes across OK. I'll keep you posted as to when it's published.
So all that's left for me to say is THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone that came, helped and raised such a fabulous amount of money for the rescue.

Healing wishes needed

As some of you may know, we are currently looking after a dog for a dear old friend of Bulldog Rescue whilst he has heart surgery. It's been a while since we heard anything and we were starting to get a bit worried, but heard yesterday that despite coming through the surgery without any problems, he has now picked up an infection and 3 days before he was due to come home was readmitted with what has been described as a serious infection. He's going to miss the picnic which is really sad as he's been to almost every single one so far, and I know that he is really missing his dog Blossom so we thought that maybe it would help him recover if we all sent him a little get well card.
WING COMMANDER GEOFFREY SHORE, ROYAL SUSSEX HOSPITAL, BAY 4, WARD 7 (MILLENIUM WING), BRIGHTON, BN2 5BE
I'll keep you posted on his progress