Queen Anne's War
The American working dog community has been in disarray—enduring serious strife and drama—in the aftermath of the expulsion of USCA from the AWDF by
Queen Anne Camper and her Seven Dwarfs. There have been shrill claims— and counter claims—of which organizations are "affiliated," "recognized" or "members of" various national or international organizations. But what do these words actually mean in reality, in terms of the authority and power granted or implied? There has been endless disputation of which titles are "recognized" by whom and which judges can serve where, but what does this actually mean in terms relevant to the person looking to enjoy taking his dog to training a couple of times a week, a post training beer or two and eventually entering a conveniently accessible local trial?
The reality is that such things are the small change, surface ramifications of much deeper, longer standing European conflicts. The perpetual struggle between the SV and the FCI, continually dismissed as a minor squabble among the bureaucrats, has been expected to yet again be smoothed over and made to fade away. But this time the happy ending has never quite materialized, and in recent weeks things have escalated, been reeling out of control.
An apparently official document appeared curtailing the availability SV judges outside of Germany—evidently forced by what was morally equivalent to gun point by the FCI. Concern verging on panic ensued. But within the week there was a dramatic reversal when the document was repudiated by SV and WUSV President Dr. Henrich Messler, who had been hospitalized when the false announcement appeared.
In retrospect this seems a bit odd in that the wording is terse and obtuse, not even on SV letterhead and over the signature of a lower level bureaucrat. Long standing precedent would indicate that such a momentous change in course and policy would be formal, on WUSV letterhead, carefully crafted and over the signature of Dr. Messler. Something ominous is very wrong here; that there is strife within the upper levels of the SV is becoming more and more apparent. The primary issue may well be how to respond to increasingly onerous FCI oppression.
Among the existential reasons for the FCI was and is the orderly exchange of judging services, conformation and performance, across boarders in order to foster unity in the evolution and preservation of breed characteristics. While the need for standards, coordination and order is and should be the function of the FCI, national sovereignty—respect for each nation's prerogatives, culture and social norms—is the more fundamental and important principle. The availability of senior judges in founding nations to serve as ambassadors and links to the homeland is essential. There is much that the SV needs to atone for, but the use of German judges in America should be according to the needs and desires of Germans and Americans rather than the interests, power and love of money among haughty FCI Eurocrats. This is clearly blowback from the ongoing power struggle between the WUSV and the FCI, raw reprisal in its most pure and blatant form.
Superficially it might seem that this European strife is only tangentially related to Annie's war in America, that is the Anne Camper led expulsion of USCA by the other AWDF clubs, the Seven Dwarfs. But in reality both of these conflicts have roots in common history, particularly the merging of Schutzhund and IPO in 2012, and are interconnected on every level. It has been said that things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler, and that is an especially appropriate reminder here. This is a very complex and convoluted state of affairs and a meaningful two paragraph "made simple" explanation is not possible. There are two deeply interacting yet separate ongoing conflicts, the AWDF fiasco (Annie's war) in America the WUSV/FCI conflict in Europe. From an American perspective it is virtually impossible to discuss either separately in a meaningful and understandable way, resulting in the complex and convoluted explanation being attempted here.
At the turn of the twentieth century the European world, especially on the continent, was remote and esoteric, separated by language, culture and the prohibitive cost of trans-Atlantic travel in terms of time and money. We spent lavishly on imported dogs, often regarded as second rate and disposable, but meaningful contact at the middle or working class level was minimal. National cooperation among European nations, let alone across an ocean, was difficult because of language, because all communication was in person or by mail, because transportation was slow and because banking and cash transfer was primitive, each nation having its own currency. Individual nations controlled their own affairs because the technology for remote micromanagement was nonexistent.
All of this changed in an era of affordable air fare, the Internet and increasingly common use of English on the continent. This cuts both for good and for evil: allows increased intercourse among the makers, the hands on working breeders and trainers on both sides of the Atlantic, but also enables the takers, the show breeders and Eurocrats, to extend their grasping reach. At the moment the takers, royal and otherwise, think they are ascendant.
In America today our working dog community finds itself in a state of confusion and strife which has brought confidence in fundamental values and our place in the world order to low ebb. Our historical, ongoing relationships with the Europeans, especially the WUSV and the FCI, are increasingly fraught as they engage in their escalating, hostile struggle for precedence, power and money while we hover on the sidelines. We would appear to be on the brink of existential change.
Fundamental change, paradigm shift, tends to creep up, appearing as innocuous alterations of practice or procedure months or years before the ultimate consequences emerge. The century old SV Schutzhund program and the much more recent FCI IPO venue had existed in parallel for years. IPO was a closely related Schutzhund variant widely used in Europe, but with significant differences, often increasing as the rules evolved separately. This was seemingly a forced and unnecessary separation and complication.
In 2011 the SV made the fateful decision to wind down the Schutzhund program and adopt FCI IPO as their breeding standard. There was speculation that the motivation was the desire of the show breeder cabal to emasculate the breeding test yet somehow avoid the shame of betrayal, the abandonment of an existential legacy of von Stephanitz. The expectation was apparently that by handing the dirty work off to the FCI their ends could be achieved while their hands remained clean. If true, the strategy has proven spectacularly flawed.
On the surface this was little more than a tidying up: eliminating superfluous complexity, abating confusion and streamlining administration. When these programs were formally merged on January 1 of 2012 it seemed like progress, a common sense simplification reducing confusion and inconvenience for all, clearing the way for meaningful international competition open to all breeds and nations.
But in reality this has had devastating unforeseen consequences in both Europe and America. In Europe the SV lost control of their breeding qualification process, their control of the letter and interpretation of rules and of which judges can award a working title rendering the progeny eligible for registration. The authority to specify breeding eligibility, the most fundamental aspect of breed integrity, was transferred in large part from the SV to the FCI, a show dog organization with very little historical concern for work.
In America the unified trial rules transformed the AWDF from an irrelevant, meaningless hulk to an organization with one very valuable commodity, the license to run a qualification trial as a gateway to glory, to a place on a "World Team" bound for the annual FCI IPO world championship. By the turn of the century USCA had completely lost interest in the AWDF, adopted a policy of benign neglect with no interest in any sort of active leadership role. This came back to bite them hard, for the power vacuum had been filled by Anne Camper, who had become president of both the AWMA and the AWDF, shepherded her toadies into office and manipulated the rules to completely stack the deck. As a result, when the championship qualifier became important the queen, responding to the puppet strings of the prince, ran the qualification trial in terms of date, schedule, location, judges and helpers for the benefit of the Malinois competitors, to the dismay and outrage of the German Shepherd handlers. Queen Anne's War was game on.
In Europe emerging reality gradually made obvious the colossal blunder of the SV, leaving their ability to protect and preserve the legacy of von Stephanitz hanging precariously in the balance. It is true that many factors—most rooted in their own arrogance, stupidity and greed—have contributed to this decline of the SV in terms of real power and prestige, as evidenced by the ongoing decline in SV registrations, by two thirds since the mid-1990s. But the fact remains that the heritage and continued prosperity of the German Shepherd requires a strong national presence in the mother land, that the SV needs to be reformed and reinvigorated rather than suppressed.
Very old, very prosperous and very powerful institutions—such as the Catholic Church and the SV—inevitably become corrupt but are in many ways perceived as too big to be allowed to fail. In contemporary society ubiquitous communication potential, the Internet, has made it increasingly difficult to conceal these shortcomings and enforce blind obedience. (There is strong correlation if not actual causation between the ascendance of the Internet in the middle 1990s and the precipitous worldwide decline in purebred breeding commencing in the same time frame.)
Reform of the SV is a necessity for the common good of all nations and all breeds. Redemption will require legitimate remorse in the SV, a sense of shame at the banana backed monstrosities they have created, and enormous humility and wisdom. A reemergence in the spirit of a new commitment to serious working character in breeding, absent in the show lines for many years, is a prerequisite for redemption. This will be painful.
The crux of the problem is that the SV has irrationally and recklessly relinquished control of an existential foundation of their breed, the Schutzhund trial, which from the beginning served as the gauge of working character. The FCI is an international show dog establishment, a huge, bloated, blundering bureaucracy concerned only with money, companion dog sales, devoid of any real concern for function and purpose in the canine breeds. They have from the very beginning been hostile to the working culture, and especially the encouragement and enhancement of the aggression fundamental to police and military service. Their tendency is inexorably to trivialize the trial, as in their aborted efforts to remove the stick hits in order to appease pacifist social elements. Today, under relentless FCI pressure and the aforementioned societal trends, the prestige and influence of the SV and WUSV is at low ebb, with continued relevance hanging in the balance.
As a result of this SV abrogation the effete show breeders of the FCI have embarked upon a relentless emasculation of the character of all working breeds, with special focus, in conjunction with the VDH, of cutting the SV down to size and severely limiting their ability to influence and guide GSD affairs worldwide. The comprehensive emasculation of the WUSV is the linchpin of this initiative.
In a world of rapidly diminishing purebred dog breeding worldwide it is all about money. When the pie is expanding what are a few cherries among friends, but as the pie diminishes each crumb represents the job, status and prosperity of some corpulent bureaucrat somewhere.
What will the future bring? Possibilities range from complete SV collapse— submission to absolute FCI control—to breaking free with the WUSV emerging as the standalone authority over worldwide GSD affairs. The problem with the latter is of course that a new German club would immediately apply to the VDH and it would be game on as each national GSD club worldwide would have to choose alignment with either the WUSV or their FCI national club, but not both. The situation in America, with two national GSD clubs, could well become the norm throughout the world. The GSDCA could possibly be forced to relinquish either its WUSV status or its AKC affiliation. It would be hardball, playing for all of the marbles.
There are intermediate alternatives, perhaps the most plausible being the SV resurrecting Schutzhund as their breeding criteria under the independent control of the WUSV. In this way SV judges could become Schutzhund judges rather than IPO and thus break free of FCI interference. The SV would gain maneuvering room in appeasing the FCI, that is complying with the onerous rules sure to emanate from the VDH, while the WUSV would be free to run real Schutzhund unencumbered. The mere threat could conceivably cause the FCI to relent and allow SV judges to continue serving in other nations. But more likely the FCI would take escalating repressive measures leading to all-out war.
From an American perspective there are several conceivable outcomes depending on what ultimately emerges from the Euro wars. Possibilities, in no particular order, for USCA include:
- A direct affiliation with an independent WUSV, with GSDCA under the AKC forbidden any WUSV link, the WUSV having become totally estranged from the FCI.
- A shotgun marriage with GSDCA with all Euro links nominally through the AKC.
- Existence as an orphan in that the FCI had locked a vanquished SV and WUSV down so hard that formal links were rendered impossible.
- Some sort of continuation of our current ambiguous situation where many things are technically illegal but condoned. (Another round of kicking the can down the road.)
- A refurbished AWDF where the dwarfs had seen the light, exterminated the Camper rats, expelled the Honda farce and offered USCA a renewed membership on sensible terms.
We cannot control the outcome of these European conflicts. Hopefully a world order will emerge where we have unencumbered access to qualified judges worldwide and run truly open and fair qualification trials for international competition including the WUSV, FCI and FMBB. By truly open I mean open to any resident American regardless of club affiliation; a trainer unwilling to be affiliated with a corrupt breed club, such as the AWMA as it stands today, should not be denied access to any world competition he and his dog can qualify for on a level playing field.
There is a pervasive but fallacious tendency to think of our American drama, Annie's war, as primarily our affair more or less independent of Europe. But the opposite is true, the European tensions, ongoing on one level or another for years and decades, have allowed us the latitude to engage in this drama. While the cat has been away, or distracted by the dog, the mice have indeed been playing. The Camper cabal has been brazenly displaying the FCI logo on the AWDF web page, when it actually comes up, and representing themselves as "official" agents of the FCI, empowered to act on their behalf, to grant or withdraw the "validity" of IGP titles and breed clubs. This is of course beyond absurd, they have never been more than an invited guest able to attend but not participate in some international meetings and send guest teams to the various annual championships.
We are venturing deep into troubled, uncharted waters. Real resolution of the American impasse, as opposed to some sort of make do arrangement kicking the can down the road, must of necessity await for one of the above mentioned European outcomes, WUSV submission to or independence from the FCI, to emerge. We will remain in limbo until the Eurocrats finally sort out their quarrels.
Any prognostication must account for worst case outcomes, and there is a small but still finite probability that AWDF might wind up with a real FCI mandate, perhaps through the AKC. There are lots of reasons why this is unlikely, a primary one being that if AKC were to become directly involved it is unlikely that they would tolerate a another layer of bureaucracy, an empowered AWDF, to come between them and the breed clubs. Indeed, bloated bureaucracy is the one thing the AKC knows full well how to do.
In the first jubilant flush of victory the AWDF expectation would no doubt be of a devastated USCA prostrated before the newly empowered queen. Perhaps this will come to pass, but I don't think so, for it would be a manifestation of weakness in USCA leadership rather than real world AWDF strength. USCA would still have most of the members, trials, judges and infrastructure and a forty year history of learning how to make it work. They would likely retain their own path to the WUSV championships, and even were they somehow to find themselves denied access to SV judges, unlikely, it would be little more than a minor inconvenience. As an extra added bonus USCA would likely find themselves free of the onerous conformation millstone, allowing a return to their hard core working roots. All in all worst case would not be such a bad deal for USCA and might very well look just fine down the road.
As for the triumphant AWDF, after the jubilation and euphoria subsided it would come into focus as a Pyrrhic victory. The good news would be a legitimization of the FCI logo on the web site, but the rest of it would be pretty much a matter of coming to regret what they had wished for. The Seven Dwarfs would still, with the exception of the Malinois and possibly to a much lesser extent the Rottweiler, be hovering on the brink of extinction as serious working dogs, capable of producing only one or two passing IGP III dogs at a meaningless annual "championship." (A number of the dwarfs—including the Bouvier, Pit Bull and American Bulldog clubs—have gone dark, have not held any sort of annual event in years yet retain a vote, a place at the table.)
Even in this brave new world the American Malinois community would still be stuck with somehow digging out of the AWMA mess that Annie made, with every judge having been expelled or resigned in protest as the direct consequence of her arrogance and tone deaf inflection of raw power in the Singleton affair. Even if she were to be gone her parting legacy would still be the 2019 championship, which was more or less a fiasco due largely to the ineptitude and lack of real effort in underlings such as Chris Smith and Monty Ellison, with Smith's loud and unseemly confrontation with spectators in sight of the obedience field drawing more adverse Internet attention.
On top of all of this, were the AKC to become operationally involved they would not likely be the least bit tolerant of blatant German colonialism, of significant segments of their infrastructure with first loyalty to Germany, if for reasons of cash flow if nothing else. There would be very little place for DVG America in this brave new world.
None of this is going to be good for the movement as a whole or the ordinary trainers looking for nothing more than a fulfilling experience with their dog, a post training beer or two and a convenient local trial. USCA trainers will experience little real change, but others are going to be forced out of the sport or seek out a club which can offer affordable local trials, six of seven of which are USCA trials. With the DVG in peril and the AWMA judging program in the ditch the shepherd trainers would likely migrate to where the clubs and trials are, USCA, followed by those with other breeds, including many if not most Malinois enthusiasts. Would it not be the ultimate irony if the long term result of expulsion from the AWDF was enhanced USCA prosperity at the expense of the dwarfs?
The propagation of fear, uncertainty and doubt is a fundamental tactic in psychological warfare. USCA is by any standard the big dog, and the attack of the dwarfs, who cannot compete in terms of infrastructure and service, is focused on discrediting the validity of USCA titles, judges and legitimacy in general. This has been to some effect. But why should there be all of this angst over the "recognition" and "validity" of our titles, our judges or our clubs? Why do we perpetually grovel and acquiesce to humiliating European manipulation, and attempted manipulation by domestic posers such as Anne Camper? Why should our credibility be so open to question when SV judges routinely pass out fraudulent titles to SV show dogs and DVG judges, European as well as American, flagrantly abuse their office in support of their personal for profit canine ventures?
Real credibility is earned rather than given; we must seek it within ourselves rather than incessantly groveling before those whose ultimate agenda is control and exploitation rather than parity. Who and what we are ultimately must rest on our personal and collective merit: the integrity and competence of our judges, supported by a demanding qualification and retention process, high standards of discipline and transparent integrity at every level. This is of course a lofty ideal for which we must continually strive but will never quite reach, but USCA is by any reasonable contemporary standard world class.
In summary, USCA is a strong, vigorous organization with a forty year base of experience and ongoing history. If the Eurocrats prove to be increasingly hostile, manipulative and controlling we must be prepared to stand on our own. And from the strength and courage to prosper in the face of adversity will ultimately come the respect bringing an equitable place at the international table.
When all is said and done the fundamental truth, that no matter what happens USCA will still have the resources and infrastructure for stand-alone prosperity and independence, will remain. It is by now trite and shopworn to say it, but it remains true: the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself. The Germans, Dutch and Belgians will still have enormous resources in terms of heritage, breeding stock and training expertise, but these things are not owned by the bureaucrats, would still be available on a personal level. Our dependence on the manipulating Eurocrats is ultimately psychological, rooted in the belief that the annual pilgrimages of elite world teams to Schutzhund Mecca, the WUSV and FCI championships, is necessary for validation. But until we can find validation from within ourselves we will be still be as children, unprepared for the real world.
I say it yet again: the time has come for American working dog affairs to be run by and for Americans.
Background and Reference:
Stacked Deck: the AWMA Election ProcessCorso Gate?
AWDF: Whose Crisis Is It?
AWMA Crisis: And Then There Were None
AWMA: The Singleton Debacle
Singleton / Felicano Smack Down
AWDF in Crisis: The Way Forward
Meltdown in America
Glossary
Orginizations and Conflicts
Legacy Lost, the Other Breeds
The Americans