Great Dane Get-together organised by Sheena Booth & Gary Gough

Great Dane Get-together organised by Sheena Booth & Gary Gough
at Ty Mawr Holiday Park, North Wales on Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th March

Having received permission from the majority of our member clubs to accept the invitation to give a short talk on the Great Dane Breed Council at this event I am pleased to be able to report that over 50 Great Dane owners attended. These ranged from very new, under 1 year, to the longer standing, up to 60 years, in our breed.

 I started with a short talk about why the Breed Council was set up, how it is made up & more importantly what it does. I briefly pointed out the day to day running of the BC and some of the work that goes on dealing with the KC and other societies, most importantly I pointed out that it was their BC and we could only make recommendations and decisions on items of agenda that had come from them through their Breed Clubs. The Q & A session went on for far longer than the 20minutes I had allocated and I was very pleased with the response, at the time and later, in one to one conversations, I was told that they now realised that the BC was there to act on their behalf and not a group of people trying to impose their own views upon them as they had been led to believe from the untruths spoken of and printed on some media sites. I pointed out that where the BC was given a mandate to request changes of the KC it can take a very long time for the KC to decide on and then implement these changes, so should they change their minds in the meantime they must keep their clubs and therefore the BC informed because it can only act on the last instruction received.

I attended the event with the premise that if I could convince one person that the BC was a useful organisation acting on their behalf I would feel it was worthwhile, so I am very happy that I left many more with that knowledge. I therefore would like to thank the member clubs for their permission to attend, Sheena and Gary for allowing me the opportunity and those who attended for listening and I hope that they will pass on the information they gained to other members of the Great Dane family as they make new friends and progress in their careers in our Majestic Breed.

Tim Lewis