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Never before a European Dog Show has had so much bad luck as this one

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Euro Dog Show. Bucharest • Main Topic

By Karl Donvil. WDPA.

Bucharest, European Dog Show 2012

Never before a Europe-an Dog Show has had so much bad luck as this one. I still remember the sight of Petru Muntean jumping up of joy next to Christian Stefanescu, vice-president and president of the Ro-manian Kennel Club when the FCI flag was handed over to them last year in Leeuwarden. But then, when the deadline ( 31-8) to enter the dogs was there, they counter was only at 2237 dogs while 12 to 15.000 dogs were expected. The committee was desperate and started to cancel a lot of judges and postponed the entry date till September 11 and closed at 6157 dogs. What happened?

Romania is a beautiful country but many people consider it as a very unsafe and primitive country with bad roads and where corrup-tion rules. As if this was not enough an unfair campaign started against the show with regard to the cruelties against the way street dogs are treat-ed. More gossip was spread via Facebook and photos of judges taken during the Black See Winner shows in order to bring them in discredit. The storm was heavy, very heavy, but first of all very unfair. Bu-charest is a modern city, with many nice, new buildings and is not more unsafe than any other big city. Bucharest is rather hip and young and it was nice wondering in the streets. And yes, there were street dogs, not as much as I have seen in Argentina, and they all had a yellow badge in the ear, which means they

COMMENTS

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were sterilized. During the days of dictator Caucescu, a lot of villages were aban-doned and destroyed, forc-ing its inhabitants to move to the cities. Most of the dogs in the villages were left be-hind and started to become a big problem. And what hap-pens when poor people want to solve this problem? They don’t put them into shelters as this is expensive and they don’t have money to pay vets to euthanize them let stand sterilize them. They use methods that look very cruel in our eyes but that are as old as history itself. Those meth-ods are no more cruel than the killing of sheep, cows, chicken, pigs… Romania is not the only country in the world where these things hap-pen, what about Spain and its Galgos, what about China and Korea…A boycott for this reason is unfair, totally un-fair. What I consider as one of the main problems is Fa-cebook. Too many judges are on Facebook, chatting with “friends” and trying to be nice to them. But this works in two ways. It pleases the so called “friends” but creates the impression that entering your dog under a judge who has many “Facebook friends” is a waste of money and sug-gest “soft” corruption. Face-book is also not the place to make official announcements or counter rumors about can-celling the show. It becomes too personal. The only way to make any announcements is the official website, not Facebook. At a certain mo-ment the rumor was spread via Facebook that the whole show was cancelled. Instead of double-checking it with the organizers the whole discus-sion ran out of hand. I think we need to make conclusions for the future, organizers and people need to use the official website to communicate.

How bad was Romania then? Bad? It was not bad at all, on the contrary. I was pleasantly

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Ms. Katarina SATTON(Russia)

Ms. Dasha CHURAKOVA(Russia)

Ms. Polina SHelKOVSKAyA(Russia)

Ms. Ksenia KOKOVINA(Russia)

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Euro Dog Show. Bucharest • Main Topic

surprised in many ways. Not-withstanding all the problems they had to face, the organiz-ers did a fantastic job. Amaz-ing to see that they were able to turn this show into one of the best there has been. Only the small rings betrayed that we were dealing with a low budget show. I questioned several exhibitors but they were all very enthusiastic. Expressions like “nice peo-ple, great show, friendly at-mosphere, efficient friendly security, nice country, great trip, terrific showground” were common. No way to find complaints, not even from exhibitors from the USA and the UK who are used to other criteria.

The showground was locat-ed on the outskirts of the city, easily accessible and with plenty of parking around. A kind of boulevard was lead-ing to the circular arena that dominated the area. It was an impressive sight. Due to the halving of the num-ber of expected dogs, only 3 halls were in use. Inside the rings were only 12 by 12 meters and for some breeds very small. Nonetheless there were grooming areas in every hall. And even if one knows that there is lack of space, some handlers manage to reserve plenty of space for them, fencing themselves in and not caring about other people, visitors and dogs. Outside on the boulevard there was a kind of market place where locals had rent-ed a wooden stand and were selling local goods, knitwear, food and woodcraft. In the middle of the boulevard were some big outdoor rings. For-tunately there was plenty of sunshine, it was warm but pleasant and bearable due to the dry air. These rings were reserved for the German Shepherds and the Caucasian and local shepherd breeds. The arena had 3 floors. The groundfloor was for the main ring and the demonstrations,

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Ms. Irina PIPKOVA(Russia)

Ms. Alexandra SOlNTSeVA(Russia)

The Kennel Club representative at «Cruft’s» information stand

Mr. Vince HOGAN - «Our Dogs»(UK)

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the collecting ring and the preparing area. On the first and second floor you had all the trade stands, Kennel Clubs and Breed clubs. Noth-ing was wide apart.

Prior to the European Dog Show there were several shows in the country, in-cluding the famous Dracula Show the weekend before. Thursday was the first show in Bucharest, the Bucha-rest Winner & Interra Show, good for about 2500 entries. Judging during the day was completely scheduled and it ended all well in time. But for the main ring, knowing that all 10 groups, puppies, juniors etc, had to pass the revue, it was no wonder that the show finished very late. Friday, the first day of the European, was also a busy day as there were 4 groups on term, groups 3,4,5 and 7. Every day there was another theme in the main ring. On Friday it was the roman era. 5 girls and two boys, all mod-els I suppose, were dressed in Roman tunica’s. Saturday was devoted to the roaring twenties when Bucharest was called “little Paris of the East “ and had one the finest peri-ods in its history. On Sunday the model were dressed mod-ern while the boys had local cloths on. The light in the main ring was nice but could be a little brighter during the judging. Dimming the lights when the judge is introduced and when the dogs come in is always nice, but once the judging starts, it is better to have a bright view. The po-dium was more than correct, dogs on the floor, only trophy and flowers were on a stand. The evening program was well attended, especially on Saturday and surely on Sun-day. Saturday was late again. Now groups 2, 6 and 10 were on term while on Sunday we had groups 1, 8 and 9, plus the finals. Former Eastblock Countries handle a different protocol as Western Europe-

an countries, speeches were not too long but every reason was one for another speech and at the end this was good for at least an hour per day. This explains why every show ended far out of schedule. But it is with pleasure that I forgive them as they wanted to counter the injustice that was done to them and state and emphasize that their in-tentions were right with re-gard to the problem of the street dogs. The Romanian Kennel Club is helping to set up a national sterilizing pro-gram for street dogs by co-financing a mobile veterinary hospital. It is always better to solve a problem from in-side as this has a better and more stable result on long term. Dog Shows are one of the means to teach people, to instruct them and to show that our world is more beauti-ful in the company of healthy and happy dogs.

As could be expected, most dogs were entered from Rus-sia, 1819 followed by Roma-nia with 1183 dogs. I had ex-pected much more dogs from Hungary but only 378 turned up, less than from Ukraine that had 436. Italy, where a big part of the rumors origi-nated from, had also 378 en-tries. Great Britain had 22, Mexico 11, Chile 3,the same as Indonesia , Korea, San Marino and the USA. There were even 4 dogs entered from Egypt. Columbia had 2 dogs entered, Azerbeijan, Canada, China and Puerto Rico had one dog. Absolutely worth mentioning are the 16 entries from Thailand. In to-tal 52 countries were repre-sented. Only about half the number of the judges that were initially planned were officiating. It must have been a nightmare to reschedule them all only a few weeks before the show would take place and facing all the ques-tions and frustrations of the exhibitors that suddenly had someone else to judge their

breed. Fortunately I heard no serious complaints about this, as if they all understood the problems and felt sorry for the organizing club.

The honor to judge Best In Show was granted to vice-president Petru Muntean and I can assure you that he was looking forward to do this. He had some very good dogs from all over Europe. His number 3 was the Flat Coated Retriever Win-A-Latte bred and owned by Carina Östman Borlänge from Sweden.Mrs.Van Brempt from Belgium had judged the breed earlier that day and chose him out of 20 competitors. Mr.Andras Ko-rozs from Hungary made him Best of Group. Mr.Paul Stan-ton from Sweden had judged the Afgan Hounds during the day and chose Oudry Gan-damak out of the 39 Afgans present. Mr.Gerard Jipping from Holland gave the ticket for the finals when judging the group. Oudry ended res BIS. He is proudly owned by Csilla Bakos from Hungary.

I think it is the very first time ever that a dog from the United Kingdom was cho-sen BIS at an FCI European or World Show. Zentarr Mor-gan made history. This Lhasa Apso was the breed choice of Mrs.Yolanda Nagler from Is-rael –she had 29 in her ring- and the Group 9 winner of Mr.Francesco Cochetti from Italy.

Zentarr Morgan is co-owned by Stefano Paolantoni from Italy and M D Anderson from the United Kingdom.

The Bucharest European Dog Show 2012 will enter his-tory as a show of extremes. Notwithstanding all the had publicity the committee had to face they had the courage to go on and show the world that challenging them has an adverse effect . Those who came over to show in Bucha-rest returned home happy

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and probably satisfied too. Romania is a beautiful coun-try, has great hospitality, a safe capital, nice people and a heart for dogs. The future of the Romanian street dogs looks a little brighter after the show. The intention of the Romanian Kennel Club was sincere, they will fight the bad reputation with regard to their street dogs and learn their people about the many benefits they can get from their dogs, about how to treat them and care for them. That way is long and not easy, but it is also the way to follow for many other countries too. In-stead of opposing them, lets stand with them and grant them a fair chance to prove that they can manage it. This European Dog Show is a fine start for this, they can really be proud.

Karl Donvil. WDPA.www.123dog.net

Ms. Marie luna DURAN(Belgium)

Ms. Vlada TSITSAK (Russia)

Mr. Denis POPOV(Russia)

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Mr. erodotos NeOfyTOU (Cyprus ) and Ms. Kati WIlKe (Germany)