I have added this page to my site because of the front page story in dog world stating that DEFRA were looking at the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals.

STOP PRESS. THERE IS A PETITION ON OUR PET HATING PRIME MINISTERS WEB SITE. IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK AND SIGN IT. 

I believe that the Kennel Club and the Council of Docked Breeds let the King Charles Spaniel down by not making any effort to avoid the ban on docking. Some of you may agree with the docking ban but I hope even you would have allowed the rest of us to have the choice.

This is a new challenge to the breed and I personally do not intend to sit back and let other (non KCS) people decide what is best for our breed. I have included  links to other web sites that are relevent to this matter.

Firstly I have to own up to being very ignorant as to who the Council Of Europe who have written this document are so if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe you can get up to speed for yourselves. Assuming that you have read some of that I will own up to thinking that that blue flag with the gold stars and the Ode To Joy anthem were something to do with the Europeen Union. I was wrong, were you? An interesting point to read is the AIMS of the organisation which says nothing about dictating how dogs should be bred but rather lots of things about human rights which is contridictory to banning things.

So these unelected people have sat down and written a convention for all 46 countries involved to alter there dogs. No country HAS to sign up to it if they dont want to and if you look on http://www.coe.int/ you will find that they are not planning any meetings on this convention this year so even they are not very interested in it. Our representative on the Council of Eurpoe is Ms Margaret Bekett. About half of the countries have signed up to it some with an exclusion on docking. I have no information as to how signing up to this convention has affected the at risk breeds in these 20 countries.

Why have I got all steamed up about this? Well the story on the front page of dog world makes it sound like DEFRA are thinking of looking at this again. Last time they tried to do anything about it they found that there was so much flack from the pro docking people that they gave it up. Well they have fixed that now so I quess they think they can have an eaisier time now. Lets prove them wrong.

I have contacted Dog World and they have kindly sent me the wording of an email received from DEFRA and I am taking a chance and publishing it here without permission.

"A Defra spokesperson said:

"No decisions have been taken on signing the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals.

"We recognise and respect the concerns that have been expressed concerning the contents of the resolution on breed standards. Nevertheless there are poor breed standards which do need to be tackled.

"We are grateful to the work being done by the Kennel Club to raise standards but it remains a fact that some dogs now have serious health problems because fashion rather than welfare has been allowed to dictate standards.

"Defra officials will shortly be meeting representatives of the Dogs Trust and the Kennel Club to review what has been done in the past and what could be done in the future to raise standards.

"The meeting will provide an opportunity to consider the possible areas of weakness in the resolution and whether there could be a better focused approach in ensuring that standards are raised."

What is involved in the "Convention". This site goes into a lot of detail http://www.saveourbreeds.org.uk/convention.htm

I have spoken to Mrs Plews and Mrs Waters to make sure the clubs are aware and are ready to take positive action so we dont wander into defeat like we did with the docking. I will publish anything that they want to say in this document if asked.

I have a plan in mind that is to fight a battle of who speaks for who and how are decisions made before any arguments take place about our breed. I will be telling DEFRA when someone comes back to me who is interested in this matter that if they want to change the breed standard of the King Charles Spaniel they will need to negociate it with the elected members of the KCS clubs and no other person has the right to impose any changes on it..... even The Kennel Club. I would envisage that at such dicussions only changes would be made that have been agreed on or have been to independant arbitration.

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