Background

 Unfortunately the report of this meeting as published in Dog World under the headline “Rottweiler summit plans for the future” is a sensationalist misrepresentation of what occurred.  The meeting was initially proposed by Mary MacPhail (on behalf of the Rottweiler Club) who approached  the current Chair of the Breed Council to call the meeting.   This was done without prior reference to the other clubs involved  either by the Rottweiler Club or by the RBC chairman Joan Adams.

 The view of the SWRA representatives is that a meeting with the KC should not have been held before the RBC had agreed the position it wished to take and identified what it intended to request of the KC.  We communicated this view both to Mary MacPhail and to the Secretary of the Breed Council when we were told that the meeting was fixed we were left with the straight choice to attend or not.

After brief consultation with our committee we decided that the SWRA should be represented.   Sadly our fears were realised, each club presented a statement tabled at the meeting but this did not lead to a consensus proposal that could be put to the KC representatives.  Far from “plans for the future” as described in Dog World the minutes above contain no actions, and no agreement regarding what if anything should be done.

As you will see from the minutes a number of papers were tabled at the meeting.   The view of the SWRA representatives is that these form part of the formal record of the meeting and should be published together with the minutes.    At the subsequent RBC regular meeting  the Chairman strongly disagreed with this view.

 To avoid conflict we, as representatives of the SWRA membership, have decided that while we must publish our statement  and it is included here (we regret that time constraints did not allow more widespread consultation before it was submitted), the decision of the other clubs to circulate their papers or not is a matter for their members.

As stated previously the SWRA representatives on the breed Council do not agree with the  statement made by the Rottweiler Club with respect to re-homed dogs.  We have had communication from breed rescue organisations conveying a real sense of upset on this matter, and while we do not wish to undermine cooperation of clubs through the breed council, we are not prepared to take personal criticism for a policy suggestion we do not agree with.

John Hubble & Michelle Derbyshire