Sherry’s Corner

Easter Tidings

      You can’t dress a bunny in a vest and call him a service animal!  As of March 15, service animal guidelines are limited to dogs and housebroken miniature horses.  No ducks, chickens, donkeys, snakes, rats, monkeys and cats, according to the Department of Justice for the Americans With Disabilities Act.  The new guidelines also exclude animals that provide emotional support or comfort and rightly so–the therapy dog and not the service dog provides support and comfort.  A service animal is defined as one that enables his owner to get safely from one point to another.

ROYALTY WITHOUT A PEDIGREE. The first mutt to earn a Master Agility championship title is owned and handled by a first-time AKC exhibitor.  His name is PRINCE DOGGIE and he earned the title in obedience, rally and agility in ten months!

AKC PENNSYLVANIA BOARD MEMBER.  Newly elected to the AKC Board is Robert Gladstone from Mount Pocono.  Gladstone, a lawyer, is active in the Welsh Corgi breed.  Another new Board member is Robert Amen.  It is Amen’s belief that the dogs of the future will be sold to older couples (empty nesters) and smaller families–the two-member family rather than four-member family will be the dog market of the future.  This will create a revolutionary change in which dogs are in demand!  These new families will need training and trainable dogs, dogs that can vacation with ease, be easy to groom and have few health problems.  Their primary function will not be hunting, herding, obedience and other performance activities but COMPANIONSHIP.  They will need to be tolerant of not only grandchildren but health caregivers.  In addition, Gladstone would set up AKC cooperatives in every community made up of dog interests–without barriers.  Clubs as well as pet services would work together to make living with dogs truly a bonding activity.  He models his program after one introduced by the renowned Kitty Stiedel who introduced us to the Portuguese Water Dog and most recently the Havanese.

      We must remember that the AKC is a business.  Competition is expensive and so are the executives and professionals who run them.  In this economy they need more and more revenue or registrations.  It is time they realize they took a wrong turn when the Canine Good Citizen was being developed.  They should have allowed and ENCOURAGED CGC competition, ribbons and titles.  The Canine Good Citizen is the AKC lifeline to continued success.  Of course, the AKC must always stress good breeding.  It is a truism.  BUY THE BREEDER before buying the dog.