Breed Club to Take Legal Action Against the Kennel Club
Posted By Freelance Writers Date: 14/02 Posted Under: Dog News, Pet IndustryA UK based dog breed club has issued a statement declaring its intention to sue the Kennel Club.
Siting actions taken by the Kennel Club as being ‘against the future well being of the Masfiff breed’ the Old English Masiff Club is claiming the Kennel Club has ‘breached its own rules’.
In a statement issued on their website here, the Old English Mastiff club Acting Hon Secretary Chris Rischmiller said:
As you may well be aware the Kennel Club has issued a number of incomplete pedigrees citing Mastiff dam name unknown, in the opinion of the officers and committee of the Old English Mastiff Club supported by senior representatives of the Mastiff Association this situation is totally unacceptable and against the future well being of the Mastiff breed.
The Old English Mastiff Club has taken legal advice and it appears that this action is a breach of The Kennel Club’s own rules.
After considerable deliberation and discussion the Old English Mastiff Club committee with the full knowledge and support of the Mastiff Association senior representatives has decided to instruct our lawyers to proceed.
We will of course keep you fully informed in due course. All members of the OEMC will receive this information by mail.
K9 Magazine contacted the Kennel Club for comment on this story and were told
“The Kennel Club cannot comment on the details of this case at present due to its extremely complicated nature.”
The legal action is the latest set back for the Kennel Club who have recently come under fire for supporting Scottish dangerous dogs legislation which is seen by many to be a weak response to a serious problem.
The Kennel Club have also been accused of hypocrisy in their ‘breed not deed’ stance by promoting a course which aims to qualify breed ID experts in just four hours.
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Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Dog News, Pet Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


How do you get “dam unknown”???! I admit, I have never bred a litter ever. But i cant quite figure out how you can not know the mother. Anyone know?!
Alison
By issuing an incomplete pedigree, the Kennel Club must still be taking the money for the registration, if that is the case, what is the point of the pedigree in the first place? If it says ‘dam unknown’, does this relate to the dam not being registered with the august body known as the Kennel Club, surely ’sire unknown’ would be more believable! Maybe it is an administrative ruse to ensure that all pedigree dogs are registered via the Kennel Club and they therefore corner the market in pedigree registration….allegedly!
Surely the problem is that by allowing registration it is allowing a dog to be registered as a true mastiff when the mother might be a Mexican Hairless dog with a mastif sire. A little unlikely, granted, but still technically feasable. Especially when the sire might have only driven past the breeder (!) in a Range Rover whilst the dam (unknown) Mexican Hairless is being serviced by a Collie. There’s a thought…
I am generally very unhappy with the KC. It is a disingenuous, self serving organisation that claims to be the official UK authority on dogs. To my mind their articles of association were originally set up to register breeds and bloodlines, from which they raked in registration fees. Now they run the annual Crufts dog circus. Does this make them the UK authority on dogs?