Topic

Text by
Vince Hogan and Svetlana Valueva . OD.
Main Topic • World Dog Show ‘15. Italy
Photo by HOTdog
World Dog Show ‘15
11.06-14.06 Italy. milan
All photos by
Natalia Feofanova and Oleg Bochkov . HD.
50 H O Tdog
3-4 / 2015
ENCI BOOTH
COMMENTS
By Vince Hogan
Our Dogs Editor in Chief
• MILAN SUCCESS FOR
WORLD SHOW
Vince Hogan of OUR
DOGS looks back at a
dramatic world show
and discusses the repercussions of the FCI
General Assembly.
The FCI world show
reached a successful conclusion in June in Italy
with success for a popular
Bearded Collie from Russia
but was then followed by a
media and social network
storm following the decision to award the 2019
World Dog Show (WORLD
DOG SHOW) to Shanghai
in China.
This show has now been
the talk of the canine
world for weeks and previously after many months
of people wondering how
it would all be in Milan, the
reaction was plain to read
on the social networks….
Bravissimi,
complimenti a tutti and about the
ENCI team….Grandissima
squadra!
Whilst there were some
problems for exhibitors
and visitors the overall
impression was that ENCI
had pulled it off!
The show ran over five
days with club shows and
there was massive interest from a worldwide audience
including
more
exhibitors than ever from
the Far East. How little did
we know that region would
soon become a massive
talking point!
Firstly
let’s
recognise
the popular and delightful owner handler of RONY
the Beardie Best in Show
MILAN SUCCESS
The FCI world show reached a successful conclusion in
June in Italy with success for a popular Bearded Collie
from Russia but was then followed by a media and social
network storm following the decision to award the 2019
World Dog Show (WORLD DOG SHOW) to Shanghai in
China.
• Vince Hogan
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winner, Olga Klimova from
Russia.
An emotional Olga spoke
soon after the show:
“We’ve arrived home! I’m
speechless… and actually
we still didn’t realise what
has happened... Should I
tell that we’re in the clouds?
It’s Rony’s BEST IN SHOW
number 20 and actually
also CACIB number 60! I’m
the happiest owner in the
World!
I just want to say THANK
YOU to the judges, who
brought Rony on the TOP!
Ronnie
Irving
(breed),
Hjorth Leif Ragnar (group)
and Francesco Balducci for
Best in Show.
Thank you to all my
friends and family, to my
Stefano Serafini and to Rony’s breeder Filippo Ripoli,
who supported and was
with us there during each
moment of this amazing
event! Thanks to Vince Hogan and Kerry Rushby from
OUR DOGS for all their help
after the best in Show and
always!”
Olga added “I also should
say that I’m VERY proud to
be the first Russian in dog
show history, to win BIS at
the WDS!”
•TRAGEDY BEFORE
THE SHOW
After fifteen years the
World Dog Show had returned to Italy with 29,398
entries from over 40 Countries from all continents
and ran from June 11th to
14th at Fiera Milano in Rho,
with the support of Royal
Canin, the Main Sponsor of
the event. The panel of 200
international judges worked
in over 100 rings set up in 6
pavilions on an area of 103
thousand square metres.
It was another world show
where so much went on you
had to let it all sink in for
days after the event.
The most tragic event
happened however in the
build up to the show.
Monday June 8, 2015 was
a day that added a very
solemn note. 200 km from
Moscow a head on collision
took the lives of 6 people and 19 dogs. Tatiana
Skoropupova, Maria Baturina, Daria Boldyreva, Julia
Khohlova and Pavel Voronov
were travelling to Milan as
a part of a larger group of
Russian dog breeders and
handlers.
This tragedy seemed to
unite the whole dog show
community worldwide and
every single one who died
in this accident will be
greatly missed by their
friends and families. A sad
start to the show President of the Italian Kennel
Club Dino Muto and the
entire organising staff of
the World Dog Show 2015
offered their condolences
to relatives and friends of
the deceased and a minute
of silence was observed at
the opening ceremony of
the World Dog Show. The
same minutes silence had
preceded the General Assembly of the FCI which
had been taking place prior
to the show in Milan. Many
people wore black ribbons
provided by Birdbrook rosettes and collections were
made for the families. On
the final day the FCI and
ENCI announced they would
refund the entry fees of the
deceased to the funds and
also make additional donations.
Maria Evteeva /Russia/
Monika Skok /Croatia/
•MASSIVE
SHOWGROUNDS
In actual fact the shows
ran for a total of five days
– with the extra day in ad-
Daiva Kvedariene /Lithuania/
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Elena Zakamskaja /Russia/
WDS 2015. Italy
Ekaterina Kashcheeva
/Russia/
Olga Sinko /Slovenia/
3-4 / 2015
vance for some of the various club shows surrounding
the event.
Many people were struck
with the sheer size and
scale of both the event itself
and the halls that housed it.
They were vast and there
was plenty of space and
beautifully air conditioned
inside.
The show itself only used
part of the exhibition space
at the Fiera Milano. We were
told in advance that the six
halls to be used would cover 25 acres – the same area
that Crufts covers. The fact
that Club shows and the FCI
WDS were all being held
in the same venue meant
that with 19,927 dogs at
the WDS and 9,516 at the
Club Shows – on some of
the days no fewer than 91
rings were in operation
in six separate halls. The
show of course has many
more breeds than say the
UK or USA and sported 392
breeds or varieties from 68
individual countries. Imagine the training required to
prepare stewards for over
90 rings and also to have to
deal with judges in several
different languages! The
main ring was huge, artistic, well lit, well organised
and well supported by an
enthusiastic crowd.
The timing of the shows
seemed to go pretty well
all things considered so the
stewards and organisers
must have kept things ticking over.
The breed with the biggest entry of 440 dogs was
American Stafford’s and the
area around the ring was
packed and heated, even
in the air conditioned halls.
Tempers flared at one stage!
The judge Rade Dakic from
Serbia was forced to suspend judging for a while to
let things calm down! There
Main Topic • World Dog Show ‘15. Italy
were also some incidents at
the Neapolitan Mastiff ring,
but other than that things
seemed to go well.
Outside the halls and rings
there seemed to be oceans
of space. A few downsides
included the total lack of
seating around the breed
rings and also not allowing
the public in until 9.30am
when judging started…a few
visitors missed classes they
had come to see by the time
they found the rings. Parking and locating the right
entrances seemed to be an
issue for some people.
• ENTRY AND RESULTS
The Italian Kennel Club
had been present at the
WORLD DOG SHOW in Helsinki in 2014 and had been
impressed by the ever efficient Finnish Kennel Club,
so much so that they elected to use the Finnish K C
for the online entry and results system from the rings.
As such we witnessed the
great use of I pads in the
ring to relay results back
to the web site for instant
uploading and recording of
results. Markku Mahonen
the CEO of the Finnish
Kennel Club was delighted
with the relationship and
also attended the final day
press conference to present
Dino Muto, the president of
ENCI, with gifts from Finland. Maybe more organisations will follow suit and
work with the efficient team
from Helsinki.
Markku said: “ ENCI organized a great World Dog
Show 2015. The Finnish
Kennel Club and its subsidiary Showlink had the honour
of co-operating with ENCI
the online registrations of
dogs and online results. In
Milano ENCI was using the
same “Ipad system” as Hel-
ENCI official booth
Clemente Grosso /Italy/
ENCI official booth. Cups and Rosettes
WDS 2015 main Prize
WDS 2015 Logo
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Attila Márton, Horváth Balázs , Tamás Jakkel /Hungary/
Official Cruft’s booth at WDS 2015. Italy. Milan. Sue Sampson and
Vince Hogan /UK/
WDS 2015. Italy
Hubert Grabowski /Poland/
FCI Youth official booth at WDS 2015. Italy. Milan
Main Topic • World Dog Show ‘15. Italy
Ekaterina Kashcheeva
/Russia/
sinki to store the results in
real time from the rings to
Internet. I was a little nervous about how this was going to work out in Milan,
but I needn’t have worried;
the Italian ring secretaries
adopted the system easily
and everything went more
than well. Italians are a lot
more relaxed than the rigid
Finns!
The Co-operation left us
with a good feeling and I
hope that ENCI was happy
with our help.”
In fact the work done by
Marco (Press Officer) and
the press and web team
was excellent. Good facilities and hospitality for the
press and four excellent
press conferences.
• SCALE OF THE VENUE
As mentioned earlier, the
Fiera Milano was a huge site
and there was some confusion in transport terms as a
huge food expo was taking
place in another part of the
centre. It certainly caught
my taxi driver out on set up
day!
Once visitors had made
it inside they saw massive
rings, well laid out in air
conditioned halls. There was
plenty of shopping at the
trade stands ( from all over
Europe and the UK) and the
overseas Kennel Clubs and
organisations were all situated in the main hall close
to the BIS ring.
That ring was occupied
all day long with entertainments and demonstrations
ahead of the group judging.
The world championship
obedience was not held at
the show: that took place
the following week in Torino, under the guidance
of Vice President Clemente
Grosso who supported the
ENCI president Dino Muto
throughout the week including translating at the
press conference!
ENCI itself had a very stylish (and Italian!) looking
stand which also housed a
very interesting canine exhibition.
The venue had a long
outdoor corridor running
through it with sidewalk
cafes that lent itself to an
atmosphere of the ambience of a Milan side street!
The organisers had said
from the start that they
had wanted a relaxed atmosphere where dogs and
enjoys could enjoy themselves. Most people agreed
that had happened and we
enjoyed warm days outside
mixed in with a few rain
showers.
Saturday night saw the
prestigious formal dinner
take place in the show hotel and we were treated to
some excellent operatic entertainment, Italian style.
The male and female opera
singers were also present in
the main ring on Sunday for
the finale which also featured a famous Italian acrobatic and contemporary
dance group. Flags were exchanged from Italy to Russia and Alexander Inshakov
took the proverbial baton
as President of the RKF, the
Russian Kennel Federation.
Klára Miketová /Czech
Republic/
Polina Shelkovskaya /Russia/
• BEARDED COLLIE
SUCCESS
And so to the grand finals
where we had top junior
handlers, top puppies and
juniors in show
The BIS was eagerly anticipated especially as the
winner got a brand new car,
holidays, prizes, rosettes
and the honour of being
selected as top dog of the
year 2015!
Ever hungry handlers....
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Maria Afanasyeva /Russia/
WDS 2015. Italy
Nataly Feofanova, Ludmila
Sautina /Russia/
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The ultimate title went
to an owner handler as we
mentioned earlier; the dog
was Italian bred and Russian owned – Ch Oops I
Did It Again del Cuore Impavido or ‘Rony’ for short….
sent through the breed by
our own Ronnie Irving. Olga
Klimova could not believe
it, Rony had caught the
eye of BIS judge Francesco
Balducci as the dog used
every inch of the main ring
to make an impact, beating
some top dogs in the last
ten.
So ended a very eventful
week; everybody seemed
tired but satisfied that they
had put on one heck of an
event.
“Now that the World Dog
Show 2015 is really over,
- commented the President of ENCI Dino Mutto,
- I would like, also on behalf of friends of the ENCI’s
Board of Directors, to send
my warmest thanks to each
and every person who came
to Milan from abroad. You
came to visit us from every
corner of the planet and we
hope we have offered service and organisation up
to your expectations. Regardless of the result made
by your dogs, we hope you
enjoyed pleasant dog days.
We organise 500 expos
every year in our wonderful
Country. I really hope I can
see you on there occasions
as well. See you soon!”
That says it all really, Ciao
Italia!!
• WORLD DOG SHOW
SHANGHAI 2019
Iva Raic /Croatia/
One of the major talking
points of the show was the
FCI decision to allow China
to stage the WORLD DOG
SHOW
Main Topic • World Dog Show ‘15. Italy
Following the majority vote
of the delegates at the General Assembly of the FCI,
the 2019 event will be held
in Shanghai and the Chinese delegation came to the
press conference to speak
and also answer questions.
We were told that this would
be the first time the WDS
will be held in China and
only the second time the
show has been held in Asia,
with Japan being the previous host some years ago.
The hosts will be the China Kennel Union (CKU) with
the support of all the APAC
countries. (Asia Pacific) This
means that supporting the
event will be other Kennel
Clubs in the Far East such
as Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand,
India and many more in the
whole Asia Pacific Area.
The organizers stated that
they are already planning
a very special event in this
exciting city and importantly will use this situation to
educate people to respect
dogs and the life of dogs.
They recognize that there
are many preconceived ideas about pet ownership in
China and the Far East, but
along with the FCI, they see
this as a great opportunity
to raise the profile of responsible dog ownership.
FCI President Rafael de
Santiago repeated this message at the press conference in Milan. He stressed
the need to educate people
about the right attitude to
dog ownership in this and
any other part of the world.
President of the Asia Pacific
Section of the FCI, Mr Dinky
Santos from the Philippines
also attended and he told
OUR DOGS “This world dog
show will not just belong to
China but also to all of Asia
where many excellent shows
are already being staged.
The CKU will tap into the
WDS 2015. Italy
World Dog Show ‘15. Italy • Main Topic
Zita Mód, Andras Korocz /Hungary/
Alexandra Morrison and Ekaterina Kashcheeva /Russia/
Zaur Agabeyli /Azerbaijan/ and Kari Järvinen /Finland/
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Clemente Grosso /Italy/, Barbara Müller /Switzerland/
WDS 2015. Italy
FCI Youth official booth at WDS 2015. Italy. Milan
Carla Molinari, Gopi Krishnan, Mohamed El Azhary, Marina Gordeeva-El
Azhary, Ken Chuah and Sibra Kennels. Official Egyptian Kennel Federation
booth at WDS 2015. Italy. Milan
Main Topic • World Dog Show ‘15. Italy
expertise of a number of
kennel clubs in the region
and we are all delighted
to have this opportunity to
raise the profile not only of
pedigree dogs, but all dogs;
this WORLD DOG SHOW can
become of focal point of
knowledge and education.”
The CKU had made a
strong presentation to the
FCI delegates at the General Assembly. They competed with Spain for the
right to hold the show and
we can confirm that the
2020 show will in fact go to
Madrid. But the announcement led to a virtual meltdown of social networks as
for weeks after, arguments
raged on the rights and
wrongs of whether the show
should be allowed to go to
China or not.
Given the reputation that
exists in some regions of
China where dogs are part
of the meat trade there was
no real surprise to see the
tsunami of protest that ensued.
• EXHIBITORS
There will be many entries for this show from all
over Asia where the quality
of the shows and the show
organisation would surprise
many in the West. Exhibitors at the show in Milan
questioned the arrangements for Hotels and public
transport in China in case
dogs would not be accepted. Areas for walking dogs,
the situation in case a dog
was lost and language barriers were all areas of discussion
The
organisers
clearly
have a challenging situation
to deal with the perception
of the west and the reality
of the meat trade in the Far
East. However, it is clear
that the CKU can grasp this
opportunity to run a massive educational campaign
against the meat trade in
this part of the world and
show people there how to
respect the lives of dogs.
• NORWEGIAN
PROTEST
However in the days that
followed the show throughout June and now into July
there have been complaints
and counter claims WITH
THE Norwegian Kennel Club
(NKK) leading the way to
have the decision reversed
and to stop the WORLD
DOG SHOW going to China.
Much of the argument surrounds a festival in a town
called Yulin; essentially this
is a summer solstice event
which has been hijacked
by traders in dog meat.
The council in Yulin has
tried to distance itself from
these traders in the face of
world wide condemnation
and multi on line protests.
The vote in Milan coincided
with the date of the oncoming festival and a ‘perfect
storm’ scenario was created
that seemed to take some
of the FCI delegates by surprise.
Many people in dogs see
the granting of the WORLD
DOG SHOW to China as a
reward in the face of a barbaric tradition. However,
show people and dog lovers
in the Far East see this as
an opportunity to educate
the Chinese people and to
put an end to the use of
dog meat and the inhumane
way of treating the dogs.
Critics also say that China
does not have enough experience in pedigree dogs
to be given such an accolade as organisers of a
world show
One way or another the
arguments have raged on
so much so that the Norwegians wrote an open letter
encouraging people NOT to
go to the show in four years
time and to warn off its
Norwegian judges from attending any shows in China.
As a result, the Asia Pacific President Dinky Santos
wrote a letter back putting
their side of the story and
asking the Norwegians to
accept the democratic vote.
They didn’t.
They simply wrote another letter saying that Norway would not change their
minds which then resulted
in a letter from the FCI’s
legal representatives telling
them to respect the vote or
else!
The odd thing ( or is it the
modern way?) is that all of
this has been done in the
glare of publicity by trading letters on social media…
surely not the best way to
resolve any dispute.
So where this will all end
is anyone’s guess; the next
General Assembly of the FCI
is not until 2017 in Ecuador
of all places. These assemblies only take place every
two years so it’s hard to see
the FCI getting a fresh vote
on the 2019 show….even if
it wanted to.
2020 world show will be
in Madrid. Will there be an
outcry regarding bull fighting?
2016 world show is in
Moscow and that too has
already attracted its own
critics with the situation for
gay people in Russia.
One thing is for sure…we
ain’t heard the last of any
of this.
And who thought showing dogs was a boring pastime?!
Vince Hogan
Editor in Chief
www.ourdogs.co.uk
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