Det ble i fjor høst tatt internasjonalt initiativ til å starte opp igjen ISF.
Det første møtet ble avholdt i desember, med deltakere fra Sverige, Tyskland, Finland, Sveits og Nederland. Norsk Schapendoesklubb hadde sykdomsforfall, men vil delta fremover.
Neste møte er avtalt til 16 mars.
Referat fra oppstartsmøte:
Participants:
| Full Name | Country | ||
| 1 | Cecilia Wahlstedt | Sweden, SSK | [email protected] |
| 2 | Christiane Weingarte | Germany, IGS | [email protected] |
| 3 | Hans Jacobs | Germany | [email protected] |
| 4 | Mari Jänisniemi-Honkala | Finland, SSR | [email protected] |
| 5 | Jenna Kallinen | Finland, SSR | [email protected] |
| 6 | Marinke Ruijs | Switzerland | [email protected] |
| 7 | Marjolein Flobbe | Netherlands, VNS | [email protected] |
| 8 | Paula Nuij | Netherlands, VNS | [email protected] |
| 9 | Wilfried Knickmeier | Germany, IGS | [email protected] |
Agenda:
- What do the individual clubs expect from the ISF?
- There shall be no fees for any member in the year 2022. On future fees we shall decide within 2022.
- Who is interested to join as member of the ISF?
- Election of the board: President, Secretary, Treasurer.
Hans Jacobs welcomes all participants. He announces that Nis Crone Köser from Denmark (DSK, [email protected]) and Vigdis Ingjer from Norway (NSK, [email protected]) are unable to attend tonight but would certainly like to be part of the ISF. Also small clubs like Austria, Luxemburg and Canada would like to be part of the ISF in some way. Hans states that the formalities are not that important, in the end the dogs are. That is our aim and we have to find a way how to deal with this.
Hans asks everyone to introduce themselves, explain about the expectations for the ISF and inform the others on the situation in your club.
Marjolein, VNS Netherlands: secretary of the board. The expectations are to form an international group where we can share information on issues we face in our boards and share knowledge on breeding. In the Netherlands we face the situation that we have 2 breedclubs in one country. If we put it black & white the VNS has breeding rules and the Schapendoesclub has none. The VNS has about 600 members. Issues we face are the decline in breeding, we have problems getting young new breeders and studdog owners. Also the global trend that everything becomes very individualistic. People do not want to be part of clubs anymore and don’t really accept rules and regulations anymore.
Paula, VNS Netherlands: boardmember, subscribes to the situation Marjolein described.
Jenna, SSR Finland: president of the Finnish club. Marjolein shared a lot of thoughts Jenna also had. Finland also expects information exchange, collaboration of countries and clubs.
Mari, SSR Finland: boardmember and breeding commission. Has been in Schapendoes in Finland since 1993. Was part of the Finnish Kennelclub for many years. There are about 250 members in the Finnish club. The Finnish Kennelclub has some breedingrules. The Finnish Schapendoesclub has no own rules but monitors all health checks on their website. The aim is to breed healthy dogs. She expects open conversations about the real problems in the breed in Finland. The club has started research on liver issues at Helsinki University. Almost 300 blood samples of healthy dogs have been sent and also of dogs with high liver values that are still healthy. The study is ongoing and the Finnish board hope to find the gene that causes the issues as they don’t want to puppies that get ill at a young age. Expectations are that all dogs may be carriers. The chairman of the breeding commission is a veterinarian.
Marinke, Switzerland. Currently there is no breedclub in Switzerland. Marinke is trying to start it up. The information is at the Swiss Kennelclub for checking. Marinke is at the moment the only breeder in Switzerland, her female can have one more litter and after that she has no other dogs to breed with. She also expects to exchange information on problems in our breed. It is very important that we keep the breed healthy.
Wilfried, IGS Germany. The IGS has about 330 members. We need international information. No one can breed in alone in one nation, we need to work together. Wilfried hopes we get a new information system that works and is really international. Wilfried is of the opinion that in a later stage we need more common rules on breeding, health and behavior. We must think about what we want.
Hans comments that it is always difficult to discuss rules in general. Think about the situation in Europe. We have Bruxelles somewhere and everybody shouts about it. Everyone is mad about those people in Bruxelles who decide everything above our heads. On the other hand we need structures if we don’t want to be isolated, little countries. Germany even is a small country compared to Russia or China or America. We should be very careful to discuss general rules right away. Let’s start on a lower level and get to information exchange, that we discuss problems with eachother on bilateral or multilateral level. The most important thing we have to establish is trust. We should offer an open hand to clubs that don’t participate tonight, be that France, Italy, wherever we have Schapendoesclubs. We should aim for the broadest level of information and people who are willing and feel responsible for the breed. We have to find a way to get them into the boat. Marjolein informs the other participants that recently the board of the Schapendoesclub was changed. The president and secretary of both VNS and Schapendoesclub will meet in the near future to see if we can establish some form of communication. The previous board always refused so this is a good step forward.
Cecilia, SKK Sweden. Information sharing is the most important. In Sweden there are no breedingrules. Dogs can be registered with the Swedish Kennelclub without any health tests. Everything is ok in Sweden. The Schapendoesclub has some recommendations but no rules. Swedish breeders will not accept rules as they want to breed whatever they want to. Therefore it is very important to share information to make sure we breed healthy dogs. Information means you can decide which choice to take. In the last 10 years between 160-180 pups have been bred per year. The breed is quite big in Sweden. Marjolein confirms Sweden is the runner up in breeding, after the Netherlands. An overview of international breeding was recently created showing the number of pups per country per year. Marjolein will share this with all participants.
As the functions and aims are covered now mostly already. We move to the election of a new board. Hans Jacobs is elected as ISF president. Marjolein is elected as secretary and Cecilia is elected as treasurer. We discussed the financial situation, Christine has not found any records in the accounts of the IGS and there does not seem to be money left from previous ISF times.
Marjolein and Paula also checked in the bank account of the VNS and haven’t found any payment records. The only present thing is the ISF website, which was managed in the past by the VNS webmaster and is also paid for by the VNS. Now that we have a new ISF, the website needs to be updated and kept alive with regular news and updates. Paula is appointed as webmaster and will take care of this in the next weeks. Everyone is asked to provide input as to what to put on our ISF website for your club/country. After all the webpage is the entrance ticket to the outside world and we need to show that the ISF has value.
On the agenda for a next meeting should be how exactly we should tackle the topic of exchanging data. We agree on end of February, beginning of March for a next online meeting.