Dear friends of dogs
The Swiss Yorkshire Terrier Club (SYC) was founded in 1992. Due to the structure of the Swiss dog breeding scene we felt it necessary to found a cynological institution, which should engage in healthy dog breeding. This should be done by committing us to the European Dogsport Union (EHU). There were several reasons why we decided to do this.
One reason was to prevent cruelty to animals, which we considered as a top priority. The cropping and docking of dog’s tails and ears is controversial. In England and Scandinavia it was and still is regarded as a taboo and is partly prohibited. Our idea was that the breeder must have the right to decide freely for himself, whether he wanted to crop and dock a dog’s ears and tail. But this was only half of the solution. At exhibitions held under the patronage of the European Dogsport Union, cut and uncut dogs have been treated equally for over 40 years.
Apart from this, our impression was that, especially in the Yorkshire Terrier breed, anatomic defects in certain bloodlines were so common, that an improvement to avoid and prevent this had to be encouraged. It seemed almost impossible to reach this goal, since the different dog clubs were fighting with each other. Without a breeding evaluation program, people could breed dogs like rabbits.
The sale of the puppies was certain, since customers think that a pedigree was some kind of a guarantee. Instead of justifying the sale’s price with the quality of the breeding, breeders justified the price with the pedigree. Its technical value is comparable to writing or copying a telephone book entry. The certificate is based on written data delivered by the breeder and it is sent to him by mail, using the cash on delivery payment method.
Then, the conditions in the scene were so bad, that people were reminded of documentations about World War II or the Cold War in Eastern Europe. Every day new cases of intrigues and patronizations took place. Almost militant and arbitrary controls of breeders by the club authorities were carried through daily at the partly more successful breeder’s kennels. The reports which were written after by the club officials often didn’t have anything to do with reality. The breeders were fully exposed to the disadvantages of these actions. They lost their club breeding licenses for an unlimited time and therefore were out of business. Only one way was left for these people to legally regain their club breeding license: the long and expensive way of a law suit.
These breeders didn’t know about alternative dog organizations working in Europe. Then, as well as today, they think that there is only one internationally accepted federation (monopoly) dealing with dogs and breeding.
These problems and the desperate helplessness of breeders led to even more constraints, especially with breeders breeding larger dogs. One of these unreasonable constraints was putting pups to death. It is a shame and against all ethics, that a breeding union itself becomes the reason why young dogs are being put to death because of the federation’s own regulations.
We regard our breeders as the keepers and patrons of healthy breeds. No club or federation has the legal right to take away a breeder’s right by it’s own or other’s regulations, respectively to incapacitate, compel or dispossess someone by statutes and articles. The killing ordered from the top of dog federations is illegal. It controls only the sales and the market status for breeders, who at the same time are active as club officials. They are using special powers of attorney to keep the number of pups bred of their own breed uncut.
