8th ECDC meeting on
organised by the Croatian Dalmatian Club ‘Atila Dubac’
Minutes of the ECDC Meeting of Delegates 2007
Chair: Mr. Frans de
Ridder, chairman of the ECDC
ECDC-committee members present:
Chairman:
Frans de Ridder (
ECDC-delegates present:
Ǻke Cronander from Sweden, Helle Höie and Tyge Greibrokk from Norway,
Sören Jacobsen from Denmark, Sanna Heikkinen and Jonna Niemenperä from Finland,
Frans de Ridder and Liliane de Ridder-Onghena from Belgium, Sally Ann Clegg
from France, Erna Kuipers and Rhys Morgans from the Netherlands, Herbert Nagel
and Alfred Ronneburg from Germany (DDC), Gerhard Herbst and Jörg Haeseler from
Germany (CDF), Ursula Voitle and Tryn E. Borckenstein from Austria, Pia
Pedercini from Italy and Ivana Bakal from Croatia (Atila Dubac).
ECDC-observers present:
Nina
Fleming from
Delegates new candidate members present:
Stipe
Gorenjak and Dean Radosevic from
Also present
from
ECDC-delegates unable to attend:
Simone
Zollinger from
ECDC-delegates absent without apology:
DVD from
ECDC-observers absent:
North of
New candidate members absent:
Maria Elena
Altuna de la Peňa from
1. Arrival of the participants.
Welcome + coffee.
At
nine o ‘clock the chairman mr. Frans de Ridder opened the meeting and welcomed
the official delegates of the member clubs and all other guests. He addressed a
special ‘thank you’ to the Croatian Dalmatian Club ‘Atila Dubac’ for organising
the ECDC event 2007.
2. Welcome from the Croatian Dalmatian Club ‘Atila Dubac’
In
his opening speech mr. Damir Skok, president of the Croatian Kennel
Club, thanked everybody for finding their way to
3. Presentation of the delegates from
the member-clubs and observer-clubs
The
delegates, official observers and delegates new candidate members introduced
themselves. (See mentioned above)
4. Chairman’s Report (Frans de Ridder)
“Two years ago when I was nominated as chairman of the ECDC,
I promised to make this organization more active. Serious health problems early
this spring prevented me from doing this. The only items I can present to you
will be a proposal for new rules for the ECDC in order to make our organization
more world wide. The new status will give us the possibility to sign a contract
with the FCI, which means that we will be regarded as an official discussion
partner and therefore will be able to have direct contact with the FCI. Another
proposal could be the change of the name of our organization to make it more
clear that the Dalmatian is well known worldwide and that we accept non-European
members in our cooperation. At a committee meeting last year, we discussed the
financial situation of the ECDC and came to the conclusion that it would be
possible to reduce the membership fee (agenda point 11). This is not only
interesting for the existing members but will also encourage smaller clubs to
become members. Another proposal is that the
secretary of the organizing (host) club should be a member of the ECDC committee.
This will allow us to have better contact with the club, organizing the next
event. Special thanks go to the committee members Alfred Ronneburg and Annemiek
Morgans and our translators Sally Ann Clegg, Mme. Ricou and Stephanie Yates.”
5. Secretary’s Report (Annemiek Morgans)
-
Minutes of the meeting 2005: There were no remarks and the minutes were agreed
upon.
- Secretary’s report Period 2005-2007: See report attached.
6. Treasurer’s Report (Alfred Ronneburg) –
see report attached
The
financial report was sent out before the meeting. After answering questions by
the treasurer, the delegates gave their approval to the report. All clubs (except
Germany DVD) had paid their membership fee for 2006.
7a. Membership matters
- From observer status to full
membership? Croatian Dalmatian Club ‘HKPDP-Dalmatinac’, the Hungarian Dalmatian Club
and the Portuguese Dalmatian Club.
The
above mentioned clubs have an observer status since the last meeting. From the
Portuguese Club we did not receive any reactions to our mails, so it is not
clear if this club wants to continue the procedure.
- New Candidate: Club Dalmata de
Cuba.
The
Dalmatian Club of Cuba is the first club outside
Ǻke Cronander asked to postpone the
vote on this agenda point until after the discussions about the proposals for the
new statutes under agenda point 11: “In our Nordic countries we are allowed to
have only one breed club per country. If we allow more clubs per country in our
organization, that country will have many votes. Therefore my proposal is: “in
case there are more clubs per country, they have to share the votes”. Ivana
Bakal mentioned not to see the point as
7b. Membership fee
Also
postponed to point 11
8. Health and Breeding committee
report (Tyge
Greibrokk)
The
following subjects were reported: mega-oesophagus and epilepsy.
-Mega-oesophagus
(mega-o): Tyge Greibrokk referred to his article about mega-o that was
sent to all members in three languages: “In the last meeting we decided that
everybody should try to send in reports on incidents in litters regarding
mega-o. I must admit, that in these two years I did not receive much. Today we
have reports of 71 litters in
-
Epilepsy. Tyge Greibrokk referred to a conversation with a German
breeder, bringing up the subject of epilepsy: “According to this breeder there
is more epilepsy among Dalmatians in his country and other countries than
officially acknowledged. Many veterinarians know about it but the breeders do
not want to talk about it. Shortly after this I received a report from the
Finnish Dalmatian Club saying that at the
According
to Ǻke Cronander the name of the project has a negative sound for
the breed and he recommended the Finnish Club to change the name into something
more positive.
Tyge Greibrokk warned not to be too optimistic about the results of the project: “We
should be aware of the fact that the Dalmatian club of
Rhys Morgans asked about the costs for a breeder, when sending a blood sample to
Persons
to contact for more info: see website www.epidal.dalmatiner.org
Jonna
Niemenperä (Finnish and English): dalmatian@jippii.fi
Bettina
Hutz (German and English): bettina.hutz@orionpharma.com
Liisa
Hällström (Swedish, Finnish and English): liisa.hallstrom@netti.fi
Rhys Morgans proposed that the ECDC should try to develop a research fund so that
clubs can donate money, when they wish to support the Epidal-project and
mentioned that not only the research for epilepsy is important but also the mapping
of the Dalmatian genes. The delegates of both German Clubs (DDC and CDF) said not
to regard epilepsy as a problem in their clubs. Frans de Ridder expressed
his wish, that there will be communication and cooperation between study groups
in different parts of
Tyge Greibrokk asked if there were any more proposals for subjects to bring up in the
next two years. Sören Jacobsen mentioned ‘temperament’, as he has the
impression that more and more Dalmatians are put down due to bad temperament.
“In
9. Judging Committee Report (Åke Cronander)
There
was no report, as nothing had happened in the past two years.
10. Website report (Rhys Morgans)
Rhys Morgans asked the delegates to report changes of addresses. Frans de Ridder
asked to publish a list of Dalmatian judges per country, but only those who are
members of the ECDC member clubs and to add a special mark to their names in
case they are qualified to judge more breeds. All delegates agreed. A yearly
reminder will be sent to ask for changes in committees, (e-mail) addresses etc.
The chairman thanked the webmaster for his work.
11. Proposal for change of
Agreements + change of name: “European Cooperation of Dalmatian Clubs” into
“International Cooperation of Dalmatian Clubs”.
Frans de Ridder: “In order to be officially recognised by the FCI,
our organization has to sign a contract (Cooperation Agreement) with the FCI. There
are two important conditions in this contract. Firstly: all of our member clubs
have to be from countries who are members of the FCI. We are allowed to have
contact with other clubs, but they can not become full members. Secondly: we
should have at least one member outside
Point 2e: ‘Membership ends when
the membership fee is not paid after two reminders.’ After a discussion it was
decided to add the following: ‘The membership ends officially at the next meeting.’ To be sure that
nothing can go wrong in contacting the clubs it was also decided that the
committee will send e-mails to at least four persons
per club: the chairman, the secretary and the two delegates. In our mails we
will never send more than three attachments, to be sure that all information
will be received. Tyge Greibrokk proposed: “To become a member of the World
Association a Dalmatian club should have a certain minimum number of members,
for example 30 or 50.” Alfred Ronneburg: “We should accept any club as a
member, as long as the club is officially recognised by its own national Kennel
Club.” Helle Höie: “In case a club has a lower number of members than
the minimum, the club should have ‘observer status’ until it reaches the
necessary number to become a full member.” A discussion followed and resulted
in a vote: In favour of a minimum number of members: 6 votes, against: 6 votes
+ 1 vote of the chairman. It was decided that ‘the membership ends when a club
is no longer approved by its National Kennel Club.’
Point 2d Membership fee (point 7b
of the agenda): After discussion the following was decided:
130
Euro per year if the club has 500 or more members (at the end of the previous
year)
100
Euro per year if the club has 200 to 499 members (at the end of the previous
year)
50
Euro per year if the club has less than 200 members (at the end of the previous
year)
Point 5d Number of votes per club:
The
original proposal: ‘Clubs with 200 members or more have 2 votes. Clubs with
less than 200 members will have 1 vote.' Ǻke Cronander proposed: ‘Clubs with
less than 200 members should have 1 vote, with more than 200 members 2 votes
and with more than 500 members 3 votes. Each country should never have more
than 3 votes. In case there are 2 clubs per country, the largest club should
have 2 and the smallest club should have 1 vote.’ Herbert Nagel proposed
to stick to the present rule of 1 vote per club.
The
proposals included in fact 4 questions and were voted upon with the following
results:
-
One vote per club or more votes per club? One vote: 4 / more votes: 7 / 1
abstention
-
In case of more votes per club, a maximum of 2 votes or 3 votes?
In favour of a maximum of 3 votes: 11 votes /
1 abstention
-
Is there a limit per country? In favour of limit: 5 votes / against limit: 7
votes
-
If yes, how many votes per country? No need to vote.
Having
discussed all points of the concept ‘New Rules and Regulations’, the delegates
agreed unanimously (see attached file)
7a. Membership matters
New
candidate clubs, from observer status to full membership?
- Croatian Dalmatian Club ‘HKPDP-
DALMATINAC’ Website www.hkpdp-dalmatinac.com
The
Croatian delegate Dean Radosevic introduced the club, which was
established in 1991 and was the first Dalmatian club in
- Hungarian Dalmatian Club
The
Hungarian delegate Fehér Gábor introduced the club, which counts 35
members. So far the club has no website and there are no breeding- or health
records as yet. Contact address: tdalmata@t-online.hu
or gabcsi@t-online.hu
- New candidate: Club Dalmata de
Cuba
As
the delegate from
Ǻke Cronander proposed the Croatian
and Hungarian club to stay observers for one more period and try to get more
members in the next two years, the reservation for these new members being only
due to their low number of members. Frans de Ridder asked the delegates
to realise that we need all the candidate clubs as members, in order to get our
contract with the FCI. After discussions the voting was carried out according
to the just accepted new rules. The delegates gave their votes, based on the
number of members in their clubs:
-
HKPDP-Dalmatinac Croatia: accepted as member with 17 votes in favour – 10
against
-
Hungarian Dalmatian Club: accepted as member with 16 votes in favour – 11
against
-
Club Dalmata de Cuba: accepted as member with 27 votes in favour – 0 against
The
chairman welcomed the three new member clubs in the organization under applause
from all present.
12. Elections
Committee members: chairman Frans de Ridder, secretary Annemiek Morgans
and treasurer Alfred Ronneburg. As no new candidates were proposed, all committee
members were re-elected.
Auditor: Herbert Nagel. As no new candidate was proposed, Herbert Nagel was
re-elected.
Health and Breeding subcommittee: Tyge Greibrokk (chairman), Åsa Boholm,
Radana Zachova, Rhys Morgans and dr. Dominique Vincent.
Åsa
Boholm had sent a message, expressing her wish to resign from the subcommittee.
New candidates proposed:
Judging subcommittee: Åke Cronander (chairman), Liliane de Ridder-Onghena ,
Åase Jakobsen, Alfred Ronneburg and Radana Zachova.
All
subcommittee members were re-elected.
13. Recommendations for breeding (see minutes meeting
2005)
At
the meeting in 2005 the possibility of creating common breeding rules had been
discussed. Frans de Ridder asked the delegates to realise that the
structure of the canine organisations per country varies enormously: “The National
Kennel Clubs in general are very powerful, they develop rules for breeding and organizing
shows, they issue pedigrees and nominate their own judges, all according to
their own rules, which vary very much per country. Some breed clubs are very powerful
and issue pedigrees, others have no influence at all, depending on the
situation per country in relation with their National Kennel Clubs. This
situation has consequences for our organization. We are not able to create general
rules for our member clubs, as our rules may conflict with the rules and
regulations of the different National Kennel Clubs. Therefore our aim should be
to have ‘common recommendations’, we can not go further than this. The Health
and Breeding subcommittee should come with advice and ask for comments from the
member clubs. The clubs should discuss this advice at a national level with
their breeders. It will not be easy to reach a common point of view, as clubs
might have very different ideas about what is important for the breed. Finally
the recommendations will be published on the website.”
Tyge Greibrokk mentioned that so far the ECDC only has one specific recommendation on
breeding and that concerns ARDS: “We are not supposed to use dogs of the first five
generations after a known carrier. However, not all clubs follow this
recommendation. Whether they do not know or just do not care, we don’t know. It
is not clear to me to what extend we will be able to come to other recommendations,
as we do not get the breeding results of all clubs every year. So far from
14. Planned actions for the next two
years
Frans de Ridder referred to the items mentioned under agenda point 8 of
the Breeding and Health subcommiteee: “We can also discuss the possibility to
put money aside for studies on subjects like epilepsy, as we discussed before.
For the Judging subcommittee, I would suggest to start a real discussion about
the breed standard and contact all clubs for their comments to the standard,
also from breeders and judges, if this is possible. Every club should collect
information. We can compare different breed standards such as the FCI- and the
English standard. Our aim should be, not to change the standard, but to come to
a more common view.”
15. Proposals of dates and places
for future meetings
- ECDC event 2009/2010 in
Tyge Greibrokk announced that the next event will take place in Oslo/Norway in august
2009. The chairman aired his preference to have a three days event with the
meeting on the Saturday or eventually on the Friday.
- Next meeting
The Dutch delegates proposed to organize the event in 2011 in The
Netherlands. All agreed.
Alfred Ronneburg proposed Germany (DDC) to organise the event in 2013,
as the DDC organised the first ECDC show and it will be the 10th show in 2013.
16. Diverse questions
Åke Cronander asked to word his reservation regarding ‘new member clubs’ as follows:
“The reservation for new members is only for a low number of members. We think
they should be observers for one more period until they have reached a higher
number of members.” Tyge Greibrokk and Sören Jacobsen mentioned
that
Rhys Morgans congratulated the Croatian Dalmatian Club HKPDP and Hungarian Dalmatian
Club for becoming members: “As your member numbers are very low, I hope we can
stimulate you to try to enlarge the numbers of your members, so you can become really
good and active members of the new association.” Applause followed.
17. Closing of the meeting
As
there were no further questions, the chairman closed the meeting and thanked
all delegates for their contribution to
the discussions.
Vollenhove,
February 2008
Annemiek
Morgans,
WAFDAL
(former ECDC) secretary