The Future of DogsNZ Governance

DogsNZ are currently consulting with members about modernising their government structure. In a previous post I described how things work currently – now I’ll share my own thoughts about what’s going well and what could be better.

Representation

Currently 84% of votes at ACOD belong to one code. The only change to the voting structure in recent decades has been the separation of agility from the Dog Training Committee, resulting in 4 extra votes at the table for non-breed show people, but we are still very under-represented.

Over those decades, pedigree dog registration and participation in breed showing has been declining. I’m not a member of a breed club but I’ve heard a few stories lately about how much these clubs struggle to find volunteers to organise their shows.

In the meantime, other codes have been growing in popularity. Two new codes have emerged – rally-o and scentwork – and soon we will have hoopers trials too. An increasing number of people are involved in multiple disciplines, which makes it difficult to categorise members into distinct blocs for voting purposes.

Is Agility Pulling Its Weight?

While I suspect agility is the most numerically strong code, this doesn’t necessarily translate into a big pool of volunteers who are willing to step up and run the organisation.

I mentioned in the previous post that there is one (on and off) agility person on the Executive Council at the moment, but I don’t recall any other agility people ever standing – is that because they don’t know they can, don’t expect to win, or don’t want to? There is usually a fairly small pool of candidates for the Agility Committee elections every 2 years, and if I remember correctly the current lot were elected unopposed in 2022 because there were only 8 nominations for 8 spots.

I often hear the comment that junior handlers are the future of our sport. Personally I think all competitors are the future of our sport, and that we need to make sure our sport is still welcoming to and supportive of older agility competitors. I suspect the average age of show dog people is significantly higher than of agility people, and that means they have more people who have significant governance experience from their day jobs; who are empty nesters; who are retired or semi-retired; and in general who have the skills and time to volunteer for the Executive Council. If we don’t have more agility voices willing to sit at this table, a change in representation won’t result in any real change to the status quo.

Shifting the Focus on Pedigree Dogs

Dog breeding trends have changed a lot over the decades too. I’m glad to see that DogsNZ now employs a health and welfare officer and made some long overdue changes in health schemes, restrictions on over-breeding from individual dogs etc. This is long overdue and is needed to prevent a public backlash against dog breeding which could impact on all of us.

Breeding trends have changed a lot during my agility career, for example:

• A steep rise in intentional crossbreeding, whether it’s a Whateverdoodle aimed at the pet market, or more recently a Borderpap going into an agility home.
• More people breeding dogs (especially border collies) for sport purposes, with little interest in whether the dog conforms to the breed standard or not. Some of these are registered as pedigrees. Some aren’t even when they could be, because pedigree papers don’t seem that relevant to their breeders and owners.
• Large volumes of non-pedigree purebred dogs being sold on TradeMe. This has settled down a little since the ridiculous prices charged during the pandemic, but these puppies sell for a lot of money. They are usually not screened for health conditions and the “breeders” often have no idea about the pedigree of their dog and what might or might not be lurking in the genes. This sort of backyard breeding has always gone on but now it seems to have become a hobby business for some people rather than just a one-off litter.

For as long as I’ve been a member, DogsNZ strategic direction has placed heavy emphasis on the importance of preserving pedigree dog breeding. Interestingly this is not really reflected in the objects section of the DogsNZ Rules, perhaps because they date to an earlier era when most dog breeding was related to pedigree dogs. This means there is already scope for DogsNZ to be thinking about how it can appeal to breeders and owners of non-pedigree dogs.

The emphasis on preserving pedigree breeds and conformation showing has sometimes been in conflict with what agility members want – for example, when DogsNZ has advocated against the tail docking ban. At the time the argument is always that these matters only concern breed show people so agility people shouldn’t have an opinion on them – but since I have to be DogsNZ members in order to compete in agility, it’s not ideal when DogsNZ takes positions that I’m ethically opposed to.

So What’s Next?

I’m looking forward to attending the road show when it comes to Timaru, but here are some of my initial thoughts:.

Individual voting would make it easier to represent each member once and only once, and fairly represent all the codes. It would also require a rethink of how ACOD would work.

The best thing about ACOD is that it brings people together from different codes and regions to discuss the future of the club. Last year the AC invited each club to send one delegate to the first Agility Clubs Conference, a great initiative that I’d love to see continue. Perhaps there could be one day of conferences/workshops for individual codes where delegates from each club attend, and then a second day where these delegates come together to discuss the big picture of the organisation and meet the EC (who have been elected by all members via electronic voting).

At the moment some codes (e.g. agility and breed showing) have a two-tier structure of champ shows and ribbon trials, with competitors needing to join DogsNZ to enter a champ show. Others (e.g. scentwork and rally-o) only have one tier of competition, or allow people to “try before they buy” and enter champ shows before they join DogsNZ. It would be great to see more consistency about this across the codes.

This is one of those things that might seem like a little deal but I think it is important to attract new members. There are fewer ribbon trials on offer these days so fewer opportunities for people to try these sports without paying over $100 to join DogsNZ. I’d love to see more options for becoming a member – quarterly or half-yearly renewal options, or the ability for clubs to collect a membership levy (say $20) from non-members entering champ shows. This could lower barriers to getting involved in dog sports but would need to be carefully structured so that an annual membership is the best option for most competitors.

I’d love to see more innovation about what DogsNZ can do to generate revenue from the general pet-owning public rather than just dog show people. The insurance scheme is a promising step. There have been other good ideas too over the years (e.g. the ferry discounts for members, which came from a vision of having a wide range of member discounts like the AA does) but there doesn’t seem to have been a consistent effort to push forward in this direction. Maybe it’s time for yet another committee to drive innovation in this area.

The Elephant in the Room

Any change would have to reach a majority at ACOD, which would require a lot of breed clubs to vote for it. This is the ultimate handbrake that has prevented the organisation from making major strategic changes to keep up with the times over recent decades. However, I’ve seen and heard more recently about breed clubs struggling, so maybe they will be more open to change this time around.