The Italian Greyhound Club AGM was held on Saturday, 19 March 2011 at Marston Green near Birmingham. Club Chairperson Jo Amsel welcomed members and her opening address is posted below:
“Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who has been able to attend today.
It is not an easy economic climate and this is definitely impacting the dog show world and dog breed clubs.
It is particularly in these times that we need everyone to pull together for the sake of our breed and the Club.
We had a really marvellous Committee this year. Special thanks must go to Chris for her sterling work in preparing the Discover Dogs stand and also its smart new banner as well as making sure that flowers and cards were sent out to members when they were needed. Added to that she has her busy duties as Membership Secretary. Many thanks too to Frances for finding us a super new venue for the Funday and also for her catering prowess at both the Funday and the Seminar. She has promised to continue to help if we ask her nicely!
Thanks too to Bill for his incredibly efficient accounting. Few members will realise the amount of work that Bill does for the Club and has done for very many years and I am sure we all wish him a speedy recovery.
To Russell, for his continuing hard work as our Show Secretary despite being show secretary of Birmingham Toy as well, and not least to a new member Clara Guzzardi who stepped into the breach of filling the secretarial role for the year despite having no experience of the dog show world at all ( what is a CC she said ) and what a brilliant job she has made of it.
Thanks as well to Jimmi for being Cup Steward and his previous hard work on the Newsletter. We were very sorry that he lost his mother last year.
Yet another new member has helped us to take the website up to a new level having attracted almost 4000 views in the past week. Hopefully members will provide more articles and photos for it in the future.
Jan Doherty has taken up the reins with both the Breed Stall and the Newsletter and has made a great success of both of them.
This year we held a very successful seminar, also at a new venue, perhaps though we took on too many candidates as it proved so popular that the uptake was more than expected, however Rachel kept them all in order. This enabled the Club to widen its list of judges which can only be an improved situation in these days when shows need to attract as many exhibitors as possible.
But if the Club is to remain healthy it must have more help from its members. For many years the Club has struggled to find enough Committee members, which means that the burden of work falls upon the few. The Kennel Club’s increasingly complicated demands upon the secretaries and show secretaries of Clubs does not make our life easy and can make it difficult to find members with the time to undertake the often onerous work involved.
It may be that in the future, The Club will have to employ an experienced secretary for a few hours a week.
It also behoves all members who breed to set a shining example where breeding practice is involved. Our Code of Ethics is in place for the best of reasons so please uphold it.
We are doing our best to educate the public about our breed but it is a sad fact that the bridge in supply and demand is being filled in many instances, with unethically bred puppies. Fortunately we have The Rescue Charity who are rehoming as many IGs and IG crosses, as possible.
Finally, members need to put aside personal differences and let their mutual love of Italian Greyhounds bring them together for the benefit of both the beautiful Italain Greyhound and the Italian Greyhound Club.”
Jo Amsel
Chairperson
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