To All Regional German Shepherd Dog Regional Clubs:
Those of us who belong to the German Shepherd Club of America are dedicated to protecting our great breed. We are concerned with the health of our breed; we are concerned with the fate of those GSDs that we find abandoned in animal shelters. We do our best to help Club members who are in need. Now, the GSDCA is asking us to help protect our Shepherds from legislation that would take away our freedom to own and enjoy our dogs.
My name is Stormy Hope. The GSDCA Board of Directors appointed me as AKC Legislative Liaison at their January 2009 board meeting. By agreeing to accept the position, according to AKC’s definition of a Legislative Liaison (LL), I also agreed to work with all of the members of the GSDCA. That means that the organizing and inclusion of all clubs is part of “my job.”
It is impossible to do this job alone, but with each club’s participation, plus each club’s members, all working together, the potential for this effort to work effectively and be successful is limitless.
To achieve that success, I am asking each regional club to appoint a key person to be an integral part of that whole, that legislative team.
My vision of this undertaking is to create a nationwide network of club members who will work together as a team, then communicate and bring that information back to their club’s members. They will accept the ongoing responsibility of informing and educating their fellow GSD club members and encouraging those same members to reach out into the community at large to begin to educate the general public.
Once each club has designated their representative, I hope that four or five additional people across the country will step up to become “Regional Coordinators.” These “coordinators” will work with the club representatives in their region to address the legislative challenges they face. There are an infinite number of excellent ideas coming from so many creative GSDCA members. These ideas should be utilized and widely employed to combat the onslaught of onerous legislation with which we are faced.
In an electronic age, the cost of this program to the parent individual clubs will be minimal. The time involved will depend on each team member and the degree of activity that individual invests. Each key person will be invited to become a part of different email trees and a Yahoo site. Communication will be the key to our success; however, digests are an easy way to cut down on mail volume if life becomes overwhelming. When the Legislation page of the GSDCA website is up and running, updates from local areas will be invaluable and always kept current. Those updates can be sent to volunteers and then forwarded on to whomever is updating the local members and website.
There have been questions regarding GSDCA’s involvement, or lack thereof, in legislative issues for some time. It is in our hands to make the GSDCA a powerful force in the fight to stem anti-animal legislation!
Please act as soon as you possibly can and send me the name of your “key person,” and together we WILL make a difference.
Stormy Hope
AKC Legislative Liaison
German Shepherd Club of America
For more information on the duties of legislative liaisons, log onto: www.akc.org/canine_legislation/gplg1397.cfm
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