Canine Confab

The media and communications world is fast moving, time and the internet wait for no man or woman come to that!
The Kennel Club have certainly realised the potential of traffic to their website and their latest initiative may well sound the death knell for the longest established paper publication , Our Dogs.

The launch of the online resource www.kcjudgescritiques.org.uk will allow dog show judges to publish their opinions in one website. There can be no doubt that as the vast majority of dog shows in the UK are under Kennel Club rules the Judges will flock to the website to share their views, and to my mind, quite rightly too.
Only then can the KC see the how much effort has to go into carefully reading each critique to avoid poor spelling, inflammatory statement and in some cases downright defamation and libel!

I do wonder who will be set the task of proof reading, at present many Kennel Club staff have been chosen for their business acumen with an interest in dogs somewhere on the list below holidays in the Balearics and world domination. Surely, the might of the KC will realise it isn’t just about proof reading? It would be like asking me to mark an essay on Nuclear Physics and that isn’t rocket science!

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Assuming appropriate staff are in place, could this be a win, win for the Kennel Club? Well, yes, I believe it could however a word of caution, the conspiracy theorists will no doubt be discussing “what did the KC leave out”. The fact is that you cannot please everybody all of the time.

As to the effect on the one left standing dog paper, Our Dogs?
Space has always been at a premium in the printed journals, that will not change. The slowness of the news is always against a weekly printed paper obviously but we still cling to the thought that not everybody has the internet or would prefer to sit down with a cup of coffee and the dog paper. I personally think the former is a statement that has run it’s course and as the time ticks away so will the number of folks without the will or ability to create internet access. The latter however does have power at the moment; there is something comforting about spreading the paper across your lap and grazing on the nuggets of wisdom or cackling at the gaffs therein. With the removal of Dog World from the show scene and the burying of that fine publication by its rival I feel Our Dogs has shot itself in the footer. Together the two papers may have been able to balance the books, alone Our Dogs is the lonely figure of Canute on the beach and the tide is coming in.

I cheer the Kennel Club on in their efforts to give the public what they want, centralised and with appropriate staff at the helm I believe the Judges Critique website has a great chance of being a success, even if in response to the JCF the same names appear time and time again.
I wonder how long it will be before a website appears offering Critiques of the Judges by the exhibitor?