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Resurrection for the Bouvier?

Jim Engel, 1998


In recent years I have had much to say about the plight of the Bouvier des Flandres as a working dog. Although none of this has been contradicted on the basis of fact, experience or logic, some have felt that perhaps enough is enough, that even if what is said is true it is nevertheless time to quit beating the dead horse, presumably by those willing to just let it lay there and rot.

Many have adopted the Pollyanna attitude, believe that if only we could be nice to each other and pretended with enough sincerity some how the miracle would occur and the ancestral character would reemerge in our dogs in spite of our foolishness and our slothfulness. It will not.

The price of a working breed will always be faithfulness to the heritage, the relentless insistence that a dog who can not work is not a Bouvier des Flandres and thus unworthy of being bred. The simple truth is that the real Bouvier is disappearing because his advocates have been lazy, foolish and, most damaging of all, liars. Our lies do damage because they are told in the most damaging way, to ourselves, because we will not face the truth of what we are doing and the lack of courage and will in the very core of our souls.

Those who boast and brag about what their dogs can do and the titles they are going to win "next year" on Dutch sport fields but do not even train are liars. We know who they are, but to others, who might become Bouvier trainers, they represent the working Bouvier and a good reason to go on to another, more serious, breed.

Those who go to Europe for a "working Bouvier" and buy a dog out of show lines because it curries favor with show breeders who pretend that their dogs are capable of work are lying to themselves, and getting what they deserve. Such people do not last long, but they do damage before they move on.

The most egregious liars are the show breeders who join NAWBA and say they believe in the working dog. Their real agenda is to sell puppies on the basis of "our show dogs could do it too, if only we had time to train. But if you are going to put in all of that work why don't you buy a nice show dog instead of one of those ugly working dogs and have the best of both worlds ? " But of course it is another lie, the dog does not work, and the potential Bouvier trainer more often than not goes on to another breed.

And what do these people have to say for themselves? In many instances, it boils down to "Jim Engel's gloom and doom is the real problem, if we could just shut him up our problems would be solved."

In England in the 1930s Winston Churchill was unpopular - and out of office - because he noticed and warned of the emerging Nazi threat. Neville Chamberlain was popular - and in office - because he promised that the problem could be ignored, that they did not need to spend tax money on rearmament and face the horror of sending another generation of British youth to die in the mud of European battlefields. Instead, Mr. Chamberlain went to talk with Uncle Adolph, gave away a few minor democracies, and came back claiming "peace in our time." In the end, of course, another generation of British youth did die, a generation which in all likelihood could have been spared by facing up to and dealing with reality in the years between the wars.

The consequences of ignoring reality in the Bouvier world are of course not as serious as the foolishness of the French and British leaders between the wars. But the principle is the same. By ignoring reality and pandering to the show breeders and pet owners, the current leadership of the North American Working Bouvier Association (NAWBA), and the European leaders, are precipitating disaster just as surely as the politicians in Britain and France before the war.

The primary arena of foolishness is the ongoing process of inventing or borrowing a "temperament test" as a means of certifying show dogs and pets as having "working character." These tests are inevitably taken over and run by the show and pretend working people, who lower standards and become judges until their dogs can pass, even though they are not and by and large can not be competitive in serious sports or real work. The national clubs in the Netherlands and Belgium are also under tight control of the show breeders and equally devoted to finding ways of pretending that dogs could work rather than taking the steps necessary to support the Bouvier as a real working dog.

Serious working dog trainers have universal disdain for these contrived temperament tests and look to the serious sports, such as IPO, Schutzhund, KNPV and the Ring Sports of Belgium and France to test and prove their dogs. Increasingly, they are estranged from the various Bouvier clubs and their agenda of pandering to the show breeders.

People demand, quite correctly and reasonably, that since I have so much to say that it is time for me to put forth the solution to these problems. And so I will.

The fundamental reason that the German Shepherd is so prominent as a working dog in America is because for almost a century there has been a strong national organization in Germany committed to the maintenance of the working character. The obvious factor is that there are a lot of good working dogs available to import as breeding and competition stock. But even more fundamentally nobody in the American Shepherd community would even think of proposing a "temperament test" because they know they would instantly become the international laughingstock. The Shepherd people know how to structure their organizations and grow their culture because they have strong examples in the homeland. The judges and trainers who come to America exemplify and advocate the principle that in order to be a German Shepherd a dog must be capable of his work.

The situation for the Bouvier is entirely different in that the national clubs in France, Belgium and the Netherlands pay only lip service to the working heritage and their leading breeders select only with the objective of winning in the show ring. Justin Chastel quit the Belgian club after fifty years as a member and twenty years as president for this very reason, because their character test judges were passing unworthy dogs, which was in his very words "a scandal."

So if there is to be a serious working Bouvier movement in America then we are going to have to do it ourselves, with no help from the European organizations. The sooner that we understand and accept that nobody is going to come over and show us the way, that they are wandering in the fog themselves, and have been for thirty years, the sooner we can begin.

Certainly there are individuals in Europe who can provide knowledge, inspiration and breeding stock, such as Dr. LeLann, Mr. Dalhuisen, Fred Samseer, Ria Klep, Carla Duyvenbode, Fokke Krottje and Caya Krijnse Locker. But what do we gain by looking to men, sincere and noble as they might be, whose training experience is with the Malinois or who happen to be FCI conformation judges and willing to say nice things on a trip to America? Why should we pay to bring over those who will spout the propaganda of the European show breeders - the same as the domestic propaganda we are so used to - rather than join with us in the common cause of doing something serious to restore the breed? Should we not look only to those in Europe who are today truly making the attempt to breed and train real Bouviers, serious working dogs, and spurn those who talk about working Bouviers but suck up to the show breeders and serve their agenda and spout their lies?

In America, the first step on a serious national working Bouvier program would be to cast aside NAWBA, the propaganda front for the show breeders and pet owners, and establish a hard core organization where only those who train and prove their dogs would have a say in working Bouvier affairs. NAWBA is not worth fixing, and when the remnants of the serious people finally leave it behind it will become a pure play dog association, which I would not object to if they were to drop the word "Working" in the name.

A second fundamental step in a Bouvier resurrection would be to recognize once and for all that you are not going to find converts among the show breeders and pet owners, and that pandering to them, as has been our practice, merely serves to convince potentially serious people that they need to look to another breed, one with a serious organization behind it. Sure, people such as Martha Sadler or Charlie Porter ( or Jim Engel) are going to start as "pet owners" and go off and buy show dogs by accident and try to make them into working dogs because Schutzhund seems like a neat real man (or woman) sport. But one way or another, usually because Shepherd people at our training club talk about it all of the time, we are going to discover "working lines" and come to understand that working character comes from relentless selection in the breeding process, something those concerned primarily with conformation show wins can not and will not do. The point is, the novice with the fire in his belly is ultimately going to look for working lines and real working dog associations, and will change breeds if he has to. The pet owners, the vast majority, mean nothing, contribute nothing and suck down and trivialize any organization which panders to them, which is exactly what has happened to NAWBA.

A fundamental flaw in NAWBA, one of the founding lies, is that play is work. Work by definition is something of value, a service to mankind with real worth, such as police service, actual herding and farm and family protection. Obedience is a good thing, a necessary prerequisite to real work, but is not work in and of itself. Thus AKC style obedience is not "as good" as a KNPV or Ring Sport title and should not be so recognized in a true working dog association. In a similar way, "agility" is a fundamental attribute of a good working dog, but agility events, fly ball events, lure coursing and the rest of it are not working events; and to allow them to be portrayed as such destroys the integrity of a working dog association and its credibility in the eyes of the contemporary working dog world, and more importantly, in the eyes of young people interested in serious dog sports and making a breed decision.

The real trainers are being systematically driven out of the organization and being replaced by "virtual trainers" who talk the talk and then talk some more, who go to Europe and on the advice of "working trial judges" buy show dogs and are then surprised when they don't work, get taken in by their own foolishness. To see this you need do no more than count the board members and officers who have trained a dog to an advanced working title: in the last NAWBA election, Marion Hubbard's "show breeder's slate" had among themselves taken only one Bouvier to Schutzhund III while their opponents had reached Schutzhund III seven times.

The people who are really training their dogs naturally train with serious trainers in an all breed environment and see that in the successful breeds there is no such thing as conformation trophies without first earning working titles, and no Mickey Mouse temperament tests, and come to see that NAWBA is hopelessly inadequate as a means of resurrecting the Bouvier as a working dog.

So now the results of the last election are emerging for all to see, that it was indeed a NAWBA turning point. Marion Hubbard and Ron Gordon, who she pays to train her dogs, put together their show breeder's slate consisting of Frank McEniry, Ron and Erik Johnson. To be absolutely candid, Charlie Porter might well have become president had he chosen to distance himself from me. Perhaps he should have, perhaps he could have gone on to succeed where I had failed.

But Charlie asked the membership to vote for one slate or the other because there was a clear principle, a choice between a true working dog association and what we see today. The election solidified NAWBA as a working association in name only, serving show breeder lies and pet owner fantasies rather than being the American guardian of the working heritage of a once noble breed. And of course Charlie is no longer a NAWBA member, has joined the ranks of serious trainers simply not willing to be associated.

All of this apparently went to Mr. Gordon's head, in that he seems to have believed that he had been anointed King rather than just elected as vice president of a second rate dog club. We are told that the wheels came off at the very first board meeting, and things went down hill from there in the form of registered letters, threats of law suits and everything else we have all been hearing about. (Things which, I might point out, never went on while Charlie and I held office....)

The root of the problem seems to be that Frank McEniry thought he had been elected president to run the association instead of taking orders from Ron and Marion, who became frustrated when the board did not immediately bow down and implement their complete suck up to the show breeders agenda.

Frank McEniry has been a bit of a surprise in a number of ways. Most of the board members have indicated to me that from the beginning he took hold of his office and worked diligently to provide leadership under difficult circumstances. He took charge of and successfully implemented the 1997 working Championship in Montreal and seems to be holding the organization together in spite of the renegade, anti-NAWBA west coast Bouvier organization launched by Hubbard and Gordon when their efforts to commandeer the 1998 championships for their own purposes were rebuffed by the board.

In the early 90s, when the NAWBA board was considering working requirements as prerequisites for conformation competition, it was Frank McEniry who first proposed the implementation of the Schutzhund companion dog test, referred to in the vernacular as "the B." At this time, in my role as president of the association, I was taking a deliberate low profile in these discussions in the hope that a consensus would emerge, which it in fact did.

Once the B became the standard and the show breeders realized that by and large their dogs either could not pass or that real get out there and sweat work would be required on their part, all hell broke loose. Marion Hubbard became the open champion of the show breeders such as Cindy Stumm and began her incessant campaign to get rid of the B. Frank, among others, proposed a "temperament test" as a replacement. I was and remain vigorously opposed, and although the board rejected their temperament test, the die was cast and the rest, as they say, was history. Frank became the titular head of the show breeder's slate and rode Marion's hoard of newly joined NAWBA members into office.

Marion's problem, of course, was that while she had finally rid the Bouvier world of the evil one Mr. McEniry emerged as yet another devil. While Frank and I have never been personally close, and over the years have fought vigerously on many issues, on a deep down gut level we believe in the same kind of dog. This of course immediately became a serious problem for Marion, one she could not resolve without yet again launching a new organization and thus fracturing the association.

At this point, in a political sense, it would seem that Ms. Hubbard has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. As the de facto leader of the show breeders and pet owners she was well placed to ease out anybody who didn't get it, failed to understand that the working dog talk was just that, that the real agenda of the association was to put out a lot of nonsense about Bouviers being different and how all of the show dogs really are working dogs and the whole tiresome litany of lies. If Mr. Gordon had taken the trouble to do the minimum to hold on to his office and if they had played their cards right they could have negotiated their nice little San Francisco party for next year if not this year and lived happily ever after as the heroes who vanquished the evil one.

So, even with their own hand picked slate in office, Marion and Ron still wound on the outside looking in, and have gone of to found their own little club where presumably they can have absolute control and freedom to pretend that show dogs can work, and of course make money and become famous in the process.

Is it not strange that Marion Hubbard's verbal and legal battles with Claire McLean and all of the anonymous mass mailings of the eighties, which led to her estrangement from the American Bouvier Club and much of the show breeding community, have in a very similar set of circumstances led to her estrangement from yet another national Bouvier club in the nineties? Is it possible that there is a pattern emerging here?

At this point in time the only real difference between Frank McEniry and myself is one of methods, of means to the end. The most important issue today is the proposed temperament test. As discussed elsewhere, I will vigerously oppose anything less then the modified Schutzhund test which for several years has been in the NAWBA rules, even though it has not been used. In particular, I will oppose any of the European tests, including those conducted by the Dutch, Belgian and French clubs, because they are watered down inventions of the show breeders and because they have failed there. Frank, for reasons I hope he will explain, may very well take an opposing position, in which case we shall once again do battle.

Chris Redenbach, as chairman of the NAWBA temperament test committee, seems to be the current champion of the temperament test. After all of these years of talking about Ring training, and getting one dog half way to the lowest Ring title, she is indeed the perfect chairperson, makes the whole thing a complete and perfect farce. Perhaps she and those who think like her can induce our Japanese friends to come out with a "Virtual Working Bouvier" so that not only would you not have to be bothered with training, you would not have to feed it and could keep it in your purse! ( I imagine that once the little plastic doggie passed the virtual temperament test and you tickled it in front of the tail it would spout "Schutzhund is for winnies!", "Real women talk about Ring Sport" and another half a dozen of the standard virtual trainer slogans.)

In an era where we see on television that yet another Rottweiler has gotten loose and attacked, and even killed, another innocent citizen, is it not irresponsible to publicly conduct tests in which a dog can bite but where control, an out or call back, is not required? Certainly the B is an inadequate test, but it should be augmented with a protection test requiring both real aggression and real control rather than replaced because the show breeders whine and their dogs fail, even when trained by the famous German Shepherd trainer.

Real politics is inevitably from time to time played by hard ball rules. Show me an organization where there are no angry words and restrained political processes and I will show you an organization where there is no real passion, where nothing of fundamental importance is at stake, where there is no real fire in any belly. Democracy in the real world is rough and tumble, but the only real alternative is a dictatorship of the elite, such as the American Kennel Club.

Politics makes storage bedfellows, and if Frank used the show breeders to gain office I have been guilty of the same sin and thus will not cast a stone. If Frank does not understand or accept that the show breeders are choking the life out of the breed and the only possibility of survival is in creating associations which deny them influence and control, then he is guilty of nothing that I was not guilty of fifteen years ago. Although I am now free to comment with impunity, I have held the office he now holds and know the burdens and limitations of speaking for the association rather than only for one's self.

When I was on the losing slate of the last election, I withheld public comment, and said virtually nothing even in private, for well over a year. Finally, when the issues relating to the renegade west coast club, Mr. Gordon's irregular exit from office and the unwarranted interference with the French judge came forth, I have publicly and privately supported Mr. McEniry, not only because he has been correct, but more importantly because he is the elected leader of the association.

None of this changes the fact that NAWBA is a fundamental part of the problem rather than a potential solution. There are only two alternatives.

In order to transform NAWBA into something useful, it would be necessary to revise the voting procedures so that only serious dog trainers, who actually put working titles on their dogs, could have a say over the affairs of the association.

One way to do this would be to restrict voting membership to those who had trained a Bouvier from the ground up and personally put a serious title on it. This would probably not be workable at this time, but we could certainly limit the voting privilege to those who were active trainers in a Ring or Schutzhund club so as to include those who are serious but have not succeeded in achieving their first title.

In the German Shepherd organization, the individual member has no vote. Only the training clubs, which must put on a yearly working trial, are allowed to vote. This means that only those elected as president of a serious local training club, or their designated delegates, participate in the election of national officers.

In the Bouvier world, people with no real commitment to working character, such as Judy Higgins, can remain aloof for years and then send in their thirty dollars in order to vote in an interesting election. These people are of course committed, committed to a phony working association with the purpose of propagating show breeder lies. From their point of view, the emergence of significant numbers of real working Bouviers in America would be a disaster, for it would then be impossible to pretend that the show stock was capable of work and the expanding working community would marginalize the show dogs, just as the AKC German Shepherd show circuit has disappeared from public consciousness into its own little make believe world.

There are of course many others who would be irrelevant were the Bouvier to become a serious working breed. Look at the NAWBA journal, where Ms. Redenbach gushes about a "working Bouvier revival" in France. But when you really look at the details all she can report is a bunch of dogs she thinks look good in training, mostly for low level "character" tests, not a credible presence on French sport fields. But, as one who talks but does not put dogs on the field, what does she know?

And of course she talks about French ring being for the Malinois, and how we can not expect to compete, setting the stage for yet another generation of excuses.

Certainly we are barely treading water in America. But based on what they have bred and trained in the past twenty years the French should be coming here and to the few remaining Dutch KNPV and IPO trainers to learn about working Bouviers, and to seek breeding stock. North Americans going to France for guidance is like the one eyed man trying to follow the blind man out of the jungle.

All of this of course creates a set of problems for Frank McEniry. I accept that he is one of the few people involved who really knows deep down what a serious protection dog is all about and that in his heart he is unwilling to accept less in a Bouvier. Even today he is taking the steps to find a better dog because he is not satisfied, just as we all are. Sooner or later he is going to come to realize and accept that sucking up to the show breeders and pretend trainers is the road to nowhere, and that the temperament test is nothing but a formal public lie for the benefit of the show breeders, the virtual trainers and the training philosophers.

Sure, he has done a good job so far, but where does he go from here? Look at it from his point of view. The Hubbard gang may or may not be history, but their show breeder and virtual trainer constituency is still there, and the next crusader to step forward and lead the winnies in the cause of mediocrity is going to have him dead in their sights if he shows any signs of being serious about the Bouvier as a real working dog.

To be a serious organization, NAWBA would have to dump this temperament test nonsense now and stand up and once and for all declare that conformation trophies go only to dogs with a serious, high level working title such as Schutzhund III, a top Ring title or the KNPV certificate.

I resigned as NAWBA president because it had become clear that the board was going to do nothing serious about working dogs; and I had the support of Charlie Porter who would have voted for serious steps and David Regier who could have been convinced. With Martha Sadler and Frank on the board we had a majority who had taken a dog to Schutzhund III, and still we didn't have the balls to do anything.

We, of course, have been swept away by the show breeder's slate, and Frank has only one other person on the board who has put an advanced title on a dog, David Cameron White. This board is most of the way through their term and has done nothing but put on a championship, plan another and announced an endless string of do nothing committee appointments.

The reason for all of this is not that these are bad people. The reason is that as a working dog association NAWBA was still born, devoted from the beginning to fairy tales, pandering to pet owners and show breeder propaganda.

There is only one thing that could make any difference, and that would be to form a serious association and set the voting membership bar high enough so that only serious trainers could participate in decision making.

Even were those who know the true Bouvier in their hearts to put aside NAWBA and organize in a meaningful way for support of serious trainers and breeders it would be a long up hill battle, with only a slim chance of long term success. But were we to fail there would be honor, nobility in bearing witness to the heritage even though in the end our Bouvier became extinct.

For those who believe, dishonor lies in failing to act, failure to take bold and necessary actions when they are unpopular. Peter denied Christ three times, and then heard the cock crow. But ultimately he found within himself the courage to step forward and found the Church, and then die in its service.

My friends, the cock has crowed for the Bouvier. Who among us has the courage to step forward to do what is necessary to resurrect the Bouvier des Flandres as a working dog?

Jim Engel, Marengo    © Copyright 1998