USCA in Decline: Crisis in Leadership
The American advent of Schutzhund training and trialing, beginning in the 1970s and prospering in the 1980s, was rooted in the desire to create a viable American police and protection dog culture, that is to provide a domestic infrastructure to train and prove such dogs, eventually leading to the evolution of our own domestic breeding lines. Many of us involved in AKC style obedience competition in that era had come to find the experience sterile and our dogs sullen in their compliance. Protection training, tracking and open field obedience work with longer distances and more vigorous, active exercises emerged as an enormously attractive alternative, for the dogs as well as for us. For thirty years there was ongoing progress: better dogs and more effective training were emerging and training day became a whole lot more fun, especially for the dogs. The long courage test, with the helper turning on and engaging the pursuing dog, was a much more dramatic and satisfying way to end the trial than picking up your dog after a long down.
But there were subtle, almost unnoticed, flaws in our brave new world, which have in time come to threaten the viability of the movement. The ultimate fruit of a police dog culture – training and breeding – should be more and better dogs serving domestic police forces and our military services: in order to have real meaning and relevance civilian training and competition must reflect the realities of ever-evolving service rather than increasingly stylized rituals. Over this time period, beginning in the 1970s, American police canine service underwent a revival, driven in large part by a crusade to suppress illegal drug distribution. But rather than evolving together in cooperation with the emerging civilian community these American police programs increasingly have looked to other cultures – especially the Dutch – for inspiration, training and deployment methodologies and dogs. Our police agencies have found the Dutch KNPV model, with close cooperation between police leadership and the working canine community, more compelling than the evolving German estrangement between the SV – dominated by the show breeders increasingly distant from the service heritage – and German police agencies and the cadre of old line, hard core trainers and breeders. The ongoing emergence of the Malinois as the predominant breed in IPO competition and police service worldwide is a direct consequence of SV focus on extreme conformation and the emasculation of working standards, and SV influence in USCA affairs is an increasing aspect of this trend.
Although there were early efforts to evolve purely American programs, they struggled with a lack of credibility or the perception of validity. The police dog mystique was European and, in American eyes especially, German: for reasons good and practical as well as emotional and irrational there was a need for German guidance and endorsement to generate real credibility. The mother club in Germany, the SV, was the natural connection, the source that could provide mentoring, credibility and ongoing support. We idolized these Germans, believed that as the guardians of the German Shepherd, the legitimate heirs of von Stephanitz, they held the moral and historical high ground, were somehow beyond the frailties of human nature. We could no more conceive of these men compromising working character for money than priests assaulting children for sexual gratification. But in cold reality we had been deceived, or rather were deceiving ourselves; but we could not bring ourselves to comprehend this at the time: it would be a quarter of a century before the consequences of this would begin to fully materialize.
Most of these Germans were quite willing to share in the spirit of fellowship and common devotion to the ideals of the founders; but there was in Germany emerging a deep chasm between the legitimate German Shepherd working dog community and the SV leadership, which was evolving into an elite, grasping, show dog oriented bureaucracy primarily interested in personal prestige, money and the trappings of personal power. The primary interest of this cabal in the American Schutzhund movement was to control and manipulate us, to create a German dominated show dog marketing subsidiary agency, effectively SV Distribution America, GmbH.
As the SV became more and more show dog oriented, which was gathering momentum in the 1970s and 80s as American Schutzhund was evolving, increasingly conformation oriented German breeders were finding the trial and training more difficult and onerous. Rather than responding by breeding stronger and more willing German Shepherds, they began to water down Schutzhund. The A frame replaced the scaling wall, the stick was padded, the test of courage lost the most dramatic and challenging element, the turn on the dog, and the attack on the handler out of the blind disappeared because so many of their dogs were failing it.
Going back to the Meloy era in the latter 1980s the relationship with the SV was the defining challenge for USCA leadership. We wanted – and to a serious extent needed – the aura of credibility the SV association offered, even as the corruption and faltering commitment to real working dog values became more and more obvious. German pressure to implement show and registration systems – to be dominated and used by their judges, officers and other insiders – became brazen and unrelenting.
In recent years, under the Lyle Roetemeyer tenure as president, the USCA has in fundamental ways lost its way, been diverted from the foundation commitment to working character in training and breeding, been twisted into an increasingly conformation oriented, foreign controlled show dog marketing operation. It is less and less worthy of pride as a vigorous American working dog movement, but rather has become increasingly subservient to German commercial interests. Even the name United Schutzhund Clubs of America has become a mockery, for the vital meaning of each of these words has been compromised and betrayed.
USCA is not united. The WDA has grown in power and influence, as USCA members have been driven out by the so-called Johannes Grewe amendment forbidding duel membership; the alternative breeds – historically a third of the membership – have been thrown under the bus in the haste to placate SV commercial interests; and the greed, mismanagement and corruption at the top of USCA has become endemic.
USCA is no longer about Schutzhund. And do not be deceived that Schutzhund has merely been rebranded as IPO, for IPO is not Schutzhund transformed at all: in hard reality IPO is the pussification of Schutzhund.
USCA is not about clubs in the classic traditional sense. A club implies a group of amateurs banded together to unselfishly serve a higher cause through mutual cooperation, camaraderie and assistance. Increasingly our clubs are becoming commercial enterprises where the membership has no real say in club affairs, become clients rather than members, where the "club" is essentially the business enterprise of the "owner."
USCA is at its core in fundamental ways less and less American, rather is rapidly emerging as a German controlled organization existing primarily for the benefit of and subservient to the SV elite.
Lyle Roetemeyer is not entirely responsible for all of this, for these trends were emerging, slowly at first, but inexorably, for twenty years. But under his tenure the accumulating weight of neglect and subversion has seen USCA falter in terms of credibility, integrity and influence. USCA no longer primarily about credible police style working dogs, but rather selling German Shepherd lines increasingly show oriented, increasingly unworthy of real world service. Roetemeyer is a small and venial man, with a feeble worldview; unprepared for and unworthy of the office he has come to hold. He is not a leader, but only an office holder and – increasingly unable to resist German domination – has becoming little more than a puppet on German strings.
There is no evident understanding of the public relations principles and the spirit of good will which should be the foundation of leadership. While he may not have directly instigated the slashing of his opponent's tires in the lead up to the last USCA election, he contributed mightily to the ugly atmosphere that precipitated it. Tellingly, he failed to speak out against such tactics in any meaningful way, failed to provide a leadership endorsement of decency or even legality in the conduct of club affairs.
USCA is still run by awkward, inefficient, unresponsive business methods and procedures that were rapidly becoming obsolete in the 1960s and have become entirely antiquated in the modern computer, data base and internet age. This has made the organization awkward and expensive to run, inconvenient for those running trials and unhelpful to the membership. It has also made USCA enormously less transparent, and thus vulnerable to corruption and financial manipulation. He has repeatedly promised to bring modern, computer age business methods to the organization, but for years done nothing but appoint nobodies to an increasingly ineffective and irrelevant technical committee. Roetemeyer seems unable to comprehend modern computer and network driven business mechanisms as much more than a new color scheme for the static web site.
The current leadership of USCA is a study in failure, incompetence and self-serving venality – weak men serving German interests and themselves rather than a viable, standalone domestic working dog movement. In order to restore the founding spirit of the American working dog, new and vital leadership is necessary.
Those currently abusing power – particularly Roetemeyer, Grewe and Govednik – were not without original merit and honest intentions, but the corrupting influence of power has put their interests in the privileges and personal opportunities of office above the integrity, viability and prosperity of the movement as a whole.
The Al Govednik story is in many ways a Greek tragedy. For many years he was respected and admired, represented the best and the brightest of our working dog movement. But somehow the wheels came off: AWDF financial and administrative affairs under his tenure as president are increasingly under a cloud; somehow his highly trained Schutzhund III protection dog was – supposedly – mysteriously snatched while loose on a highway in front of his house; he became a newfound proponent of a dog psychic; and he was placed under an order of civil protection by the Henry County Court. He was estranged from his own Schutzhund club over matters of financial manipulation and deceit and has been engaged in ongoing and extensive litigation involving several of these issues.
When Govednik's dog Hex was struck and killed by a truck while loose on the highway in front of his residence, a fate which had also befallen a previous dog, he concocted an abduction story which he tried to sell to the police, immediately began a wide sweeping fund raising campaign and went on television to sell his story and solicit funds. Much commotion and fanfare was made about a private detective agency which was going to reveal the real truth, but which a year later was obviously little more than a diversionary tactic, a way to buy time until the public lost interest in the failed and discredited scheme. All of this spun out of control when the Freedom of Information act was used to procure and distribute the exhaustive Henry County Sheriff's Department report, which categorically stated that the dog had been dead in a ditch 400 feet down the road the entire time, and which contradicted many other elements of the publicity and fund raising scheme.
Any of us can undergo a rough patch in life where, eventually, rational and compelling explanations can emerge, and life can go on. But this cascading, never-ending sequence of dramatic episodes is more than that, is a troubled man out of control in his personal and public life. Under these circumstances continued service as a USCA officer or judge become problematic, to say the very least. This is indeed a melancholy story, in so many ways reminiscent of the Paul Meloy saga: capable, impassioned, personable men who somehow came to believe that their positions of power and popular persona placed them beyond the rules of law, honesty and decency applicable to ordinary men.
Johannes Grewe is in many ways the least admirable of these men. He has sought importance and privilege through the role of de facto representative of the German establishment, but the SV he represents is the new SV, all about selling show dogs and essentially abandoning the principles of von Stephanitz, the concept that a real German Shepherd is first and foremost a legitimate police dog candidate, that lacking the physical and moral attributes necessary in this function a dog cannot truly represent the breed. A review of the SV web site features photos of show dogs, dogs in the field pretending to be herding dogs, rally play dogs. One must dig deeply into the site to find a mention of IPO, or a photo of a protection exercise or sleeve. I could not find a photo of a dog actually engaging the helper. This is the SV that Grewe represents, and there is no rational leadership role for such a man in an organization devoted to serious, hard-core police and protection dog training and breeding, it truly is as simple as that.
I do not know Jim Alloway well. He has been involved in our sport for many years and is generally taken to be serious and is well respected by reliable people I talk to. In preparing this commentary, I engaged him in extensive telephone conversation and asked him the hard questions. His responses and comments rang true in my ears and my best judgment is that both he and Frank Phillips are viable candidates, worthy of the offices they seek. But do not take my word, or the word of anybody else, this is still a small enough organization that you can contact these men directly by E Mail or phone and get a direct, personal response on which to base your decision.
Every election at one point or another is said to be critical, a decision point for the organization. But USCA is today in real trouble, has lost direction and been diverted from the priority of serious police level work and training above all else. This election does matter, and every person concerned needs to make the effort necessary for an informed decision and act accordingly, supporting as well as voting for the viable candidates.
USCA needs renewal – a new direction and new leadership – now.
Candidate contact information:
Jim Alloway Cell Phone: (614)736-2275
EMail: jimalloway@gmail.com
Frank Phillips Home Phone: 603-471-0439
EMail: SchH3FH2@hotmail.com
This contact information supplied with permission. Although these commentaries have been viewed by the candidates, they do not necessarily represent their personal views.
Background or reference material
Many of these issues are relevant to the AWDF as well. Perhaps this will be of interest:
Some facts concerning the supposed "theft" of Al Govednik's dog Hex and related matters: