Memo to: The USCA
Executive Board
cc: The
membership.
From: Jim Engel
Date: July 10, 2010
Subject: The future
of USCA.
Over the past several decades the working dog community, on the international scale, has struggled with societal and economic change. The secondary breeds, beyond the German Shepherd and the Belgian Malinois, have for all practical purposes been lost as working breeds. Over a decade German GSD puppy registrations fell from about 30,000 per year to about 15,000 per year, with corresponding reductions in many other breeds. The SV show line German shepherds are increasingly separate from the working lines, and if current trends continue will be much more akin to the AKC show shepherds than the dogs of the founders as they come down to us in the working lines.
In
I have been a member of the United Schutzhund Clubs of America (USCA) for some thirty years, and at this moment this is the only national club in which I retain membership in spite of the fact that my personal passion is for one of the lamented alternate breeds. The reason for this is quite simple, this is an organization in the large view worthy of support by all who believe in the heritage of the protective style working dog. We can be proud of many things, particularly our judges program and the quality and integrity of our individual judges.
We have seen and survived very hard times, particularly the end of the Paul Meloy era. This was for me a sad and distressing episode, for Paul was in earlier years a strong and decisive leader who will not be remembered well for his major contributions. The primary lesson to take from this is that we need ongoing renewal of leadership; excessively long terms in office, particularly at the top, has not proven to be a good thing. "Power corrupts" is the short lesson of the Meloy era, and we need to avoid this example.
I have been in support of Mr. Roetemeyer as president and will strongly support him in the upcoming election. But looking further down the road it is time for new leadership to emerge, and one of his priorities in the next term should be to identify and prepare an eventual successor. This preparation is especially critical in view of the ongoing strife with the SV and GSDCA.
For most of it's existence, USCA has been engaged in a gut wrenching, incessant power struggle with the GSDCA and the SV. This has been a severe stress on our organization, and to their credit our leadership has held up well under this burden. But this preoccupation with conflict and intrigue has taken focus away from more fundamental issues, such as the difficulty of bringing good training opportunities in a geographically large nation with a weak working dog heritage and fostering communication and cooperation with the various American police canine operations.
Although the implementation could have perhaps been a little
smoother, in general the ban on WDA members in the USCA is the right policy;
the German Shepherd working heritage demands a single,
unified national entity in
Governance of USCA has suffered from this preoccupation with international canine politics, and one disturbing manifestation of this is the casual proposal to raise USCA membership dues by two thirds, from $60 to $100 per year.
I have an item of news for the leadership. The
Inefficient and obese American corporations, such as Ford and GM, have been forced to tighten up and become leaner and more competitive, or simply disappeared, and this caviler attitude toward a huge, arbitrary dues increase has made it quite apparent that operationally the USCA bureaucracy is suffering from the same inefficiency and bloat that has become apparent in American corporations and national canine registry entities, such as the AKC and SV.
Operationally the business of USCA lags seriously behind the state of the art, fails to take real advantage of the computer, data base and internet revolutions that have transformed progressive, by which I mean surviving, American organizations. A trial entry should be a simple matter of the competitor filling out an internet form, which would be delivered to the trial secretary. Post trial "paper work" would consist of entering the judges results and comments into the data base and the printing of a form for the judge to sign and provide a hard copy record. The results, upon verification, could appear on the internet in provisional form in hours, and final, approved form in days. Conformation events and helper and judge records could be handled easily.
Such a system could produce a data base driven internet presence with a complete, accurate listing of all future trials and results of all historical trials. Why do we need an expensive paper journal in the twenty first century ? Why don't we have this sort of thing out there to attract and hold members? Why don't we become more modern in our operations so we could actually reduce dues and increase membership service and exposure to potential enthusiasts and members?
And this is not a pipe dream, a few years ago I prepared an on line prototype system demonstrating how this could work, but could not find any real interest at any level in the USCA.
Note that this would not be an easy or trivial thing to implement, rather it would require a difficult and complex design, implementation and testing process. Furthermore, it would require the complete and active support of the leadership. In order for such a program to succeed, the person with over all implementation responsibility would require authority to hire and fire the office staff in order to bring the right people into place.
For those not moved by the enhanced member services and cost saving, let me pose a simple question: as the system exists today, how would USCA function the day after a night time fire completely destroyed the St. Louis office ?The week after ? The next year ? Would the organization survive at all ? Is there a comprehensive and disaster plan for such an eventuality ? All well run modern businesses are prepared for such things; how many of the NY businesses with major offices destroyed went out of business as a consequence of the nine eleven disaster ?
The inescapable conclusion is that a fundamental reason for the perceived need for this huge dues increase has been a lax attitude toward efficiency and modernization in the conduct of the affairs of the club. The leadership needs to suspend consideration of this increase for a year, even at the cost of a deficit which would diminish our substantial cash position, and make a strong effort to put in place long term programs for the modernization of the business operations of the club, cut extravagant or optional items put steer USCA back toward financial responsibility.
A prime example of extravagant spending is the proposed central physical facility for training and all national competitions. This conceptually has very serious flaws, and is grossly irresponsible in view of the projected deficits and proposed dues increase. For one thing, there is a huge tendency to underestimate the long term, draining, cost of such a facility, such as insurance, permanent maintenance staff, taxes and the rest of it. Can there be any doubt that this will ultimately require a full time staff? Where are the realistic cost projections? Yes, hard economic times may have made property available at very attractive prices, but the original price is just the tip of the cost ice burg.
Furthermore, such a facility would be so far distant from the typical member that most would never actually set foot on it; but would forever be taxed to support a facility for the elite professional and quasi professional trainers.
Also, such a system would give the people in the several adjoining states a permanent home field advantage. They could afford the time and money to train on such a field many times during the year, and trials would always be in the same region and climate in which they trained. This would be fundamentally unfair and impractical.
If the purpose of this huge dues increase is to fund an elaborate facility in the mid west then common sense would dictate that such extravagant projects be deferred until the real issues, such as modernization of the data and information aspects of our ongoing operations, are dealt with.
Finally, there has been much discussion of the process for electing our national officers and leadership. Some propose a direct election by the membership, but this would be irresponsible and absurd. Election by the vote of the individual clubs, through the president or the designated representative, puts the power in the hands of the people doing the work and contributing, where it should be.
But the actual process, appropriate when put in place, could be greatly enhanced and modernized. The main problem is that candidates can be nominated from the floor, immediately before the actual election. This means the voting delegates have no time to consult their club members, no time to question or examine the candidates. Also, other activities, such as on the field training, cause delegates to be absent at critical moments.
A much better approach would be for the nominating committee to produce a set of candidates according to the current procedure. In addition, a petition endorsed by three or more club presidents for additional candidates could be presented in the time leading up to the national meeting, which would be published, enabling all club presidents to consult with their membership with complete knowledge of the candidates. The candidates would make presentations and answer questions at the annual meetings, and undertake any campaigning for votes according to their desire.
The actual election would be by EMail one week after the national meeting. In the event any vote for an individual office did not produce a candidate with a majority, a run off election could be immediately conducted via EMail.
This would be a much more open and transparent process, one which would allow every club member to communicate his views to his club president or designated voting delegate.
Although some of this may be construed as forthright with an edge, none of it should be taken as personal criticism of any individual serving our organization, but rather as a sincere effort to address serious issues and hazards before us.
USCA has in the big picture much to be proud of in our accomplishments over the past thirty years, my intention is to put a spot light on a set of issues we need to recognize and deal with in order to consolidate and maintain what we have built up over these years and thus form a solid basis for further progress.