Surrender in Europe
Jim Engel
Copyright February, 2002
In the
beginning the Bouvier des Flandres existed in the minds of the creators. This
vision of the bold defender of the Flemish plane, the cobby body and alert
expression, enhanced and accentuated by the cropped ears and docked tail,
inspired devotion and determination in many souls and several generations. Over the years men and women, such as Justin
Chastel, Edmee Bowles, Koen Semler and Caya Krisjne-Locker, devoted a lifetime
of labor to the realization of this noble dream.
Now, in Europe,
driven by a failure in leadership and social and political evolution, this
vision is fading away. In Belgium, over
the past thirty years, the breeders, in some cases pandering to the American
dollar, gave up on the character of the breed.
A decade ago Justin Chastel left the Belgian club, having been a member
for fifty years and president for
twenty, over the issue of character and the tests for select designation. The last notable Bouvier to work in the Belgian
ring sport was in the sixties, and since that time the Belgians, who should
take leadership, have devoted themselves to pathetic temperament tests, excuses
and fairy tales about "le character le Bouvier des Flandres…"
In the
Netherlands the Bouvier became two breeds because the national club fell under
the control of the show breeders and abandoned the original vision. The real Bouviers in the Netherlands, the
old Dutch Police lines, were looked down upon and abandoned by Netherlands
Bouvier Club as they created their own version of ponderous, over built
"Bouviers" with the elaborate fluffy coats.
In France a few
true believers have struggled to train for the French ring, and by use of the
old Dutch working lines have achieved some success. But it means nothing, for the club is still in the hands of the
old guard show breeders, such as Francis Romano, who have a vested interest in
the failures of the past which constitute the "French heritage." Unfortunately, these French men and women
who share the vision are a small minority, unable or unwilling to stand up to
the entrenched establishment.
Over the past
twenty years there has been increasing pressure in Europe from the far left
environmental and green political movements to ban ear cropping, tail docking
and serious training. When the greens
came in with their litany of demands, the politicians, pockets stuffed with
money from the agricultural interests and pharmaceutical houses, threw the
animal rights winnies a bone and let them have their way on cropping and
docking, because the dog people were too slow and complacent for effective
resistance. Thus in Norway we still
have the baby seals clubbed to death to harvest their coats, and animals used
in experiments for cosmetics, but the world is safe from the simple, relatively
painless procedures of cropping and docking.
This cancer has spread from the Scandinavian north until it threatens to
sweep across Europe, and sweep away forever the remnants of many once noble
breeds such as the Bouvier and the Doberman. Cropping and docking are now
banned in Germany and the Netherlands.
Ear cropping is as of now banned in Belgium, and tail docking will
be forbidden in five years. For the
moment the French hold out.
In the
Netherlands the Bouvier Club did not resist.
Ultimately, the real enemy turned out to be the Raad van Beheer, the Dutch Kennel club, which has led the
way to the enforcement of the emasculation of the Bouvier. They jumped in to be assistant police men by
forbidding the exhibition of cropped and docked. dogs. I am told that the president of the Raad van Beheer remarked to a Bouvier handler at a
conformation show that she was giving the dog only "very good" rather
than "excellent" because it barked and showed spirit, and
"that's not the kind of dog we want in the Netherlands."
The Dutch club
could have resisted, could have conducted their own shows, could have
maintained their own stud book. Yes,
they perhaps would have failed. But
they did not have the courage to try, gave up their breed without any real
resistance. We will never know what the
fate of the Bouvier des Flandres might have been if there had been men of
courage, vision and wisdom at the helm of the Dutch, Belgian and French Bouvier
clubs.
Is it not
fascinating that this "mind your neighbor's business" has evolved in
the cold North ? This is democracy
running out of control, with all power to regulate the minutest details of
every life going almost by default to the pathetic little ciphers that make up
the ever expanding government bureaucracy.
We read in Finland of the man fined over one hundred thousand dollars
for going ten miles an hour over the speed limit. Who could imagine a Spaniard, where the bulls still run, a Greek
or an Italian having such an empty and pointless life that the only pleasure
was trying to pass laws to insure that everybody else was miserable too? Perhaps we should all send money to
Scandinavia so that they could spend the long winters drinking themselves into
oblivion rather than using the political process to make misery the norm rather
than just something they have chosen for themselves.
The democratic
purveyors of righteousness and misery exist in America too, of course. While the men were off fighting world war
one, the little old ladies at home were busy making the consumption of alcohol
illegal, truly one of the most stupid and pointless exercises in history. And our religious right is always trying to
impose quaint moral platitudes on the rest of us, and the left is bringing
political correctness to American campuses, which means censoring young people
who believe that the first amendment empowers them to think and speak for
themselves. In order to live out our
lives in peace, we all must be ever viligent against those on both the left and
the right who would impose their will and their perception of the correct life
upon us.
A Bouvier des
Flandres is a concept, a vision of perfection, not merely a dog from a specific
gene pool. In Belgium today, you can
pick up random dogs off the streets, breed them together to make your own
Bouviers. You can take them to the
conformation show, get a rating of "good" under two judges and get
provisional papers. In three
generations you can have your own line of Bouviers with the same registration
papers as the dogs who come down from Nic, Soprano and the others. (Admittedly this is a flawed process because
there is no working character test, but then none of the Belgian dogs are
required to pass a working test in order to produce more "Bouviers"
either.)
It is quite evident that the will of the
founders is that the Bouvier des Flandres is a dog who embodies those noble
aspects of character and appearance, the cobby, athletic body, the alert
expression, the courage, the steadfastness which have characterized the breed
from the beginning. Only those dogs
bred and trained in the shadow of this vision can in truth be called Bouviers
des Flandres.
Those who do
something else, change or "modernize" the breed, are perfectly free
to do so. But honesty demands that they
call whatever it is that they create by a new names, and reserve the words
"Bouvier des Flandres" to those dogs true to the vision of the
founders.
At each stage
of this retreat from the heritage we are told "never mind, accept the inevitable,
they are Bouviers underneath." But
are they ?
In Scandinavia
they now have several generations of dogs with long tails, floppy ears and soft
character. Are these dogs Bouviers just
because their ancestors were Bouviers ?
What if the green winnies in Norway pass a law that dogs over twenty
pounds are dangerous, and must be put down.
Some Norwegians would no doubt breed from their former Bouviers twenty
pound, flop eared lap dogs with long tails.
Would they still be Bouviers because their ancestors are Bouviers ? I think not, they would no longer be
Bouviers any more than the dogs of today are wolves because they are descended
from wolves.
If it had just
been the ears we could perhaps in wisdom and humility acquiesced, accepted it
as a price necessary to pay. But the
green terrorists inflicting this humiliation will never be satisfied, will
never accept enough as enough. It will
be the ears, it will be the tails, it will be public temperament tests in which
any dog which can be induced to show aggression to another dog is to be put
down. This "temperament test"
for the spineless dog is already being promoted in Germany and the Netherlands
and recent history says that it is only a matter of time.
In the end, the ban on tail
docking will likely prove to be the
final nail in the coffin. A number of
years ago Jan Janssen, one of the most successful and influential KNPV Bouvier
trainers and breeders, under the kennel name van het Heukske, told me that if
the tail ban every went into effect that would be the end for him. It did, and true to his word he abandoned
the Bouvier and now breeds and trains the German Shepherd, most successfully I
might add. Fritz Severens, of v d
Statorhof fame, has also given up breeding.
These senior working breeders have not been replaced, young people are
not taking up the cause of the Bouvier, perceiving it as lost.
The truth is
that Europe is on a course where the descendants of the Bouviers des Flandres
will be flop eared, long tailed dogs passive in character and devoid of the
working drive for which the breed was created.
These dogs will
not be Bouviers des Flandres. The
Bouvier will be an extinct breed, destroyed by the general moral and political
decay in Europe that is sweeping away the heritage and customs that were the
wellspring of western civilization.
It would appear
that George Orwell was right. It will
come to pass in 2004 instead of 1984, but in Europe at least his vision of
total control by the state, the stamping out of individual will, freedom and
expression, is becoming reality. The
Bouvier will not be the only loss to mourn.