16th July 2021

 
Hound Show and the Northern Saluki Club Championship Show will be held on Saturday 17th July 2021.  Hilary Davies, Caroline Pickering and Adele Walton Haddon would like to welcome everyone attending the NSC Champ show to join them in a glass of Prosecco and a piece of cake to celebrate seeing friends again.  Any contributions, of course, would be welcomed.
 
Traditionally the weekend of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of July would have been the weekend that Windsor Championship Show was held.  Unfortunately, this year it was not held due to conflict of time scheduling.  As an ode to the missing show Glen Dymock has posted some very interesting photo of past shows.  This particular photo which I shall be referring to was “scenes from ‘Windsor Championship Show’ held in 1927 in the Home Park, Windsor under the management of the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Canine Association”.  The photo is of Miss Purgold with a quintet of Salukis. With Miss Purgold is a black tri feathered, a smooth, cream feathered, a parti coloured feathered and a red feathered.  It has been suggested that the outfit that Miss Purgold was wearing was the clothing usually worn by the kennel maid.  Glen Dymock has kindly supplied me with a copy of the 1927 Windsor catalogue for Salukis.  It says that Miss V Purgold owned Sarona Haroun.  A dog.  Breeder was Major A.W.D. Bentinck.  Born 1st October 1923.  By Rishan of Kurdistan X Feena of Kurdistan.  As the address given for Miss Purgold as the same as the Lances she may very well of been their kennel maid. As added interest at that show Sarona Haroun won a 2nd in Limit Class, 1st went to the Lances’ Sarona Jazzar.  Judge was A. Croxton Smith Esq.
 
The last person I remember taking a team of dogs to a show was the late Mary Long (Amena Salukis).
 
Somewhat later than usual we received a copy of The KC Breed Record Supplement.  It included Breed Records for January to March 2021. There were 36 puppies registered from 4 litter. Two of the affixes are familiar to me.  There was one importation from Netherland.  El’Ubaid’s Zulu (IMP NDL) It is a bitch it was born 3rd September 2019.  Breeder is Mr B Van Der Moezel, owner Mrs A.E. Cole.  One export to USA, Llygoden Bach.   Three more Salukis have been tested Clear with DNA results for Sal-NCL.  They are Kensteen Brook of Madejel, Madejel Premiere Enfant and Tywysog Cyntaf Arabaidd of Madejel.  Hopefully we will eradicate this disease in time.      
 
Not long now, the Summer Championship for UK Sighthound Sport will be 22nd August in Gloucestershire.
 
  
LIMITATION ON ‘HEREDITARY CLEAR’ STATUS POSTPONED TO 2023
 
Following the announcement that The Kennel Club will limit the assignment of ‘hereditary clear’ status of registered dogs to two generations, the organisation has announced that this change is now set to be implemented as of January 2023.
 
The decision to restrict hereditary status was made by The Kennel Club Board in 2018 on the recommendation of the Dog Health Group, and followed a Kennel Club study, published in the journal of Canine Genetics and Epidemiology. This change was put forward to safeguard against the impact that dogs with an incorrect ‘hereditary clear’ status could have on health issues within a breed.
 
Hereditary clear status is given to dogs that are determined to be free of specific genetic material linked to a particular inherited disease. The Kennel Club’s registration system assigns a dog this status if their parents are known to be clear, either because they have both been DNA tested as clear, or because they are hereditary clear themselves.
 
Dogs could be mistakenly given a false hereditary clear status for a number of reasons; for example if there has been a failure of laboratory protocols, pedigree errors or incorrectly recorded parentage. In these instances it is unlikely that the inaccuracies would be noticed immediately, but rather that several generations later many dogs throughout the breed descended from the individual with the original incorrect status will also have erroneous hereditary status, and the well-intended mating of two such apparently hereditary clear dogs risks producing affected puppies.
 
The Kennel Club research analysed the risks faced by a population following the incorrect assignment of hereditary status and determined that the rate of dogs with false hereditary clear status could rise considerably over a fairly small number of generations, particularly for genetic conditions that are more common.
 
To reduce the knock-on effect of these errors, and the risk of unintentionally breeding affected puppies, The Kennel Club will be ensuring that from January 2023, the ‘hereditary clear status’ will be limited to two generations, unless lineage is verified by DNA parentage profiling recorded by The Kennel Club. DNA parentage profiling is a separate procedure to screening DNA for disease causing mutations, but can often be carried out at the same time by the same laboratory.
 
Originally scheduled to come into effect in January 2022, this has now been postponed to 2023 to allow for necessary development work to be completed and in order for ‘hereditary clear’ status to be as effective and reliable as possible.