squalor and degradation in cynophilia today

When and how did you start raising?

I started raising in the 80s. As for all fans of a race, the love for the boxer bloomed from the encounter with a dog that struck me aesthetically. But it was above all the unique and extraordinary character of this breed that had finally conquered me.

He was inspired by some other breeder before her and what ideal image of a boxer he pursued in his selection activity?

Initially a breeder adheres to the elements of typicality, which have made the breed famous; then he elaborates his own idea of a boxer. I in my subjects seek morphological harmony, which must not be bound up in the hypertypicity, that is, in the exasperation of those characteristics of race that can lead, especially in the moloxoids, to health problems. I try to find courage and firmness of nerves, as in the old boxer, father of the race, but also the bonarity of a companion of adults and children, because this is the role that must play in our time.

What do you remember of those years that distinguish them from the present times?

At the time there were some highly professional selectors, who proposed dogs strongly characterized and with their own style, to the point that simply looking at a specimen you were able to guess from which breeding from the 1950s, how you would distinguish a painting of Picasso from one of Matisse. Just to give an example the boxers from a certain breeding were noticed for the massive construction and the heavy head, others for the elegance etc.

What about today?

Today there is a new generation of improvised breeders, who do not know the blood lines and therefore only mate with the stud titled of the moment, making also some good subject, but above all littered, that they sell well. The fastest way to become breeder today is to hold some females and make it covered by the champion atibox of the year, that is the stallion that everyone knows.

What limitations do you see in this practice?

This way, it is not possible to create a blood line, to deepen the selection of the boxer and improve the breed by following its own model. On the other hand, it is used in an exaggerated and manic way to compare health data, as are emerging from official medical controls.

Do you not think that official tests are important for the control of the typical diseases of the breed?

They are absolutely important, but they are a minimum requirement - so to speak -. Official controls give us information about the status of the breeding animals and nothing more. In reality it is not yet clear how and in what cases some hereditary diseases are transmitted. Therefore the results of these tests do not give us certainties about the results that these subjects will give in reproduction. Only the verification a posteriori is interesting for the selection: that is only the practice of breeding allows me to evaluate whether a subject is good or not in reproduction.

So?

And so we return to the previous speech: I can have good results if I know my blood line for several generations and I have first-hand information on the side. If instead I do littered "a spot", covering once with a stallion, another with the champion of the year, I will always go to tentoni, not to say casual. In fact, the breeders of the last hour, do not cross blood lines, but plates, health data and titles.

Does the canyon panorama look like it's degraded for this?

So far we say that it has expired, but unfortunately it is worse. It is widespread - and this applies to several breeds - the practice of importing puppies from Eastern Europe, which are sold in pet shops or for mediation of veterinarians without scruples, but also, which is worse, proposed as if they came from our kennels.

How is that possible?

The puppies are registered as born in Italy. These dogs make exhibitions where they may get titles and are used as breeding animals, so we are in circulation of specimens whose blood line is not the one attested by pedigree, but it is completely false and this compromises the selection conducted seriously.

But there are no controls?

In fact, the ENCI whose primary task should be to certify the origins of each dog enrolled in the genealogical register is perfectly aware of this squalid traffic and the breeders involved are not - allow me - only of the "cagnari," but often of the breeders with affisso. All this is tolerated because "regularizing" an import dog costs a contribution - collected by Enci - of 150 euros, while to register a puppy born in Italy about 15 euros: it is clear that there are strong economic interests in the field. However, in this way it penalizes those in Italy who work honestly and with authenticity, to the advantage of those who place subjects on the market, who come from where and pollute our blood lines bringing back the work of many years.

And race clubs do what they do: do they ignore or know?

In the breed clubs there are often characters, whose first goal is to keep the chair conquered and this succeeds only if you do not beat too many calluses. As I said above who uses these devices is not only the small breeder on duty. There are also big names of the cynophilia, which have sufficient strength and power to use the leadership advice of the clubs to their advantage.

What can we say about the judges of the competition?

Our judges, especially the boxer world, are almost all affected by incurable provincialism. They operate in narrow circles, composed of the usual known, with a methodology that we could call "an equal exchange": you do a favor to me and I do it to you. They hardly do refresher courses, almost never attend international ring and in particular the German ring: let's not forget that the home of our race is Germany. It would be like for an English-speaking professor never been to London. Moreover, they are hard to transpose innovations, preferring to fossilize on the webbies and exceeded criteria. I refer in particular to the way of judging the integrated boxer, which is now the only way to conceive the boxer after the change of the standard of 2001. In spite of this, in Italy we continue to see on the highest step of the podium completely amputated subjects and this transmits incorrect information to those who attend the exhibitions.

What can we wish for cynophilia today?

That it should be the place where the dog is the protagonist and not the "god money." Before that, the person who made cynophilia belonged to a small group of people of high socio-economic class, who dedicated themselves to this hobby for passion: the dog was not seen as a source of income! Now the times have changed: the cynophilia is within everyone's reach. It is right that the dog has a price, because the one who raises conscientiously faces costs. But it is also right that the practice of breeding is regulated, and on this should be precisely monitoring the Enci by applying all those beautiful rules, which instead is limited to putting on paper, as attested by recent cases reported by the chronicles of scandalous lager structures, held by breeders with so much of affisso recognized by the Authority.