NOW I AM …………………..50!
As my half century has come around and disappeared into the dim distance, I have decided that I must face something I have been avoiding for a while……….making a Will. Of course any Legal papers should be properly drawn up, but dog owners have one extra and vital component to take into consideration; their dogs!
Death is a grisly subject and we all hope to depart this mortal coil in as painless and prompt way as possible. Dog show exhibitors all expect to know the closing date and which ring we shall be in as well! However, this is sadly not always the case. But you can make provision for your animals which means that any untimely departures can be accommodated.
Firstly, where do you want your dogs to go when you die? Don't expect that friends or relatives will take them with open arms, unless you have their prior agreement. There is something in the Health Service called 'Continuity of Care'. This applies to our dogs as well.
Scenario One
Say you have kicked the bucket at home. You are found the next day. Your dogs will need feeding by then and any daily medications administered. Who is going to take them, there and then? This cannot be the subject of any delay; it is an immediate situation which calls for immediate action. Certain National All Breed rescue operations may be called in and take your dogs. They may be put into homes which you have not personally approved. Is this what you want?
Scenario Two
So instead of the above, you end up in hospital for many weeks and come out in the hearse. Can your interim arrangement be made permanent? Probably not.
May I suggest the following?
Firstly, write a Will. You will be amazed at how many people don't.
Secondly, appoint Executors, one for the Estate (or in my case, the overdraft!) and one for the Dogs! You must make sure this is a person you know will carry out your wishes and who knows your dogs relatively well, able to distinguish one from the other and who agrees beforehand to do this. This last point is very important.
Thirdly, you must have in your Will where you expect each and every dog to go, the Guardians. Every person named in your Will should know they are named; do not give a poor unsuspecting six stone Maiden Aunt a heart attack by having the Executor arrive on her doorstep with a fully grown Samoyed regularly used male stud dog. This is not funny!
Fourthly, make sure your Dog Executor knows where you keep your Dogs Folders'. That odd scrappy envelope hidden away with his vaccination certificates in it needs to be put in a place where it is easily accessible and needs more adding to it. For instance, is your dog on regular medication? Write it down; put it in his folder. Has you dog any feeding problems e.g. needs gluten free food? Write it down; put it in his folder. When was he last wormed, last in season, and so on?
With this information to hand, whoever is his appointed Guardian can see straight away the position and make sure that his care is continued.
Fifthly, if you are getting on a bit, have something in easy view in your house and/or kennels that says 'In case of my (unfortunate and vastly premature) demise call Mrs****** on Tel no. *******' This will be the name and number of your Dog Executor. (I shall probably put this on my PC as a Screen Saver!)
So, going back to the Scenario One. You are found, cold as can be, by your next door neighbour. The neighbour sees the sign on the shelf/PC and contacts your Dog Executor who then springs into action.
If however, you meet your maker at the end of a spell in hospital, make sure that your Dog Executor knows you are there beforehand and has been appraised of your wishes, even if you are only there for your Haemorrhoids! They can then retrieve the dogs from Kennels or wherever they are and arrange with the new Guardians to take them over. This is not such a bad scenario for the dogs as they are always in someone's care.
Should you have dictated in your Will that all your dogs be put to sleep, please make sure that you Dog Executor is actually willing to make sure this deed is carried out. To push this onto some unsuspecting friend is really unfair and can be very traumatic.
To enable the Continuity of Care, the monied amongst you should also perhaps think about the costs that may be incurred by your pets on their new Guardians. If a dog has a continuing health problem that it is not possible to insure against, perhaps you could estimate how much this is going to cost the new owner and make a sum available in the rest of your Will to cover this. For healthy animals, why not just estimate how much it would cost to insure the dog for the rest of their life expectancy and provide for this?
It is also only fair that you have a sum stipulated for your Dog Executor to cover costs incurred in carrying out their duties dictated in your main Will. What if scenario one happens and all your Guardians are on holiday, away at a show, etc? There may be no other option than to Kennel your dogs for a few days and that don't come cheap! (And won't having all the dogs' papers to hand come in useful then!)
For people with a Lot of dogs, you may or may not have them Identichipped but it is a good idea. Then in the case of your Dog Executor not being available, who ever ends up with them can whisk them all down to the local vet to see who is who! One white dog is very much like another to those not in the breed! Again, information about this in their Folders will come in very handy.
Should you wish your dogs to go into Breed Rescue when you shuffle out, all the same things apply; tell them they have been appointed, don't let them be landed with umpteen dogs out of the blue; this also isn't fair. You will still need a Dog Executor to make sure this happens.
One other thing that needs to be taken into consideration beforehand is the amount of dogs us Pensioners have at any one time. Just look at your dogs and decide if there are any that could benefit from going to a new home now rather than later.
To those with KC affixes, you need to decide what you want to happen to the name behind all your years of breeding. If you want it compounded, talk to the Kennel Club and see how much they would charge for this and stipulate it in your main Will with an appropriate sum set aside.
The talk of money all the way through this piece is of course subject to you having any. If you don't, then as long as the people concerned are willing to do their tasks, transporting dogs about and paying for medications, that is fine. Breed Clubs can apply to the KC to make sure your affix is kept if it is an important one. But should this be the case, please make sure the appropriate Breed Club know this and has it in writing before you pop your clogs. You know what the KC is like; they would probably insist on confirmation from a Clairvoyant before acceding to your wishes!
And while we are talking about money, and making Wills, don't forget that your Friendly Neighbourhood Breed Clubs will fondly remember you should you decide their years of hard work on your behalf warrants a bequest! I could get silly at this point by saying we will guarantee mourners and assistance to the choir should we get a bequest from you, but there are probably those who would rather we didn't, so we won't go down that route…..
BTW the above recommendations are from a totally Non legal person, so do get Suitable help in drawing up any Legal Documentation. However if you want to do it on the cheap and know your Will will not be contested by your heirs, just to have anything in writing is better than nothing.
Altogether, not a happy subject and I may have offended by taking it lightly, but at 50 and on the downward slope, I like to think I have not lost my sense of humour!
'And when my time on Earth is done,
I'll go without much nudging'
Just give me four weeks closing date
And let me know who's Judging!'
Hazel Fitzgibbon - Smiliesam Samoyeds - 28-6-03
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These were the famous words of a Committee member when the idea of the Spitzical was muted. Anything further from the truth had yet to be uttered. But I digress.
The Spitzical was born during an AGM under the vague title of Social Activities. It was our 75th Birthday coming up and we really did want to have a good night out. Our last attempt at having a Dinner Dance ended up with 16 of us in a Trusthouse Forte on the M1 having the dinner without the dance! As Secretary I was tasked with coming up with an idea. The Spitz breeds generally have long been a passion of mine and so I presented our Committee with a three page proposal at our next meeting. It was an ambitious project and would entail commitment on behalf of the Committee as a whole. Everybody was very enthusiastic and I was instructed to take the first steps. Ask the Kennel Club if such a match was acceptable and most importantly ask the relevant breed clubs and councils if they would take part and nominate dogs. To cut a long consultation short, I obtained the support of 21 breeds. Our Chairman found a suitable venue and I poured over dates with the Kennel Club diaries for all the breeds.
A projected balance sheet was prepared and we realised that it would be very easy for us to fall down on the finance side of things, so the Grand Draw was born and the wonderful auction was included. What to do if we actually made money? Well at this point it became charitable although the money making was not the primary object.
Various people on the Committee undertook to do various functions and I must say all did a wonderful job.
Between this preparation period and the actual day, a few problems were encountered. For instance five breed clubs changed Secretary and not all new incumbents had been told of the event. And then there were the mice?.
We had decided to give each exhibitor a ?goody? bag with various bits and pieces. To be included there would be something breeds specific or relating to their country of origin. I gradually stored the pieces up over about 18 months in my garage. After Winter, I went in for a stock take to find that mice had nested in the Malamute T shirts. Luckily the donor had a sense of humour and laughed it off. The ceramics in stock seem to have survived OK.
The actual bags were natural Hessian coloured and a bit unattractive but they were donated by the Nordic Breeds club of Slovakia and reusable. So I dyed them all! It is wonderful what you can do with the new Dylon washing machine dyes. What I didn?t bank on was that they would come out creased to high heaven. There was nothing else for it, I had a pile of the worst work in the world for me; ironing. But 64 bags had to be done. For the domestically minded, to make sure they stayed straight, I starched them as well!
The problem we didn't expect happened when the Working Breeds of Wales schedules came out. Without telling anybody, it seems, they had changed their date! This news was quickly assimilated by the working and pastoral spitz, including our own breed. I had to miss a show I would have dearly loved to attend. The Greenland people sent a very apologetic letter; as they are so small, and they had classes at WPBoW, there was no way they could attend. As our judge is a specialist in that breed, I quietly made preparations for him to meet the Greenlanders the next day.
Then the Buhund people let me know they had no interest in attending. This was closely followed by the Malamutes, Canaans and the Akitas.
This unexpected lack of dogs would cause a problem for various reasons. But I was most concerned about the financial aspects.
Luckily the Malamutes changed their minds and we were happy to have two representatives from that breed. I approached another Canaan Club and was happy to have a good representative from that breed. Akitas again came through a friend of a friend. The wonderful Basenji we admired came through an appeal in their Breed Notes. At which point we had a Shiba problem. Again, luckily the lady who had booked in with a Shiba puppy was able to provide dogs for the other matches.
The actual organising of the match was almost the same as organising a show. The same amount of paperwork produced, a catalogue had to be produced, information for the evening Commentary had to be fleshed out. The main difference though was chasing the entries!
Sponsorship was almost a stumbling point as we failed to find a major sponsor. But extreme efforts by Val Freer and a few overseas contacts were successful in finding more than enough for main prizes. The visit last year to Australia came in very handy!
On a personal note, during April, my Club had an AGM and an Open Show. I also exported one dog to the Continent, imported one dog from Australia, did all the paperwork associated with the above events and co-ordinated the Spitzical. It was my month from Hell. But I still got the Annual Returns in on time! One figure I still wonder over is the 500 emails I have on file for the event!
Special mention must be given to the following people for their wonderful contributions to the event.
* Margaret Payne for totally organising the raffle, from the License to the draw on the evening.
* Sue Smith for her outstanding individual fundraising effort at Aviemore which gave us a financial cushion.
* Janet Handley for all printing , especially the catalogue which had the most extended ?closing? date in dog show history.
* Annette Hansell for all things artistic from the original logo and producing the wonderful Wall hanging which graced the evening, to the table d?cor.
* Val Freer for the arm twisting with sponsors.
* Vikki Lloyd for keeping our finances on track.
* All Committee members for their very hard work during the evening. It was truly teamwork that got us through.
Our Committee has passed the Balance sheet for the event and cheques for £415.33 have been sent to the kennel Club, to be ring fenced for the Health Foundation, and to Dr Brian Catchpole for his Canine Diabetes Research.
We have been approached by several clubs to do this again. At the British Samoyed Club, we are sociable animals at heart (like our dogs!) and have relented.
The next Spitzical will be in 2008.
Please do join us!
Hazel Fitzgibbon
May 2006.
