I joined the Dalmatian Club of Southern Ca when I got my first Dal many many years ago. I was young and full of new ideas. The thought of hanging out with other people that loved Dals as much as I did sounded like a great idea. I soon found out that dog clubs can be pretty awful. There were people in the club that just fought every new idea and thought the club was there personal club. The fighting and back stabbing was horrific. The few nasty people made it not so fun.

I had volunteered to be recording secretary and that was a huge mistake!!! I am not a dot your I's or cross your T's kinda gal… but nobody else wanted to do it, so I gave it a shot. Well we had one REALLY old member that would send me my meeting minutes with red pen correction marks ALL over it. It is actually kinda funny now that I look back at this… but back then it just pissed me off. I thought why don't you step up to the plate and take the f'ing meeting minutes you old bag???? Obviously you know how it should be done!!!!

I think a good portion of well intentioned members finally got sick of it and all walked out of a meeting and quit the club.

Now over a decade later I saw that they had a bunch of new people in the club and the board seemed to be fresh and wanting to move the Dal club forward so I approached the Dalmatian Club of Southern Ca and asked if they would like to hold agility trials. I ran it by the president, Lesley and the board. They all seemed pretty excited and asked me to present it at the meeting they were having. So I did. Several people that do agility were at this meeting and also liked the idea. The club voted to move forward with this idea and I started to get the ball rolling.

I had experience with this as I have gone through all the steps to get the Papillon Club of Southern Ca to hold AKC agility trials.

I had already gathered all the paperwork needed and was still under the impression that DCSC was still on board….. then I started getting emails and  phone calls from Karen the club sec. that some people in the club had questions and concerns. I spent hours and hours answering questions and concerns by email and phone. Karen also spent hours gathering information from AKC and other breed clubs that hold agility trials.

I even spent over a hour and a half speaking with DCSC club member Marianne Lovejoy who was the club member with the majority of the concerns. She spent the majority of our conversation telling me how badly she has been screwed by the DCSC and how horrible people in the club are and all about her bassets. By the end of the phone call she assured me that she was very comfortable with the company that I suggested using to hold agility trials and that she was very glad that I was doing this.

I later came to find out this "seal of approval" she gave me was all lies. She continued to talk shit to a couple of other club members and they got a few people to come to the meeting that I was to have my membership voted on and they voted against my membership. It was not the smartest way to handle this and bottom line it was not nice. They should have just voted me in and then voted against holding agility trials. And that would have been that. But the way they handled this made them look really bad. At this meeting that this all took place at they had 2 new potential members sitting in on the meeting as guests. These two people saw how this club acted and they could not run away fast enough!!! They told me that they want no part of a club like this!!!

The meeting was held on Sat. and I was set up right across the way from all the Dal people the entire weekend and it was a little uncomfortable for everyone that voted for me. It was VERY easy to tell who voted against my membership because they never made eye contact with me or said one word to me  the entire weekend. All the people that voted for me could not have been nicer. I really felt bad for them. They were angry, frustrated and very embarrassed at what happened.

I am glad that I don't take things personally and I truly believe that everything goes down just the way it is supposed to.

We have started our own dog club called Action Dog Sports and just as well that I spend my precious time and energy on this grand adventure!!! We are holding our first UKC conformation show Feb. 11 and 12, 2012. I am so excited!!!!

Dog clubs are supposed to be fun and we intend to be. So onward and upward. The Dalmatian Club of Southern Ca can just continue to rot and fester in it's own meanness and I know that Karma Karma Karma takes care of mean people 🙂

Thank you to every single one of you that came over to tell me how sorry you were and gave me hugs. Hope to see you all at future Action Dog Sports shows!!!!

The next blog post is the letter I wrote to DCSC…..