Liam Gor­don

The Ger­man Shep­herd Club of T&T will be ship­ping off dogs Glen Vom Hex­enkeller with his han­dler Christo­pher Seeyaue, Ken­ny with Mark Chin Ale­ong, Aki­ra with Vit Singh and Xi­to Von Con­neforde with han­dler Fedric Gar­bo (club pres­i­dent) to the Wel­tunion der Schäfer­hund­vere­ine (WUSV) World Cham­pi­onship in Aus­tria in No­vem­ber. In 2009 T&T was rep­re­sent­ed by Xi­to Von Con­neforde and han­dler Vit Singh, which was host­ed by the found­ing coun­try Ger­many, in Krefeld from the Oc­to­ber 7 to the 11, 2009. This was the first time a team from T&T and the West In­dies par­tic­i­pat­ed. Christo­pher Seeyaue with his three and a half year-old Glen Vom Hex­enkel­li­er who was born in Great Britain is a four-time world cham­pi­onship com­peti­tor. Glen last rep­re­sent­ed T&T in the Aus­tri­an cham­pi­onship last year where he placed 17th out of 50 dogs.

Glenn al­so rep­re­sent­ed the Unit­ed King­dom in var­i­ous Sahun­zhunz com­pe­ti­tions. Xi­to pri­or to rep­re­sent­ing T&T in 2009 has com­pet­ed re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in Ger­many but due to quar­an­tine prob­lems he (Xi­to) is yet to re­turn to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion. Akia Von Forster­aus owned by Vit Singh is present­ly com­pet­ing in Sahuzhunz com­pe­ti­tion in Mi­a­mi. The dogs and their han­dlers will trav­el to Ger­many for prepa­ra­tion where the dogs will un­der­go train­ing and heavy com­pe­ti­tion and from there they will trav­el to Aus­tria where the com­pe­ti­tion will take place from Sep­tem­ber 7 - 9. The club would be host­ing a tri­al on Sep­tem­ber 8 and 9, where lo­cal dogs would be able to com­pete. Ken­ny, Xi­to and Glenn would be com­pet­ing for an­oth­er leg in Sahuzhunz which would en­able them to com­pete in the WUSV World Cham­pi­onship in Aus­tria. The club on Fri­day re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion to com­pete in the Turk­ish WSVI in Turkey in No­vem­ber Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer Adri­an Wal­cott said that the club has made a de­ci­sion whether the club would be at­tend­ing.

Wal­cott al­so not­ed that the club has ex­pe­ri­enced prob­lems with dogs in the past while re-en­ter­ing the coun­try af­ter in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion."Dogs in re­turn­ing af­ter com­pet­ing abroad usu­al­ly go in­to quar­an­tine for a month. Present­ly there is one dog Ban­dor Von Der­li­ete­wise owned by Prime Vu­lan that is un­able to re­turn to T&T and is be­ing kept in Ger­many. This is­sue usu­al­ly falls un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture from what we un­der­stand a let­ter was sent to cab­i­net re­quest­ing a de­duc­tion of time which would en­able dogs to be able to come in­to T&T with out go­ing in­to quar­an­tine for such a long time once there blood work and vet­eri­nary pa­pers are cor­rect."

The club will al­so be look­ing for­ward to host­ing the world cham­pi­onships with­in five years time with dogs from the 60 mem­ber WUSV reg­is­tered coun­tries along with their han­dlers. "The mind set has to change abroad ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tions are made for both dogs and han­dlers and there are spe­cial re­served places for the dogs. Once the prob­lems are rec­ti­fied with re­gards to the quar­an­tine prob­lems I can see it hap­pen­ing in the next five years." said Wal­cott. The WUSV head­quar­ters is based in Ger­many and has more than 80 mem­ber coun­tries which has a mem­ber­ship of more than 600,000 Ger­man shep­herd en­thu­si­asts around the globe with T&T be­ing the on­ly coun­try in the re­gion as a reg­is­tered mem­ber. T&T as a mem­ber coun­try of the WUSV are en­ti­tled to par­tic­i­pate in many in­ter­na­tion­al events un­der the aus­pices of the WUSV. The two main events are the Bun­dessiegerzuchtschau (BSZS), which trans­lates in­to the Na­tion­al Breed Show for Cham­pi­ons held an­nu­al­ly in Ger­many, and the WUSV World Cham­pi­onships, this event is host­ed by a dif­fer­ent mem­ber coun­try each year.