CHANGE AGAIN?
by Jeffrey David Ball
Let’s look at some interesting statistics —the American Pet Products Association (APPA) claimed that in 1994, pet industry expenditures were $17 billion and in 2018 they had increased to over $69.5 billion. While Statista, an online statistics portal that aggregates data, reported that in 2000 there were 68 million dogs in America, they now report that increased to over 89.7 million in 2017/2018. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) stated that in 2018 over 38 percent of the homes owned dogs, which is the highest estimated rate since AVMA began measuring in 1982.
With just these statistics, you would think that would mean the American Kennel Club (AKC) and their affiliates have been growing as well. If you look at the most recent AKC annual report regarding registrations, financials and show entries, the answer is yes compared to past years. However, over that same time, there has actually been a major decline. Most importantly, no one can dispute that sports participation and club memberships continues to drop. How many clubs have recently dissolved or have very few remaining active members? Why is that if the industry is growing?
Whether or not we like change, it is happening. Change affects each of us directly and indirectly, it affects individuals but companies and organizations even more. Who would have thought that major companies like Bethlehem Steel, Polaroid and Woolworths would go out of business? A major cause of their failure was because society and the business climate changed and they did not.
If an organization or company is to be successful, they have to be prepared to change. How can that be accomplished? One way to do that is with Strategic Planning. Strategic planning occurs when organizational leaders develop their vision for the future as well as identify their goals and objectives for the organization. These visions should be for three to five years in advance. If you are not planning ahead, you are already behind.
In strategic planning, some of the things you look at are your organization’s goals/objectives, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, external changes, such as society and technology and develop of a plan to succeed. Strategic planning forces organizations to be aware of future opportunities and challenges. This also helps limit or avoid time spent on crisis management.
Recently the New Jersey Federation of Dog Clubs (NJFDC) met with some of our clubs and discussed strategic planning regarding their clubs and the canine fancy. First, we asked them for the biggest threats to their club and canine fancy. The top three responses were animal rights groups, bad legislation and social change. Then we asked for their strengths. This took a lot more time but here are the top three. Breeders passion/love for their dogs, breeders goals to improve canine health/longevity and breeders overall knowledge/experience to help both canine and public.
It was interesting that clubs quickly and easily identify what the threats are to their club and fancy, but had to think hard and long about their strengths. We then asked them how their strengths could overcome the threats. This became a bit of a struggle. Again, the question was how can we counter the animal rights groups, who are behind the bad legislation and have changed the public outlook on breeders and purebred dogs? There was no one simple answer. We had passionate arguments about why purebred are better; The members pointed out predictable temperaments; guaranteed known health; becoming part of a breeders extended family who can help with training and issues and the list goes on. Now that such a large number of the people support rescue dogs, how do we change their mind and get them to understand the importance of purebreds? It seems that animal rights supporters figured out a way to change public opinion on Breeders and purebreds, so we should be able to reverse the argument and do the same.
Here are parts of the discussions we had with clubs regarding the threats to us. Social change, everyone agreed the younger generation is much different today; not nearly the same as it was even 20 years ago. Then again, were you the same as your parents? Every generation changes; let us be clear, not all changes are for the better, but in fact, they happen. The younger generation’s learning curve is much quicker than ours was. What they can learn in today’s electronic world in minutes may have taken us weeks or months to learn in the past. Multi media has not only changed the younger generations, but all of us. We can communicate much easier and often want instant gratification at times. Misconceptions and lies are easy to spread. If lies can be told about the presidential and political elections, are we surprised about false information about breeders and purebred dogs? It’s that type of misinformation that leads to our next threat, bad legislation.
Our biggest threat however is bad legislation. How does this happen? Remember, politicians only do what the public wants. If the public turns again breeders and purebreds, the legislators are going to support ordinances or bills against it. Their objective is to represent the majority of their constituents, who of course vote them in to office. When those bad bills or ordinances come up, of course we have to fight them. Again, the problem here is that we are being reactive instead of proactive. If we had properly planned, we would not be in this situation. Now we are on the defense. It gets interesting when the NJFDC asks for assistance from the fancy to fight a bad ordinance/bill at the local/state level. When we try to recruit people, we find there are two types, those who will get involved and those who will not. Those who will not get involved can be broken down even further. There are those who know there is a problem and choose to bury their head in the sand. There are those who do not believe the issue is there and believe that if they ignore it, it will go away and of course those who do not want to get involved because they themselves are afraid they will get targeted by animal rights or are breaking the law
If we are to address this now, we all need to be on the same page. How can we do that, we need a plan. The only reason to look at the past is to try to learn what we did wrong. If we did, we would learn that if we had done sufficient education, we would have had more of the public on our side, which would make this easier. We can still correct this, but it will not happen overnight. There also needs to be more to the plan, which people like your can assist with.
In regard to animal rights, if we do proper education and gain public support, animal right’s strength will weaken. If they are weaker, we will see less bad legislation and can then incorporate positive legislation. Of course, if we educate the public, improve public support and have positive legislation, our numbers will grow.
If we had recognized the animal rights threat and planned accordingly, we would not be in this situation today. However, we are, so let us deal with it. The club members who discussed these issues had a difficult time understanding that their strength could counter the threats. This project involves a great deal of work. The answers cannot and will not be developed in one club meeting or overnight, but working together, they can be. Club members in the activity eventually concluded that addressing the issues, starts with education. The public needs to learn more about breeders and purebred dogs. Let us start strategic planning at every level so that we are prepared for the future and do not go the way of other great companies or organizations.
