How it Hurts and How to Help – Dog Shows vs. Coronavirus
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By Sandy Weaver
Dog shows are being cancelled because of a novel form of coronavirus. This isn’t a news flash – you’ve probably experienced the frustrations of no TP at the store, being told to cook at home instead of go out to eat, and cancelled dog shows.
For a large number of people, the cancellation of dog shows isn’t just a frustration – it’s a threat to their ability to feed themselves and their dogs. For others, it’s watching a year or more of work get cancelled and not knowing any of the answers for the hundreds of calls and emails – “will I get a refund” and “when will I get a refund” and “why can’t you tell me if or when I’ll get a refund?” Those are the polite people – sadly, a lot of people have been quite ugly when contacting show chairmen with questions for which there are no easy answers. To make it easier on show chairmen, judges, vendors and exhibitors, AKC put up a web page with up-to-date cancellation information: https://www.akc.org/sports/event-cancellations/
This article is about solutions and ideas. This article is intended to spark thoughts and discussions and contingency plans for the next time an emergency strikes the dog show world. Because it’s not “if” – it’s “when.” Here’s the good news – we’ve weathered emergencies before and will weather them again.
Let’s look at this from the club’s point of view. By and large, the clubs are being told to cancel shows – they’re not choosing that option. As Grace Knickerbocker Carter of the Greater Orange Park Dog Club explained, “Canceling is not the choice of the clubs. Trust me…we are losing money. Our show canceled today. I am busy contacting my RV folks to let them know we are refunding their money. When we are told the venue is being shut down, we have no choice but to cancel.”
Government agencies are limiting the size of gatherings, and state- and county-owned properties are cancelling events. The club members have worked for a year or more to create an event that now won’t happen or may not happen. They’ve invested hundreds or thousands of dollars in non-refundable deposits for the venue, purchased ribbons with dates on them, paid for judges and their travel expenses, only to have the show they’ve worked on either cancelled or hanging on the brink of cancellation. They’ve got vendor money and entry money, and everyone wants all of it back – and the club still has expenses they probably won’t get back. A lot of clubs rely on show income to keep running – they have a “paycheck to paycheck” dependency on that show revenue.
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Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=181426
Posted by AnthonyA
on Apr 26 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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