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The Azawakh & Sloughi Club of Sweden
Both of these breeds are quite new to our country; the Azawakh first arrived in 1989. The Sloughi was first introduced in the ’60s but after some tough years, they disappeared until 1993 when they made a new start.
The breed club for Sloughis in Sweden started in 1999 by joining forces with the few Azawakhenthusiasts present in the country at the time. The already existing Azawakh Club was closed and a new Azawakh & Sloughi Club (AzSK) was founded.
The aim is to give advice and encourage healthy breeding; for instance, AzSK recommend breeders to have all Sloughis used for breeding DNA-analyzed for PRA. We also want to keep in touch with other countries breed clubs, we have good relations with Finland and Norway though they haven’t their own clubs yet. We want to spread knowledge of our breeds by arranging shows and other activities.
The club holds a annual club show each year in the end of July held in conjunction to the largest sighthound show and international competition of lure coursing of the Scandinavian countries arranged by the Swedish Sighthound Association (SvVK). The specialty show usually gathers a total of 20-25 Sloughis and Azawakhs, and the ground idea is to have as many as possible participating regardless of winning chances and prestige.
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left: Uadi-El-Djemilla de la Cite de Guerrier (Intissar’s Firoush x Mechra el Bahia de la Cite du Guerrier). Br: M & L.Gouzy, France. Ow: Kjellåke Bjurström, Åkersberga.
right: Al Suwiid Aziz Dijaa (ITillieville Zalute x Rahina El Bahia De La Cite Du Guerrier Br/Ow: Tiina Wallgren, Segeltorp.
Judge: Djordje Tesic (Hungary) |
Another big task for this small club is to keep a breed information stand at Sweden’s biggest dog show in Stockholm each December. The Swedish Kennel Club (SKK) offers breed clubs to have this stand for two days, we have to have people and dogs there all the time and we are supposed to decorate our stand typical for the breeds in it. However larger breed club then ours fail to achieve this task! But this is a fantastic opportunity to inform about small breeds like ours. If you are an interested non-owner you need persistence and time to find these dogs in an ordinary show, none of the shows are benched nowadays and since there often is only a couple at the time you easily miss them! It is also great fun to get to talk about your favourite subject for two whole days meeting lots and lots of nice interested people.
In the beginning, there was a newsletter of a couple of pages for the members containing news and results. Today we have a club paper called Ökenposten (“Desert Review”) that is published two times a year, in May and December. It concludes advertisements, results from both LC and shows and interesting articles on tracking or journeys to Crufts, even.
The latest issue on the club’s agenda was the work to agree on a Breed Specific Breeding Policy for our breeds. This was a task requested by the SKK to all breed clubs in Sweden in order to maintain a good future in a longer perspective. This Breeding Policy had to contain the history, present status and future goals, for each breed. This should have the support of the members and breeders and is supposed to be a continual project for the breed clubs work with update as time goes on through the coming years.
After this was sent to the SKK and approved, our next big concern was the work with a Judges Education Pamphlet for the judges seminar taking place this autumn. The official special clubs (in our case SvVk) have the duty to hold a seminar for new judges every ten years. But this is not always the case; the last conference for our breeds was held in 1992. But finally, we were scheduled to have one, sadly it was too big a task for a few people with very little time. Sloughi-part was concentrated on leaving comments to the standard. The Azawakh-part was concentrated on a good background, but there are only a couple of Azawakhs in Sweden today and no active breeders. Now we will get a second chance to update our education material since the conference was cancelled due to lack of participants, however the conference will be rescheduled for a later date.
At the moment the work with our newsletter and breed/club stand is at hand and all our efforts are being channelled there. But we want to take this opportunity to tell you of our existence and if you want to make contact there is a homepage  - only in Swedish at this time but soon there will be an English version available. Until then you are most welcome to contact us by email!
Azawakh & Sloughi Klubben
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