President’s Message
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s Easter is drawing near, we can only hope that the extremes of weather events in Australia will settle down and that the shocking events in Ukraine will end. Disaster Benefits for DQ applicants Quite a number of our members were adversely affected by the recent Queensland floods and made application to Dogs Queensland for some financial support from our Budgetary Disaster allocation. This last week the Board approved payments of $1000 to each of these applicants. In addition, thanks go to our major sponsor Royal Canin who provided a generous allocation of Royal Canin dry dog food to assist those affected. This is also being distributed. Our thoughts go to the people in the Lismore area who have recently been inundated with flood waters a couple of times. Ukrainian Kennel Union Members would know that our national body, the Australian National Kennel Council “Dogs Australia” is a member of the European FCI, the Federation Cynologique Internationale. The Ukrainian Kennel Union (UKU) is our equivalent national body and has 290,000 members, no doubt with many of them displaced with their dogs. By way of comparison, in Australia we have just over 30,000 members nationally. The FCI has established a special fund to provide funding to the UKU and its affected members and dogs. At a recent Dogs Australia meeting it was agreed that Dogs Australia would match any donation our State and Territory bodies donated for this fund. At our Board meeting this week it was agreed that $5000 would be donated by Dogs Queensland. It is likely that these funds will be reimbursed by a Ukrainian benefit show as the year progresses, but it was thought important to move quickly to donate these
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DOG WORLD April 2022
funds. I note that Dogs Victoria has recently raised more than $8000 with a virtual show. Paws Aid ANZAC Day Show Planning is well underway for this special event. The Conformation Show starts at 1pm with the traditional dusk service happening at 5pm at our War Dog Memorial outside the Clubhouse. The service is conducted in conjunction with the Forest Lake RSL, and thanks go to our committee and those at the Forest Lake RSL for planning this event. Even if you are not entered in the show, I would suggest that you mark your diary and come along for the quite moving dusk service. It is a very special collaboration. New Board members At our Board meeting last week, it was decided to fill the two casual vacancies caused by the removal of Mr Woodrow as a director at the Special General Meeting held on 9 February 2022 and the subsequent resignation of Ms Carolyn Pearen as a director on 7 March 2022.
