The book of Champions
This article was written by Jo and David Barnes, dedicated researchers, breeders and members of the club.
The research of the book of Champions was started with an idea by Vice President, Gary Withers, in late 1996. The initial idea was to produce the book every six months however gathering the information proved to be a much larger project than originally envisaged and so it has taken nearly four years to complete.
The first step was to ask the New Zealand Kennel Club (NZKC) for a listing of all Great Danes who had gained their Championship title in New Zealand. Unfortunately they were only able to do this from the time of computerization in 1970 thus the years prior to this had to be constructed from alternative records including the old and somewhat unreliable files of the NZKC.
The next step was to contact the owners and breeders that could be identified from the list and ask them for pedigrees and photos. Identifying breeders and owners of Danes who became Champions 40 years ago was a task in itself but with the help of some of the current breeders who have been in the Dane world for some time we were able to make contact with those breeders and owners who have long since retired from Danes. As is always the case in researching old records much of the information had been lost or mislaid over the years. However, the response was certainly encouraging - information started to drift in and the file began to expand.
It was during this period that we started to explore old records for Danes that had been titled before 1970 and in fact we turned up quite a few that were not recorded on the NZKC database (more of this later).
Then the search requesting information went out to all members. Advertising in the country's two Great Dane Club magazines, writing letters and telephoning brought information and possible contact details for old members slowly, but surely, drifting in. It now became quite clear that the initial collection period was dramatically underestimated and as the years rolled by the publication date was realistically set as being early in the new millennium. This meant that not only could a more comprehensive research of the archives be done but also the latest champions of the 20th Century could be included.
The production of a publication of this nature is by necessity a collaborative project and many people gave their time and minds to its creation: Gail Taylor provided us with a great deal of information when she sent us an extract of the NZKC year book 1943-46 and a copy of Show Dogs of New Zealand which although it does not have a publication date is believed to have been printed in the early 1940's (based on a picture of the NZKC Executive). She put a great deal of effort into contacting many of the South Island exhibitors and copying the Dane section of numerous old "National" show catalogues.
Eva Craig performed a valuable task by visiting the NZKC offices and extracting pedigrees of missing dogs.
The combined computerized databases of Phil Hemming, Tony Evans & David Barnes proved invaluable in putting pieces of the jigsaw together and the records of the (English) Kennel Club were made available to us through Julie Scanning Ling.
Rosemary Hubrich and Lu Sumner provided us with a great many pedigrees and photographs as well as names and addresses of older breeders.
And, of course. There are all those breeders and owners, both current and retired, who delved through boxes and old suitcases and who were so often saddened by the memories that were brought back while looking for pictures and pedigrees of past Danes.
The compilation of a book of this nature is fraught with difficulties but one particular problem is the reliance of old records. There are some interesting anomalies to be found in the pages of this book. For example there are dogs from the 1930's who were registered with only one name, that is without prefix or suffix and whose registered color would not be permissible today. There are Dames who are recorded as champions on pedigrees and in show catalogues which cannot be verified as titled by the NZKC. There are dogs registered by the NZKC as being imported from England but who, according to the (English) Kennel Club, were not registered as exports or not the progeny of the stated parents, and there is an Australian National Kennel Club pedigree in which a generation has been skipped.
As researchers of this book we have had to make some decisions about the contents to be included. While we have made every Endeavour to include every champion it will be inevitable that we have omitted some.
George Mills, Director/Secretary of the New Zealand Kennel Club wrote about the NZKC's record system in the New Zealand Kennel Gazette (December 1999/January 2000) and stated that after 1973 "the records were then kept on a card system. These cards still largely exist today but the logic of the filing system is hard to follow and some cards appear to be lost. It is difficult to follow these records." Indeed we could find no record of a particular dog being made up to champion status yet we sighted the Championship Certificate hanging on a living room wall! Where we have been able to ascertain the championship status of a Great Dane beyond reasonable doubt we have included it.
Many of the pedigrees have been reconstructed using various records but you will see that if we have not sighted the official pedigree or our reconstructed pedigree has not be authorized by a breeder or owner we have marked it as "pedigree unverified". Many handwritten and typed pedigrees include only four generations and we have endeavored, wherever possible, to extend them to the fifth generation.
As many of the pedigrees are handwritten often names are difficult to read and sometimes the spelling of the same dog is different in different parts of the pedigree. We have made every effort to be consistent with spelling but with some 11,000 entries to check some errors with be unavoidable.
While the majority of pedigrees are accompanied by photographs there are a number for which we were unable to find a picture of any description. There are also photographs of questionable quality - scanning photographs that were originally taken by a Kodak Brownie camera in 1950 is a challenge!
Since the first edition of the Book of Champions was published, 2 subsequent supplements have been published.
The book of Champions is available through our "Dane Shop" at a very modest price. Well worth the read!
This article was written by Jo and David Barnes, dedicated researchers, breeders and members of the club.
The research of the book of Champions was started with an idea by Vice President, Gary Withers, in late 1996. The initial idea was to produce the book every six months however gathering the information proved to be a much larger project than originally envisaged and so it has taken nearly four years to complete.
The first step was to ask the New Zealand Kennel Club (NZKC) for a listing of all Great Danes who had gained their Championship title in New Zealand. Unfortunately they were only able to do this from the time of computerization in 1970 thus the years prior to this had to be constructed from alternative records including the old and somewhat unreliable files of the NZKC.
The next step was to contact the owners and breeders that could be identified from the list and ask them for pedigrees and photos. Identifying breeders and owners of Danes who became Champions 40 years ago was a task in itself but with the help of some of the current breeders who have been in the Dane world for some time we were able to make contact with those breeders and owners who have long since retired from Danes. As is always the case in researching old records much of the information had been lost or mislaid over the years. However, the response was certainly encouraging - information started to drift in and the file began to expand.
It was during this period that we started to explore old records for Danes that had been titled before 1970 and in fact we turned up quite a few that were not recorded on the NZKC database (more of this later).
Then the search requesting information went out to all members. Advertising in the country's two Great Dane Club magazines, writing letters and telephoning brought information and possible contact details for old members slowly, but surely, drifting in. It now became quite clear that the initial collection period was dramatically underestimated and as the years rolled by the publication date was realistically set as being early in the new millennium. This meant that not only could a more comprehensive research of the archives be done but also the latest champions of the 20th Century could be included.
The production of a publication of this nature is by necessity a collaborative project and many people gave their time and minds to its creation: Gail Taylor provided us with a great deal of information when she sent us an extract of the NZKC year book 1943-46 and a copy of Show Dogs of New Zealand which although it does not have a publication date is believed to have been printed in the early 1940's (based on a picture of the NZKC Executive). She put a great deal of effort into contacting many of the South Island exhibitors and copying the Dane section of numerous old "National" show catalogues.
Eva Craig performed a valuable task by visiting the NZKC offices and extracting pedigrees of missing dogs.
The combined computerized databases of Phil Hemming, Tony Evans & David Barnes proved invaluable in putting pieces of the jigsaw together and the records of the (English) Kennel Club were made available to us through Julie Scanning Ling.
Rosemary Hubrich and Lu Sumner provided us with a great many pedigrees and photographs as well as names and addresses of older breeders.
And, of course. There are all those breeders and owners, both current and retired, who delved through boxes and old suitcases and who were so often saddened by the memories that were brought back while looking for pictures and pedigrees of past Danes.
The compilation of a book of this nature is fraught with difficulties but one particular problem is the reliance of old records. There are some interesting anomalies to be found in the pages of this book. For example there are dogs from the 1930's who were registered with only one name, that is without prefix or suffix and whose registered color would not be permissible today. There are Dames who are recorded as champions on pedigrees and in show catalogues which cannot be verified as titled by the NZKC. There are dogs registered by the NZKC as being imported from England but who, according to the (English) Kennel Club, were not registered as exports or not the progeny of the stated parents, and there is an Australian National Kennel Club pedigree in which a generation has been skipped.
As researchers of this book we have had to make some decisions about the contents to be included. While we have made every Endeavour to include every champion it will be inevitable that we have omitted some.
George Mills, Director/Secretary of the New Zealand Kennel Club wrote about the NZKC's record system in the New Zealand Kennel Gazette (December 1999/January 2000) and stated that after 1973 "the records were then kept on a card system. These cards still largely exist today but the logic of the filing system is hard to follow and some cards appear to be lost. It is difficult to follow these records." Indeed we could find no record of a particular dog being made up to champion status yet we sighted the Championship Certificate hanging on a living room wall! Where we have been able to ascertain the championship status of a Great Dane beyond reasonable doubt we have included it.
Many of the pedigrees have been reconstructed using various records but you will see that if we have not sighted the official pedigree or our reconstructed pedigree has not be authorized by a breeder or owner we have marked it as "pedigree unverified". Many handwritten and typed pedigrees include only four generations and we have endeavored, wherever possible, to extend them to the fifth generation.
As many of the pedigrees are handwritten often names are difficult to read and sometimes the spelling of the same dog is different in different parts of the pedigree. We have made every effort to be consistent with spelling but with some 11,000 entries to check some errors with be unavoidable.
While the majority of pedigrees are accompanied by photographs there are a number for which we were unable to find a picture of any description. There are also photographs of questionable quality - scanning photographs that were originally taken by a Kodak Brownie camera in 1950 is a challenge!
Since the first edition of the Book of Champions was published, 2 subsequent supplements have been published.
The book of Champions is available through our "Dane Shop" at a very modest price. Well worth the read!
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