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Rottie Powers - International Dog of Mystery - Page 2

© Wendy Smith

The best way to explain what I have found out about the FCI is to look at one breed of dog. So, of course, let's look at the Rottweiler. The Rottie is recognized by the FCI. To set a breed standard, the FCI looks to the country that the Rottie is considered to be the property of, i.e. Germany, since that is were the breed originated. The official Rottweiler club of Germany (the ADRK I've mentioned in earlier articles) sets the official FCI standard. That standard is then applied to Rottweilers in any of the other member countries.

Therefore, Rottweilers in Australia, Ireland, Japan, Chili, or even Zimbabwe are all judged by the exact same breed standard as the Rotties in Germany. A long, curly coated dog would not be considered a top quality Rottweiler in ANY of the FCI's member countries.

OK, so what about the United States? Well, the United States is not an FCI member country. However, when viewed side by side, there really doesn't seem to be much difference at all between the breed standard used by the AKC and that of the FCI. In fact, to my untrained eye, the only differences that I saw were:

1. A slight (less than an inch) variation in the allowed height of the dog. However, both prefer the dog to be somewhere in the middle of the range.

FCI- dogs 23.9-26.7 inches; bitches 22-24.7 inches

AKC- dogs 24-27; bitches 22-25 (sounds like they just looked at the FCI standard and rounded up)

2. The AKC standard asked for a small bit of black fur around each toenail and the FCI didn't mention this.

So basically, to put it bluntly, if it doesn't look like a Rottweiler, don't let anyone tell you that it is a Rottweiler, no matter where the person claims it came from. After all, just because you cross a Rottie with a greyhound doesn't mean you've got an Egyptian Rottweiler.

Thanks for dropping by. Season's Greetings to everyone and their furkids.

Linkfest

http://www.fci.be/english/ The FCI's English website.

http://www.molossermania.com/ Molosserworld is where I turned to to get the FCI standard for the Rottie converted into inches. Quite helpful for those of us who have forgotten our high school math classes.

http://www.akc.org To look at the standard the AKC uses, then, of course, this is the obvious place to go.

http://www.usrcweb.org/ This is the link to the United States Rottweiler Club's website. The USRC is a US based Rottweiler club that does use the FCI standard.

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