The First Step . . .
Whilst we are absolutely certain this is a necessary project, we are under no illusion it will be easy. This will involve years of careful breeding to get the desired outcomes. And all these efforts would be null and void if we didn’t have the backing of the international breeder and owner community as well as the established registry bodies (the Kennel Clubs). Why? Because at the end of the LEOGEN project we need to be able to register the progeny so that future Leonberger breeders may use them in their own breeding programmes if they choose to.
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Hence our very first steps in this process meant we needed to write a proposal to generate Kennel Club support for this project. Pages of facts and figures, statistical data supported with graphs, research results and an enormous amount of personal knowledge gleaned from long time Leonberger communities were crammed into an application and submitted in March 2022.
We chose to start with the British Kennel Club because it is well respected amongst its fellow institutions worldwide.
This process alone is not as easy as it sounds. There are several levels of deciding committees and boards within the kennel club structure and our proposal needed to go through each. They countered with many questions and suggestions which we responded to and at their meeting in July of 2022, the full Board of Directors of the Kennel Club gave their approval for the venture to go ahead.