Dog owners gowl over AKC book

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NEW YORK — For almost 70 years, the American Kennel Club’s “The Complete Dog Book” has been considered the bible for dog lovers.

But the venerable kennel club is recalling the book’s latest edition amid howls from pet owners who objected to its descriptions of some of the nation’s most popular dogs — including Scotties, Dalmatians, dachshunds and 37 other breeds — as unsuitable for children.

Some breeds with more dangerous reputations, such as the American pit bull and the Doberman pinscher, were cited as good with children.

Within days of the new edition’s release, breeders and owners complained that the new classifications were unfair and uninformed.

The kennel club reacted as if it had been caught sleeping on the furniture, apologizing for the unintentional errors in the $33 book and announcing a recall of the entire 30,000 first printing of the book that has sold 2 million copies since 1929.

“The AKC sincerely regrets the distress caused to dog owners and breeders by the errors,” the club said in a statement Wednesday. “AKC neither agrees with nor endorses the material.”

The kennel club blamed the mistake on a change in format “without proper vetting.”

The publisher was asked in January to suspend sales and recall the books, which will be replaced free with a revised edition in June, the AKC said.

“Nobody quite knows who put that information in, and a number of the breed clubs around the country are not pleased with it,” said Patty Brooks of Strafford, Mo., whose husband, Fred, is a breeder and president of the Scottish Terriers Club of America. “The information certainly was not supplied by anyone who evidently knew what they were talking about.”

The recently released 19th edition of the AKC book carried new information boxes for each breed with data such as size, trainability and ratings as to suitability with children.

Dogs cited as “not good” with children include Chihuahuas, toy poodles, whippets and Scottish terriers. But those citations sometimes contradict the book’s more detailed remarks about temperament. Scotties, for example, are said to be “loving and gentle with people.”

Paddie Swift, a mother of two walking her Dalmatian Griffen in New York’s Central Park on Wednesday, joked, “Disney might have to change the name of the movie to `101 Dalmatians Ready to Eat Your Kids.”‘

And Alexandra Day, author of the popular “Good Dog, Carl” children’s books about a baby-sitting Rottweiler, said there was no basis for that breed — the nation’s third-most popular — to be criticized, either.

“They are family dogs, but they protect their own,” Day said.

Her Rottweiler Zabala regularly works with therapists and kids at hospitals.

“He loves to play,” she said. “He’s been around literally hundreds of children.”

AKC list of breeds not good with kids

The Associated Press

Forty breeds listed in the 19th edition of the American Kennel Club’s “The Complete Dog Book” as being “not good” with children:

affenspinscher

Afghan hound

Akita

basenji

borzoi

Brussels griffon

bull terrier

Chihuahua

Chinese shar-pei

chow

dachshund

Dalmatian

English toy spaniel

French bulldog

German shorthaired pointer

German wirehaired pointer

giant schnauzer

Italian greyhound

komondor

kuvasz

Lhasa apso

Maltese

Manchester terrier

Manchester toy terrier

miniature pinscher

Pekingese

Pomeranian

puli

Rhodesian Ridgeback

Rottweiler

schipperke

Scottish terrier

Sealyham terrier

Shiba inu

Skye terrier

Tibetan terrier

toy poodle

whippet

wirehaired pointing griffon

Yorkshire terrier