Following receipt of a letter written last Friday from Caroline Kisko, Kennel Club Secretary, in which she suggests that his comments in a contemporary regarding spectators’ dogs at licensed shows were in contravention of the collective responsibility obligations agreed to by Kennel Club committee members, Andrew Brace has resigned from the Kennel Club’s Show Executive Committee of which he has been a member for several years, elected as their representative by the Associate Members.

Andrew says, "I have in the past been mindful of the collective responsibility obligations and have always endeavoured to honour them. However, the requirement to ignore major decisions places me, as a paid journalist part of whose brief is to comment on all current issues within the world of dogs in a very invidious position.

"If comments such as those referred to by Mrs Kisko are considered unacceptable, then I now find that remaining on the Show Executive Committee will inhibit my freedom to write objectively about important decisions in which the SEC may have been involved, and consequently feel that I have no alternative but to resign.

"I have very much enjoyed the years I have spent serving on the Show Executive Committee and would like to think that my contribution has been a positive one. However I believe it is essential that as a journalist within the fancy I have to be able to write freely and without restrictions, something I have always aimed to do in the last twenty years.

I am grateful to the Associate Members who have supported me ever since they were given the opportunity to elect representatives to the Show Executive Committee, and hope that they will understand the reasons for my resignation."