If you have been reading this blog over the years and you recently attended a seminar on the Stafford then you may have thought something seems very familiar. Yes, some of the thoughts we have written here on our website as far back as from 2008 have been used verbatim in both the TSK and the SBTCA Illustrated Breed Standard projects.
We gave our permission for this information to be used. Some of the writing is actually ours exactly, our words, our thoughts, our ideas. Some of the writing came from other sources which are credited on the back page of the TSK project. The SBTCA version doesnt give any credit to the source material, artist or any contributors except their own judges education committee. They even went so far as to print that the material in their book is ‘copyrighted’ to them. Of course if you have read all three – this blog, TSK and SBTCA projects then of course you know that cant be so.
Instead of being angry, which we were initially, about our work being used with zero credit, we decided that as long as good information is out there and is being shared then it doesnt matter who gets the credit for writing it. It would have been a bonus to have been credited or thanked for our many years of hard work, but this is not why we do what we do. Our passion is this breed. Knowing in our hearts that our work was so valued that it is being used in other projects should be enough.
In fact the TSK project has been translated into many languages and has been used in breed seminars and judge education situations many many times all over the world. We are very proud to be a part of that effort.
Thank you to everyone who worked on, contributed to or enjoyed these projects!
