ACP CLUB'S HISTORY

Idea about a club comes about

We had walked our feet and ourselves till exhaustion by watching dogs and the endless number of magnificent stalls at Cruft’s in Birmingham. Indeed, Eija Alvasto and I were able to trudge in the show for all the four days. Our heads were already dizzy about all we had seen, but furthermore, we still had a day to spend at Corydon kennels.

We got the chance to enjoy of our host’s and hostess’, John’s, Barbara’s, Miranda’s and Lene’s hospitality and dog stories, and at the same time get to know almost 40 unforgettable Collies. The Blakes have bred Collies, in breed’s home country England, since 1958, so there’s an impressive amount of knowledge and experience of Collies in their family.

In the evening of March 18th 1996, we were thinking all over again all those things what we had experienced during the last five days. No dog enthusiast can keep calm after experiencing all that. We were so tired that we only did a little shopping tour, although our hotel was situated nearby the best shopping streets in London. It had been my first visit at Corydon kennels and I were amazed, apart from I had almost fallen in love because, I had just met the most loveliest blue Collie bitch ever.

Corydon Handsome Hotspur


With a smile on her face, Eiju was watching and listening to my sighing and stories about the heavenly appearance of the blue bitch who I had met at the Blake’s. The idea just came as a joke: ” What if we established a Corydon Fan Club?"

The club’s establishing and basic ideas

The club was founded on April the 21st 1996. Inventing the name wasn’t easy, and we didn’t think it was so important. The letter combination ACP came from initials of the following words: aidon collien puolesta- aidon Corydonin puolesta (in English: for true Collie – for true Corydon).

From the very beginning, the idea was that the club is simply a link between such breeders who use the Collies of the Corydon-line in their breeding work. Everybody who has ensued the breed for long time knows that there are breeders who base their breeding work on specific foreign kennel’s breeding, for example English, Swedish, Middle-European or American ones. It’s not odd or strange at all - why couldn’t you admit that you admire some older breeder’s life-work.

We wanted to keep ACP-club small, so that the occupation would happen in ”family circle”. That’s why we didn’t advertise the club in public, and wanted to set a limit for membership. The meaning was, and still is, to keep the club un-registered, in this way we especially wanted to avoid thoughts that the club would in any way, compete of members or occupation with the official organization of the breed. We decided to keep the finances in ”spirit level”, which means that we haven’t collected money more than the occupation has needed.

Corydon Polly Tucka


Difficulties in the beginning

Certain Collie enthusiasts, who were outsiders to the club, and who hadn’t got full information about basic ideas and aims of the club, started a regrettable episode in 1997, when the club had run for a little over a year. There were strange rumours and gossips going on about the club, they even collected namelists against us and caused deplorable quarrels, which left staying traces. When the bulletin 4/97 came out and the strife was on its worst, Anja Alvasto wrote to members on the chairman’s column: ”Show them how a human being should treat another human being, despite all these insults, without any features of terrorism and racism!”

Despite these things, we wanted to continue the club’s occupation because it had given so much joy to the members. Within the years, the general attitude has become more tolerant, for example an assurance of that, is that the breeders of the American-lined Collies ”dared” to establish their own club, ACT, year 2003. And that’s good. Let all the flowers bloom, these clubs are surely a good increase for many people’s hobby with dogs.

Members and the bulletin

In the beginning, there were 10 breeders with an affix and a couple of active Collie enthusiasts in the club. The number of members increased to over thirty within a year, and the current number of 50-60 members has preserved already several years – the turnover in members has been rather slight. It was clear from the very beginning that there would be interests on our club abroad, so that’s why we have been publishing a part of our bulletin in English, too. Within the years the club has had members from among others Australia, Hong Kong, South-Africa, England, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Estonia, Denmark and Sweden.
Within the first years, the bulletin came out every month and it was accomplished by copying. During already the first year a part of the pages accomplished in colours, and after three years we found a technique which was cheap enough, and by that the bulletin got a right size of a magazine and it became partly colourful too. During the last years, the bulletin has come out six times a year.
According to the original idea ACP is a link specially between breeders, but there have been also those active Collie enthusiasts in the club from the beginning. The labour input of theirs has surely been important for the occupation of the club too. And of course, a part of them start their own breeding work later.

Corydon La Stupenda ja Corydon Black Cat


Following up the breeding work

From a breeder’s aspect the club offers its members information about dogs behind their stud dogs’ and brood bitches’, and also the possibility to exploit each other’s experiences. It is not sensible to repeat the same mistakes in your breeding work, if somebody else has already done them, and on the other hand, you’re able to exploit wisdoms which have helped some breeder to get a little closer to our common dream; the perfect Collie.
To have the information going, we’ve been publishing health results of the dogs owned by the members and of the stock they’ve bred, in the ACP-bulletin through the ages. In addition to this, we also wanted to create a system which would give the breeders a chance to pursue concretely the breeding work. The result was the ”10 point Collie”. In annual gathering the breeders go through their stocks litter by litter, after the dogs have reached a certain age. ”The 10 point Collie” is a dog who fills the certain criterions (which are defined together,) for his character, health and appearance.
The profit of the system, is that the results of the breeding work become written. A human being forgets easily the failures, and remembers only the positive things. It takes a lot of honesty to advance in breeding work.

The ACP-meetings

Even the club’s home members live very scattered from one another, so there haven’t been many common gatherings in a year. The annual meetings and ”The 10 point Collie”-meeting have been arranged regularly. In addition to that we have spent a summerlike weekend together once in two years, called ”The ACP-happening”. The weekend has included all kinds of programs and just being together. Another of the days have always been dedicated for the unofficial Collie survey, which into we have invited also other at least 25% Corydon-backgrounded Collies. We’ve always invited true specialists of the breed to judge the dogs, and the prizes have been unforgettable, too.
The first ACP-meeting was held on 1997, and after that regularly on every second year, 1999, 2001 and 2003.Because of the 10th anniversary, we prolonged the interval of the happenings, so that the next meeting hit the year 2006. After that the meetings has been held on years 2008 and 2011. You can find more information of these meetings else were from these home pages.
We have always staked on photographing in the surveys, so that we’ve been able to publish a picture catalogue of the dogs of the survey. A noteworthy thing in our surveys is also, that an unofficial happening tempts such dogs and dog owners who don’t normally go to official shows.

The future

The club’s future seems stable and bright. The idea which accured from a little joke has carried on for 10 years, and there seems to be no ending for it, as we have so active members.
Because the club is small, every member has a real chance to affect on coming activities. It’s shown, that there have developed lots of joy of a little thought!

text Suvi Hirvonen
translation Vera Viteli