Interview with Kari Järvinen, President of the WDS organising committee

Hello Kari. I guess you are very proud when you look back at this marvelous World Dog Show 2014. What was your biggest challenge or fear before the show?

No problems but the thinking of who to invite for such activities? Let me say this straight, it's not needed to invite all the presidents again and again. We asked the breed clubs to follow that. That was for me the most difficult part.

Everybody was impressed by the nice main ring!

Yes, I said to the main ring committee - we had different committees created - that this is a dog show, not a circus, and to try to find a good balance. We had these young children to dance for us, nothing else but that. It was not too long, but it told us that Finland is a modern country. I think that we kept the dog central in the main ring.

Did you have any serious problem to solve during the show?

Yes there we had some with that young boy who did not speak Finnish, but understood a little bit of English. He could not tell what country he was from, but we could find out that his parents had entered 3 Labradors. And via our fantastic database system and by elimination we managed to retrieve his parents and bring the boy back. For the rest there were no problems with dogs in cars and the high temperatures. Everybody took very good care.

You have an amazing and reliable team. Can you tell us something about them?

I have 700 people, but the inner circle of them, like Kaija Unhola and Lena Sarvi have over 20 years of experience and I have been over 30 years the chairman. We grew up with the Helsinki shows and previous shows like this. The secret is to trust people like them. Too many chairmen of other WDS try to do everything by themselves. I'm a different leader. I trust them and if my telephone is ringing I know that there is a real problem.

The new logo was your idea, the merchandising was fantastic, tell us a little about it.

We started in 2008 with that office BBO (Better Business Office) and we were a great team together. We found out they were working well. We found each other, we trust each other and there was great team work.

There were maybe 50 different merchandising items. Was this the initial idea or was it growing and growing by the time when you saw it was successful?

It was growing yes of course. The Finnish KC’s stock was almost sold out as everybody wanted to buy. This speaks for itself. Can you believe that the Italians, the country of design, came to say how unbelievable this is! Imagine, the Italians !

The Finnish Kennel has set the standard higher again. How difficult was it to find a way to do that?

There was no voting needed when we asked to organise this show to celebrate our 125th anniversary. Everybody agreed and trusted us. Nobody was opposed and that was the very first time that this happened. I was very happy and proud, of course.

Kari, I'm very confident that the Finnish Kennel Club will organise more World and European section shows. Congratulations once more!

Interview: Karl Donvil