WE ARE A CHAMPIONSHIP BREED!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lori Greer]

From our Breed Chair: "In a momentous event in Savannah history we have been voted by the TICA BOD to advance to Championship. It was not a clean sweep, but close enough – 11 votes to advance, one against, one abstained.This is the beginning of a new era for the Savannah, and we can look forward to an exciting future.

I want to thank each and every breeder and exhibitor who has worked very hard and had a great deal of patience over the years for never giving up and for loving this breed and bringing us to this wonderful day. It has taken each of you to bring us this far and now the fun can begin.

Come May 1. 2012, let’s begin our trip to Champion and Grand Champion and all that goes along with these great titles."

 

[Arline]

Congrats to all! This is so wonderful.

 

[tkymasters]

Yeh!!? So I'm a guy... what does this mean?

 

[Jacq]

WOW! Congrats to all you wonderful breeders and show people. What a great day!

 

[Kronos]

Yeh!!? So I'm a guy... what does this mean?

This means that in cat shows, our breed is now allowed to compete for titles. Judges select winning cats based off how close they are to the written standard. After earning a certain amount of points, cats will gain the title CH (Champion) and GCH (Grand Champion). Championship status cats are very valuable in a breeding program because it is PROOF that you have cats in your lines that are meeting the written standard and it will aid in selecting mates to produce the typiest offspring.

 

[admin]

Yeh!!? So I'm a guy... what does this mean?

It's not a girlie thing - LOL!

 

[tkymasters]

Ok... went to TICA website and read about it... Now that SVs are a Championship breed.. will they still be considered hybrids? or will they fall inline with the rest of the championship breeds... ie bengel, ocicat, toyger..

 

[admin]

Good question...technically a SV is a hybrid and so is a bengal and even though an SBT is 3 generations of savannah to savannah breeding, just as Bengals, they are still hybrids. A savannah is considered domestic by TICA at the SBT level for Championship, but most legislation still considers the savannah a hybrid.

 

[Brigitte Cowell]

Yeh!!? So I'm a guy... what does this mean?

It's in effect becoming a "bonafide" breed, before then we were working through the steps of TICA's (the International Cat Association) new breed program. We were developing a breed, the cats from F1 forwards are considered "foundation cats" until they are SBT (Stud Book Traditional) which is three generations of the same breed and what we in the cat world consider "purebred".

So we've spent over ten years working hard, selecting our best and taking them to cat shows to educate the public AND the cat judges. We had to prove to the cat association that our breed was not a passing fad, that it had something unique to offer the cat world, and that we could create the look we promised back in the beginning.

Now that we have taken this last step and joined the other Championship breeds, our cats will now compete in the open field against all the other established cat breeds. We can win titles from Champion through to Supreme Grand Champion, and we can attain Regional titles and International titles too. Likely it will be a little tough at first because we are playing with the big boys now...but it's the beginning of a new chapter for our Breed and very exciting to us

 

[Per Lausund]

This is great! But it also means less chance of showing the non-SBT cats, and may move interest more to SBTs than early gens?