i'm thinking of cancelling DW , its seems to get smaller each week

I just have! They phoned up and asked to speak to  my husband about why he cancelled his subscription. I pointed out that this had been in MY name and told them the list of reasons why I was cancelling, one being "we print critiques faster than the other paper"- that used to really annoy me :( Just having OD from now on, my idea of economising. A friend has both and she wil lcopy anything which I would be interested in.

I am fed up with having several pages of photos of PEOPLE in D.W. of late. Some pages have no dogs in the photos at all. Why would we be interested in the Fosse Data or Highams staff; the Bannerdown team; the society committee; the treasurer, etc.? On another point, I have never been asked to send a critique to the K.C. so how would they know if one has been submitted?  My friend no longer subscribes because of the impossibility of getting through on the phone. I spent over half an hour on two occasions trying to get through to subscriptions. When I told D.W. of this and suggested that they did not have sufficient staff I was told that it wasn't lack of staff but too many people phoning in. She couldn't see that they were one and the same.

Well if it isnt the pages of people its pages of the same old group winners so its all of a muchness to me :-p  ,,, i was going to cancel DW this year as they  had got so slack with the critiques but for the past couple of months they have been appearing online before they are even in the paper so its earnt them a reprieve for the time being.

I've cancelled and will switch to the online sub.

M.

Sounds to me like DW and possibly OD need to listen to their readers more carefully otherwise they will be losing them! It was in DW that I came across the most improbable gossip column ever, written in sub-red top style--that was enough to put me off buying it again.

OD have became hopeless for my breed critiques, think ive seen about 4 in there the whole year and weeks behind DW.

> Well if it isnt the pages of people its pages of the same old group winners so its all of a muchness to me

My friend stopped showing for a while & hadn't had the papers, so started getting them again in 2009......after about a month she cancelled ha ha
She said "Same old _ _ _ _ different week" and when ever I see her I give her some recent copeis of DW and she said the exact same thing after going through them lol :-D

I really dislike the prominence of the handlers in photos these days, it used to be the dogs when I first started.  I nearly always crop down to the dog any pictures I get sent, don't want any distractions.

I think this is an American thing where the handler is the one to be recognised, and advertising is a big part of campaigning a dog as the judges get sent all the mags.

i agree B.  I've cancelled  my DW .

Thankyou for your interest.
They will give you a 50% reduction on the paper, the print is so small its impossible to read especially for partially sighted. I want to be able to check what I have written in case of errors or typos which often occur. I do think they could have warned their readers and people from overseas always envy us that we get show reports they are now denied this facility.
I have tried and I know some people are dissapointed, maybe they will be able to get someone to write notes.

I only have 20% sight.  Anything that can be copy and pasted or saved on-line I save in notepad, and that way i CAN HAVE THE TEXT THE SIZE i CAN SEE WHEN i PRINT OFF.

Also if you increase your viewing size you can often get it to print larger too, I always do print preview to check.

after 30 odd years no DW for me.  they didn't  even query  why i'd cancelled  . received cheque today for advance dd.

I bought my first DW in 1981 - but it's not the paper it used to be. I miss the great columnists they used to have like Peggy Grayson and Anne and Mary Roslin-Williams.

I still prefer it to OD, which I dislike because of it's layout and print style. I don't mind the photos, but I would rather see more of the dogs and less of the judges, committee members, etc.

I think some of the breed note writers should be promoted to regular columnists - often the breed notes are better reading than the rest of the paper.

> I miss the great columnists they used to have like Peggy Grayson

Peggy Grayson writes in Our Dogs at the moment. We've changed from Dog World recently. At least OD prints the judges critiques as written by the judge as opposed to DW who tinker with them.