Len and Prue Green – ‘Coverdale’

Founder members and long serving officers
of the Collie Club of Wales

The Collie Club of Wales’ has the single simple objective of:

Promoting the breeding and exhibition of pedigree Collies
(Rough & Smooth).

 

Dedicated to furthering Collie interests in Wales membership is open to all.

For more details about what the Collie Club of Wales has to offer
please contact the secretary

The Collie Club of Wales was established as recently as 1961, making it the youngest of the current Collie Clubs, by a group of South Wales fanciers including Len and Prue Green ‘Coverdale’ and Frank and Winnie Davies ‘Franwyns’ all active members of the West of England Collie Society.

Tribal loyalty has always been a feature of the South Wales valleys, and this national trait has given the Collie Club of Wales’ management a degree of
stability rarely exhibited in the hierarchy of canine club. Of the founder members, Len Green served as Chairman for seventeen years until ill health forced retirement in 1978, while his wife Prue took on the role of Secretary, a post she held for more twenty four years, making her one of the longest serving of any Breed Club secretaries.

With the only remaining founder member, Mrs Winnie Davies, now elevated
to Vice President and Honorary Life Member, today’s management is in the
capable hands of Mrs Christine Collins ‘Triburle’, who took on the secretarial
post after Prue Green’s retirement in 1986, and a dedicated team of Welsh
Collie enthusiasts of all levels expertise.

The Kennel Club’s decision, prior to the 1996 season, to reduce the
number of Challenge Certificates to all breeds including the Collie, limiting those to Rough Collie Breed Club Shows to thirteen, came as a surprise. Their decision that this reduction would be achieved by rotating
Championship status between the Collie Club of
Wales and the West of England Collie Society left
both in a vulnerable position. After ten years of such
an unsatisfactory arrangement members of the
Rough Collie Breed Council eventually asked the
Kennel Club to include all Breed Clubs in the rotation,
the new arrangement was implemented in 2007.

Early events were confined to members only shows, but Open Shows were
soon added to calendar, and by 1973 the Kennel Club considered them
sufficiently experienced to grant Championship status. Right from the
outset the Collie Club of Wales engaged a separate judge for each
sex, and their shows, initially held in the autumn, but moving to an
early spring date in 1984, quickly attracted an increasing entry.