Cites Nearly a Victim to Our Dogs, 'The Training of Kennelmaids', Our Dogs 111 (1st Apr. 1938), p. 27.
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'Sir,- Speaking as a breeder, I think it would be an exceedingly excellent thing for all concerned if kennelmaids would form a union. The ramp in kennelmaids is to be deplored as much by the breeder as by the poor kennelmaid; and that there is a ramp no one can deny.

But it should be noted that half the trouble is due to the girls themselves, who, in too many cases, come from “aristocratic” surroundings, and fancy themselves as kennelmaids because they consider they will have in that position a social cachet denied to them if they were to take up other professions, and they suffer for their snobbery by being well rooked by unscrupulous “trainers.” If the supply of these “genteel” would-be kennelmaids were to cease, matters would be very different.

I am at the present moment training a completely untrained girl at the moment. Her food is found, and during the period of her training she is receiving a nominal wage of 5s. per week. Nothing whatever is taken from her, either in premium, board, or any other way. Just so soon as she reaches a reasonable degree of efficiency her wage will be increased, and thence pro rata according to her ability; and the sooner she commences to be a help instead of a liability the better I shall like it.

I consider this is a perfectly fair arrangement. The cost of the girl, including her food, is considerably over £1 per week to me. In return for that she assists (or hopes that in due course she will be competent to assist) in the kennels. As the amount of assistance she can give depends on the success of my training of her, it is as much to my benefit to train her properly as it is to her benefit to respond to that training.

She certainly gets plenty of dirty work. That is necessary. When she is competent herself to take charge of an under-kennelmaid, then she will be able to pass the dirty work on.

I have preferred engaging a completely untrained kennelmaid, and training her myself, to engaging one trained at some “ramp” kennel, for the simple reason that girls trained at these establishments are encouraged to develop a superiority complex. They might be capable of supervising a large kennel of their own some day, if some charitable person gave them a thousand pounds capital to start off with; but they will never be capable of making a business out of it and running it at a profit on little or no capital at all.

The entire process is wrong, and the girls are as much at fault as the unscrupulous persons who take advantage of them. They pay huge premuims to be trained (?) in large kennels replete with labour-saving devices which no ordinary breeder would be able to afford and still show a profit, and when they go into service properly, or start a kennel of their own, they are helpless – quite incapable of  making their own tools, in emergency, and using them. I have very little sympathy for them. Let them offer their services to some working kennel, in return for training, their keep, and a nominal wage. They might lose the delightful social cachet from running around in jodpurs and looking superior, but they would learn something worth learning and save themselves from being stung into the bargain.'
 

Cited by Edward Johnson to Our Dogs, 'The Training of Kennelmaids', Our Dogs 111 (10th June 1938), p. 847.
Description:

‘Sir,- Every prospective kennelmaid should read the sound, informative letter from “Canis” in your issue of June 3, which makes common-sense. I am quite in agreement, too, with “Kennelmaid” who writes in the same issue and says all dissatisfied kennelmaids should not sit grumbling but should rise as a body but should join a certain club (which is waiting for members before it can act).'