When I began my journey in the sport of purebred dogs over 50 years ago, the American Kennel Club was experiencing phenomenal growth. Owning an AKC-registered dog was a big deal, and if it was a Champion, that was an even bigger deal. The AKC was a prestigious organization with a New York address on Madison Avenue and a positive standing with the American public.
Looking back on those days, I would venture to say that over 90 percent of all participants were regular, hard-working families enjoying the opportunity to compete with the family dog and share in the camaraderie and fellowship with people with a like interest and a desire to improve the breed they chose to exhibit.
In those days, just about every participant worked a full-time job during the week and showed their dogs on the weekends. There were not many professional handlers who did not also have a regular job, and those who didn’t usually owned and operated a boarding kennel or managed one for a wealthy client.
Most everyone knows that in those days, shows were one-day events. After each show, you went to another location, and almost all shows were on Saturday and Sunday, with very few weekends when there might be three or more in a similar geographic region.
AKC registrations reached all-time highs, and our sport was experiencing growth nationwide. Show entries were seldom fewer than 1,000 or more dogs at each event. For the performance people, Obedience Trials and Field Trials were the other options for competition.
Reflecting on that era, I now wonder whether the AKC’s traditional success created a comfort zone that prevented necessary adaptation—contributing to the sport’s difficulties today. A key issue may be that previous AKC leadership, buoyed by decades of achievement, struggled to adjust to changing conditions, leading to decisions that, though logical at the time, may have inadvertently contributed to today’s problems.
Historically, many of the top companies in America have failed after great success simply because of a lack of vision, becoming comfortable with success, and failing to stay current.
Since 2000, over one-half of the Fortune 500 companies have failed or are in a rapid decline. These are just a sample of those companies: Nortel Networks Corporation, Pan Am, Woolworth Co., Sears, Roebuck and Co., Enron, Lehman Brothers, Radio Shack, Kodak, Polaroid, Blockbuster, Toys “R” Us, Netscape, Arthur Andersen, and automakers Pontiac, American Motors, Saab, and Oldsmobile. These companies did not plan to fail; they simply failed to plan for the future and rested on their past successes.
Animal rights groups have waged war on us and our sport with great success, leading to numerous legislative actions against dog owners while also pushing the general public toward shelters to acquire their family pets.
I have never understood why the American Kennel Club never capitalized on its popularity by using television and radio to promote its purpose. Over the years, numerous celebrities have been involved in our sport, and the AKC could have used many of them to promote purebred dogs, the advantages of owning them, and the many opportunities for families to compete.
Before moving the majority of its offices to Raleigh, North Carolina, the AKC was offered a fantastic deal to relocate to Lexington, Kentucky. A variety of reasons not to take advantage of this opportunity were presented at the time, including airport location, being too far from New York City, and not being near the East Coast, among others. Yet despite the possible long-term advantages, the AKC Board of Directors turned down the deal that would have probably saved millions of dollars over the past four decades.
The opportunity to relocate made a great deal of sense: a more centralized location, a lower cost of living, lower taxes, lower operating costs, and plenty of room for growth. I may be mistaken, but I also believe a facility for shows similar to Purina Farms was also part of the plans.
The AKC still maintains offices in New York City and in Raleigh. Is there really a need in today’s global world to maintain offices in the high-rent market of NYC?
During the energy crisis in the late 1970s, the AKC made a wise decision in allowing clubs to hold back-to-back shows on the same weekend. This was a great move, as it allowed clubs to cut expenses on facilities and judges while helping exhibitors by reducing weekend travel between sites. This was a popular move, and it indeed helped clubs while maintaining show entries and club viability. However, when the AKC decided to expand this into what eventually became three-, four-, and sometimes five-day clusters, the problems began to surface.
Originally, large clusters were to be allowed only at exceptional sites. What we know now is that the rule did not stay in place, as clusters are everywhere across all types of facilities which, in many cases, are far from exceptional. Clubs wanting to compete for exhibitors began joining together to create clusters. While this may seem like a good fiscal plan, it also has several drawbacks.
When shows were held on a weekend with another club nearby, clubs had very few problems finding volunteers. Members were happy to sacrifice one day of exhibiting to work and volunteer for their home club. You never saw professional ring stewards, as clubs filled those roles with members. They did the parking (which, in those days, did not have 100 or more RVs to park), cleanup, hospitality, and all the jobs that today’s clubs struggle to staff.
Since clubs needed a partner for a cluster, many people started new clubs so that they could act as the second club. A period followed in which new clubs appeared everywhere. The new clubs drew members from existing clubs, and despite their intention to collaborate, power struggles often emerged.
With many clubs suffering a reduction in membership, the need for volunteers also became critical. Members who worked full-time jobs could not take time off to volunteer, and clubs had to hire paid workers to fill critical roles. All of these new clubs also had to have their own dates, which further diluted the number of available show dates.
Nowadays, with people staying multiple days at one hotel for the weekend cluster, hotels are charging pet fees or not allowing pets at all. Why is this?
When I started showing, I cannot recall being asked if I had a pet or being told I had to pay an extra fee to stay there. In earlier days, participants typically stayed only one night, and property owners rarely noticed isolated issues. With clusters, large groups of people sometimes neglect to clean up after their dogs, bathe dogs in rooms, leave dogs unattended, or allow dogs to soil elevators and common areas. As a result, hotels now impose fees to cover increased cleaning costs. These added fees are a direct result of the clusters and the exhibitors who continue to
abuse them.
It is no secret that travel today is better than it was fifty years ago. With the addition of these new clubs and the increased number of clusters on any given weekend, it is not difficult for most exhibitors to find numerous options within a 4-to-8-hour drive. If you look at a map of most shows, the number of alternate shows within 200-300 miles of each other is astonishing.
The addition of all of these shows is sort of like churches, Walgreens, CVS, and Dollar General; there is one on every corner every weekend. Consequently, the proliferation of shows and clubs—rooted in past growth and unchecked optimism—has led to declining entries, as the supply now far exceeds demand.
For so many years, we were truly a family sport. The entire family would come to the show on weekends after a long work week and when the kids were out of school. Today, the average working family cannot get away for three-to-five-day clusters on a regular basis. They also probably don’t have a budget that can afford entry fees for that many shows. We not only lose the Mom and Dad but also the Junior Handlers who, in many cases in the past, continued on as the future of the sport.
There has always been a rivalry of sorts between the Professional Handler and the Owner Handler. But the expansion of shows has exacerbated the issue. Fifty years ago, even the Professional Handler had a full-time job or owned a boarding kennel and only showed on the weekends. We did not have 100-plus motor homes and RVs at every show. Most handlers did not carry 10-20 dogs, and their rates were reasonable against today’s standards. The expansion of clusters created an explosion in the professional ranks. Now there is no shortage of individuals who consider themselves professionals, and some do not always conduct themselves to a professional standard.
The average exhibitor has always complained that professionals win more than they should, and they blame it on politics. This is not new and has always existed. In many people’s opinion, the AKC made a good decision by creating the National Owner Handler Series. But, while popular, the debate between the professional and the amateur will never go away.
With the increase in our event totals, we must as the question: How is the health and welfare of our dogs affected? With all these consecutive weekends, it is conceivable that a dog could be shown over 250 times in a calendar year. Is that of any benefit to the overall health of the dogs? Or are we just satisfying the egos of the owners and backers to amass great show records at the expense of the dogs we are supposed to love and protect?
Even professional athletes get time off. There are no sports leagues that run 50-plus weeks a year. Even baseball, with a 162-game schedule, has off days and an All-Star break—and an off-season.
I also do not think spending four or five days in one spot and using the same ex-pens for more than one dog is a great example of good hygiene for our dogs.
The advancement of judges has always been a hot topic for discussion, but because of the rise in the number of shows and the decline in entries, the need for judges qualified for multiple Groups has become an even bigger issue for show-giving clubs; the exhibitors continue to complain that many of our judges lack knowledge of the breeds they judge.
I came up with the one-for-one system. We were never allowed more than eight breeds at a time, and our provisional requirements were more stringent than they are today. I believed for many years that AKC judges were the best in the world, a position I can no longer take. It took many of our older judges 8-10 years to acquire their first Group, and I know that we were all prepared.
Many of the younger judges are advancing at a pace that is not helping today’s exhibitors. I do not know many individuals who have only had experience with their initial breed yet are capable of adding 12 new breeds and becoming proficient in them. We have judges today with just a few years of experience judging four or five Groups… or more. This is just another example of the AKC not having had the foresight to recognize a problem and address it sooner.
There are many judges with many years of competent experience who were frustrated with the old system and with how they were treated as they tried to advance. The AKC has never made the judging process a fair and level playing field. There have been, and will be, individuals granted special privileges simply because of their connections. And there are many good, experienced judges who have just decided to stop applying rather than deal with the judges’ department and its personal prejudices and biases.
There are judges today with 20, 30, and 40 years of experience who have strong reputations, and AKC should ask them to proceed rather than promoting a too-fast process for new judges who have yet to prove themselves.
For many years, the AKC has hired employees from the ranks of former Professional Handlers and other friends and families of those in charge. While many of these individuals may have been good people, one must ask, “Did they have the proper business and educational backgrounds for the positions they filled?” Many of these individuals were hired, given health insurance, and offered retirement benefits because they had connections within the organizations that helped them, even if the hire was not in the organization’s best interest.
It is also important to recognize the AKC’s addition of many Performance events and the great impact it has had. Performance events are becoming increasingly popular; the more options we offer purebred dog owners to compete, the better for our sport.
On the AKC web page, the objective is listed as: “Advance the study, breeding, exhibiting, running, and maintenance of purebred dogs.”
On the same page, under Core Values, it reads:
The AKC decided to allow mixed-breed dogs to compete in its Performance events under the title of “All-American Dog.” While I can see how this might introduce individuals to the purebred world, I don’t see them getting purebred dogs for future competition. What I do see is that some of these people take the top performers and crossbreed them even further in the hope of producing a better performance athlete.
The primary objective of the AKC is the registry, so how does this fit into that mission? I could understand it if, after the individual competes with the All-American Dog and they wish to compete further in AKC events, they are required to do so with an AKC-registered purebred dog. Would that not better align with the AKC’s objective and mission?
The AKC considers itself to be a Club of Clubs, and on the web page it states:
The reality is that, yes, the clubs are made up of volunteers. Those volunteers supply hundreds of thousands of non-compensated hours to host the many AKC events throughout the country. But if you were to ask many show chairs, trial secretaries, and officers of many clubs, they would tell you that the paid employees of the AKC do not always treat them with respect and support.
There are departments that do a good job, but many AKC employees simply do the bare minimum when a volunteer is trying to get something done. Some employees simply don’t care about the clubs and the volunteers they serve, and some make it very difficult for those who are relatively new to AKC requirements and are trying to put on events yet can’t seem to get answers from the staff. Often, employees do not even communicate with people within the organization. AKC needs to remember that without the volunteers, there will be no shows or trials.
While there are many other areas we can explore, it is important to remember that we all want to succeed. We want our registrations to return to the numbers of the past. We want to provide the public with well-bred, healthy dogs, and we want to encourage people to join our clubs and participate in our events.
But we also need to recognize that we have made mistakes along the way, and some programs and changes have hurt rather than helped our sport.
The AKC, if it plans to be around for another 150 years, needs to review and address the problems our sport faces. It is not too late to learn from our mistakes, make corrections, and move forward. Failure to address the issues will likely continue our downward spiral and result in the extinction of our registry and our sport.
I had the pleasure of judging at the Oklahoma Summer Classic weekend of dog shows. If ever a facility fits the “Exceptional” category, this is one of them. There are huge rings, plenty of space, great lighting, climate-controlled, and something for everyone who loves dogs: Five All-Breed Dog Shows, Obedience and Rally Trials, at least nine Concurrent Specialties, numerous Group Shows, Barn Hunt, Scent Trials, Weight Pulls, Fast CAT, Farm Dog, Temperament Testing, Dock Diving, Heart and Eye Clinics, and just about anything else you might want to do on a dog show weekend.
If you are looking for a summer getaway for yourself and your friends who do everything dog-related, the Oklahoma Summer Classic is one that needs to go into your planning for the future.
