AN ATTRITION PROBLEM: DEVELOPING THE NEXT GENERATION OF JUDGES AND INVESTING IN THE FUTURE OF OUR SPORT

BY KEVIN LIND

The American Kennel Club has roughly three thousand approved Conformation judges. Many are well into their seventies and eighties. This isn’t an ageist observation. It’s an observation that ties back in directly to the graying of our sport. But, the pipeline of new judges is too thin to replace them once they’re deceased or retired. If you’ve followed the AKC Gazette Secretary’s Page, then you’ve noticed this as much as you’ve noticed the names in the premium list. Thus, as the number of experienced all-rounder judges declines, the gap between them and the next generation grows wider with each passing year.

This crisis of attrition is not a crisis unique to our sport. American businesses have been grappling with the same problem under various names: the “retirement cliff,” the “silver tsunami,” the “great Boomer exodus.” In 2024 alone, roughly eleven thousand Americans reached traditional retirement age every day. That’s over four million adults annually—or 1.2 percent of the US population.

Let’s translate this into our judge dilemma. If these data stay true for dog show judges, then 36 judges retire each year. Also, approximately 30 judges passed away in 2025, which is consistent with the 0.9 percent death rate. This figure does not reflect the fact that not every judge has more than one Group. Many don’t even have a full Group—often by choice.

Fewer than half of privately held businesses have a formal succession plan in progress. Industries from construction to financial services are publishing white papers on knowledge transfer because they understand that what’s at stake is the institutional memory that took fifty years to build, which could all disappear in a single decade. And the American Kennel Club is not immune from this dilemma, or the responsibility to have a robust succession plan in place.

“This is true for every breed, and especially acute for low-entry breeds where the pool of knowledgeable breeders—those people who share the heaviest burden of teaching the next generation—might already number less than a dozen nationally.”

WHY BREED KNOWLEDGE IS HARDER TO REPLACE

A senior engineer at NASA can document what she learned about combustion stability. A retiring banker can write up relationship histories for the clients he is handing off. Some knowledge cleanly transfers; other knowledge does not.

Breed knowledge is one such category that does not transfer easily. A judge who has been hands-on with five generations of a low-entry breed has built knowledge that exists nowhere on paper. It exists in the calibration of the eye and the memory of the hand. When that judge’s career ends, that knowledge could be lost, unless it has been actively passed on to others who can demonstrate it in turn.

This is true for every breed, and especially acute for low-entry breeds where the pool of knowledgeable breeders—those people who share the heaviest burden of teaching the next generation—might already number less than a dozen nationally. Lose any of them in a single year and the breed begins to drift towards extinction, or at best, extirpation.

THE CATCH-22 SHOW CHAIRS HELP CREATE

SHOWSIGHT ran a piece in December 2025 arguing that the AKC has built itself a Catch-22: clubs want multiple-Group judges, but the system advances new judges too slowly to grow the pool fast enough. The author, Walter Sommerfelt, is right in this regard. The diagnosis is known, but the treatment is lacking.

Some show chairs perpetuate the same Catch-22 every time they build a panel. Faced with a choice between an experienced multi- Group judge who can cover thirty breeds and a Permit judge only approved for two, the rational choice is the experienced judge. But the Permit judge needs assignments in order to grow. The show chair, in turn, needs entries to balance the budget and hopefully turn a profit. The assumption is that entries follow recognizable names, pushing judge selection toward the same handful of judges, time and again. Meanwhile, the next generation encounters difficulty and roadblocks towards getting the assignments they need to grow.

This is fixable. Not by waiting for AKC to overhaul approval, but by show chairs and clubs choosing, intentionally, to invest in the development of our future.

WHAT SHOW CHAIRS CAN DO NOW

Diversify the Judges Selection Committee. Some clubs, and indeed some clusters, use the same person to select judges, year-after-year; and that person might be closed off to new ways of doing things. Having more hands to do the work can lessen the burden of contracting with judges, especially for large clusters. Further, ensure the show chair is part of that committee so that judges can easily find the right name to communicate with.

Reserve assignments for Permit judges. Most panels of any size can absorb one or two Permit judges without harming the overall draw or creating scheduling problems. A new judge permitted in select Hound breeds alongside seasoned Group judges will help to pull a respectable entry for the club, and provide exposure for the new judge that does not exist in any other way.

Permit judges meet mentor judges and breeders at shows. Lunch-table mentorship is a genuine act of knowledge transfer. A new judge who has spent the morning judging their assignment and then spends forty-five minutes at lunch with an experienced judge and/or breeder-judge learns more than any seminar can teach.

Fund travel and/or lodging for new judges. The single largest barrier for Permit judges is cost. New judges pay 100 percent of their expenses to attend breed Nationals, seminars, and even attend shows just for ringside observations and tutoring. Meanwhile, provisional assignments bring nominal compensation, if any at all, and seldom ever cover actual expenses. It is said that acquiring the first Group can cost a judge as much as $100,000 out of pocket. A club that wants to support a new judge could absorb travel and/ or lodging on top of the still-low customary judging fee. The line item is small; but the impact on investment in our future is significant.

Make Sweepstakes, Futurity, BPUP, NOHS, Open Show, and Special Attractions assignments with newer judges in mind. These assignments, specifically, are an ideal place to give a knowledgeable up-and-coming judge the experience of evaluating a full ring of dogs, and they afford judges up to one Component Education Unit (CEU) for each breed. Too many clubs default to the same names, year after year, squandering the educational opportunity. If clubs change their practices to help new judges earn educational units, the exhibitors will notice positively.

Build Match Shows back into our culture. Sanctioned and Fun Matches have largely disappeared from many clubs’ calendars, and with their increasing scarcity, the most natural training ground for new judges, exhibitors, and puppies has also become scarce. A Match can be put on for very little money, usually turns a profit for the club, and gives prospective judges hands-on practice that cannot be replicated. Parent clubs in particular could be running Matches in conjunction with their Nationals as an additional fundraiser.

WHAT PARENT CLUBS CAN DO

Parent clubs hold the keys to breed-specific education. The single most important thing a parent club can do for the future of its breed is to run an annual Judges Education seminar that is actually worth attending. It is well-structured, with qualitative hands-on examples and a clear path from the seminar to mentored ringside observations to a Permit application. Many clubs do this well. Many do not. And more need to do it with the judges in mind.

Seminar materials must be current. An illustrated standard last revised twenty years ago is not adequate to teach a new judge in 2026. Update the materials. Photograph current dogs. Show us your color variety, not just the popular or common varieties. And ensure presenters understand the material, and are trained in presentation skills. It’s not enough to stand in front of a room and read the slides. Some of the best presenters are the ones who make it interesting and maintain the focus of the audience through engaging storytelling and dynamic interaction.

Mentor lists must be honest. If the club’s published mentor list includes people who are no longer around or don’t respond to email, then the judge wastes precious time chasing dead ends—and it has the effect of making it more difficult to obtain education in your breed. Curate the list. Ask current mentors annually whether they want to remain on it. And recruit credible new ones.

Mentoring must be deliberate. A new judge needs to see the breed and understand how its form relates to its history and purpose. A parent club that wants to grow the pool of judges will ensure that the National Specialty offers structured ringside observations and post-show mentoring. Schedule seminars at Independent Nationals for the weekend so that our new generation of judges doesn’t have to take three days off of work to attend on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

WHAT ESTABLISHED JUDGES CAN DO

Identify mentees. Who has the eye and the judicial temperament to handle adjudicating Breed Standards responsibly once you’re no longer around? Tell them you see it in them. Invite them to be mentored. Walk them through your reasoning on placements at shows, and meet with them when you’re not judging. This act of preparing the next generation is one of the most powerful things a senior figure in any field can do, and it costs nothing. Junior Handlers, who are critical for our future success, should also be mentored by experienced judges. Further, mentors should be able to recommend exceptional provisional judges to advance at a faster speed when they have demonstrated competence. Some people have a natural instinct, regardless of breed, that shouldn’t be slowed down by bureaucracy.

Document your knowledge. Some of the best breed knowledge of the last fifty years exists only in conversations that happen over coffee and have never been written down. So, write it down. Write a book. Record a video. Annotate photographs. Make a Canine College course. Future judges will not have the privilege of standing next to you ringside, and the materials you leave behind are what they will have to reference.

WHAT AKC AND THE SPORT CAN DO

The current system has room for improvement as well. The current approval process, particularly the 12-5-4 method and its alternates, reflects a sport that admires the experience of its most accomplished members. However, the next generation of breeders increasingly produces fewer litters, often co-breed across households, and often under stricter regulations than existed 30-40 years ago. The CDC rule change restricting importation, too, has seriously hindered the abilities of low-entry-breed breeders to be productive. And handlers are struggling with shrinking client lists and a high demand for wealthy backers. The pathway to becoming a judge needs to recognize the reality of contemporary breeding without lowering the standard for what a judge needs to know.

Permit advancement should be quick-paced, transparent, meritbased, measurable, and objective. The operative assumption is that a Permit judge who is doing the work and getting solid evaluations will advance. The SHOWSIGHT piece referenced earlier was not wrong that perception of favoritism has done real damage to the sport’s pipeline. Perception in this case is not unfounded. Further to this point, new judges are currently capped at 12 Permit Breeds once their initial breeds are approved. It can take 18 to 24 months for that to happen, and another 18 to 24 months to get through each set of Permit Breeds, particularly in low-entry breeds which require up to six assignments before a judge can be fully approved in the breed. For a new judge, it can take several years for their first Group to be fully approved. Giving regular status for low-entry permit breeds upon successful completion of the breed interview can help expedite this timeline.

AKC could further incentivize clubs to help develop the upand-coming cadre of new judges. For example, clubs could receive a 50-cent break on recording fees for each entry judged by a Permit judge. When Permit judges are used to adjudicate developmental assignments, such as BPUP, the savings for clubs compounds. This is but one way in which AKC could work with clubs to stimulate the development of new judges.

THE ARGUMENT FOR ACTING NOW

Every business consultant writing about the retirement cliff makes the same point; that is, the compounding costs of inaction. The expertise that leaves us this year is unrecoverable next year. Replacing it from scratch, if it is even possible, takes years and money that exceeds what proactive succession planning would have cost.

Dog shows, however, operate on thinner margins than most of the industries publishing those white papers. But our sport cannot afford the cost of inaction. Clubs that take succession planning seriously by reserving panel slots for new judges, by subsidizing education, by holding A & B Matches, and by developing the future of our sport—whether Junior, Owner-Handler, or Judge—will be the clubs that survive into tomorrow.

The judges already on the panel have built and maintained this sport for decades, and we are grateful. The next generation will inherit whatever is handed to them. The question is, will it be a functioning system or a pile of Standards no one is around to interpret?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Lind is an AKC judge, President of the Affenpinscher Club of America, a former Junior Handler, and an accomplished breeder of multiple breeds.