The AKC jumped the shark *years* ago with the new “Yellow Paper” registrations for dogs of questionable/fraudulent/unknown parentage.
Not that I had any respect for them before that, with their carte blanche attitude towards puppy mills.
The AKC is all about the money, now; send your money, get your papers, no questions asked.
There are gazillions of agility/obedience matches every year with no “breed restrictions”.
Just more of the usual “everybody is equal and fabulous!” liberal crap.
This “feeeeeeels good” and that’s all that matters.
Mutts are wonderful but not at WKC.
[and if somebody mentions the mythical “hybrid vigor”, I’ll scream]
:)
Just to play devil’s advocate: from a genetic standpoint, wouldn’t mixed breeds be more robust anyway (i.e. less prone to disease and disability)?
Agreed. Unfortunately show entries across the board have declined, I would guess because of the poor economy. Add a new event like agility and you’ve just increased entries. I’m not sure it has much to do with the AKC as with the Westminster Kennel Club who hosts the event that is AKC sanctioned (ie it meets AKC requirements for a benched conformation show). AKC agility events don’t allow unregistered dogs, unless they’ve recenlty changed that rule? But there are others that do, USDAA for example. All the reasons Salamander listed for getting a pure bred dog andnot a rescue are absolutely correct. And while I help out with Shorthair rescue when I can, if someone asks me if they should get a rescue dog or a pure bred dog, I always recommend a pure bred dog from a reputable breeder (I don’t know what a “fancy breeder” is as mentioned in the article) over a rescue unless the person is a very experienced dog owner that knows how to deal with possible behavior issues.
Westminster is quite an experience. The benching portion is really horrendous, with the dogs having to basically stay in the assigned crate area all day while hordes of people walked through the already cramped areas to get a close up look at the dogs. They have a few wood chip stalls for the dogs to pee & poop in, my GSP didn’t want to step foot in the nasty things and waited all day and let loose the second we got outside at the end of the day. The carpeted show rings are really nice looking for TV, but the dogs always slip on it and never move their best. But, it’s exciting to do the show once and overall I’m glad we entered.