It's not a 'conformation championship' though, that's merely the way most people in the past have treated it... like a beauty contest. Truly, if you want to measure whether the dog meets the intended standard for the breed, that includes both looks and temperament to do the work the breed was intended to do. I like it. I'm not sure, but I think the British registry requires that hunting dogs pass some rudimentary hunting aptitude test before titling them.
Actually, in the UK they can be a Show Champion without a hunting test. If they have something like a Working Certificate (not sure what they call it there but I believe it's a basic hunting test) they can then just be called a Champion. This is not really different than what we have here, it's just semantics. Here that dog would be Ch INSERT DOGS NAME WC. Just a different way of looking at the same thing.
I'm all about people getting titles, especially working titles. However, I don't understand why people always say AKC should do this or AKC should do that. Anyone who doesn't like the way AKC does things is free not to participate, to participate in a different organization, OR even to start their own.
susie