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
Just pick up our marbles and go home eh? No point even lobbying to the AKC for improvement?
Honestly, I don't think there's a lot wrong with many of the show dogs not having a lot of working experience. Most people who buy Labradors and Goldens don't hunt. Hunters shouldn't pretend they are the only market.
What I don't like to see is the show type and the working type divergine radically in how they look. Either the standard is wrong, in that case, or somebody's not breeding to the standard.
Working German Shepherd Dogs do not walk on their hocks the way the cartoonish specimens in the show ring do.
Labradors should be neither the stubby fat sausages with legs of the ring, nor huge leggy monster dogs of the field. They should be a gentleman's hunter, strong and muscular but compact enough for a hunter to haul back into a small duck boat after a retrieve :~D
I don't think the AKC ruins dogs necessarily, I think that's an over-simplification. What I think happens is there seems to be a competitive resentment between working and show breeders, and while some of us might think they ought to have the same goal, they don't necessarily. Goldens with big poofball feet and glorious long blond hair is of no value to the field trial people, but the pet buyers love it. The purposes of dogs change over time sometimes, I guess.