The State of AKC Judging – Some Possible Solutions – Part I

The first time I ever watched a dog show – I believe it was a Westminster Show on TV – I remember thinking it odd that the judge was all alone and that she made her pronouncements with no attempt to explain her decision. It seemed, well, amazing to me that one person would be given such a level of influence with no accountability. Now that my wife and I are somewhat actively involved in conformation, I’ve lost some of the amazement, but still have to shake my head at the general acceptance of it. The majority of people who exhibit dogs at AKC shows seem, at best, resigned to the state of the sport. Veterans appear to have found that, over time, they can finish the dogs they really want to finish, either by working the system or patiently working through its shortcomings.

Perhaps that’s the tack I should take. By profession, though, I solve complex problems, so it is difficult for me to be passive in the presence of such obvious and rampant malfeasance and opportunism. It’s “just a sport” – true enough – but a very public one in a country where $38.4 billion was spent on pets in 2006. The AKC, two of whose stated core values are "We are committed to advancing the sport of the purebred dog" and "We uphold high standards for the administration and operation of the AKC" places its organizational integrity in question by adhering to this subjective, single-judge system in the face of such widespread misuse by both judges and those who take advantage of the system's shortcomings.

Other sports with judging systems, recognizing the serious consequences of a system without accountability and objectivity controls, have taken many steps over the years to address the problem. None of them is perfect. The ISU's new judging system for figure skating, for example, goes to extremes to remove the human factor from judging, but does so at the possible price of practicality. I don't believe anything so extreme is needed to bring AKC judging to an acceptably professional level. I see three solutions that in combination would go a long way towards thwarting the kinds of misuse I've discussed in previous posts. I'll throw them out for consideration here, and discuss them in more detail in subsequent posts:

1. I've mentioned this one already: Require judges to write a brief review of each dog judged. In European shows this amounts to no more than two or three sentences or sentence fragments. Time consuming? Somewhat. Helpful? Definitely. Knowing that we will be required to explain ourselves always makes us more conscientious and self-aware.
2. Introduce a point system. Assign a point value between 1 and 10 to each of a set of criteria by which the breed is to be judged. This may be a more objective alternative in lieu of or as an addition to item one. The judge assigns the values and they are tallied for each dog by the ring steward. The judge then awards the win to the dog with the highest score..
3. Introduce use of a multi-judge panel. This is used in combination with the point system to award the win to the dog with the highest combined score. This approach serves to cancel out judging biases - indeed this was the reason for its introduction into Olympic judging.

A combination of all these approaches would, I believe, remove most opportunity for ethical infractions from AKC conformation. Next time I'll talk about what this would do to the sport, and address some of the things I'm sure you're already thinking having read them.