Introduction.

n most dog related magazines you can very easily find an article that discusses the AKC judging program and the quality of the AKC judges in general. If there is no article on this subject matter in this month's issue, there most likely will be in the upcoming issue. Authors of these articles talk in vague generalities to define specifics regarding the problems of the AKC judging system. The judge does not see the whole dog, the judge likes the Hollywood dog, the judge is mixing the standards, etc. All vague accusations with nothing to back up their claim. Although these are valid claims, they have no substance, no data to back up their accusations.

The Problem.

s there a problem with the system or with the judges? I say that it is both, but I will only address the problems of the judges themselves in this article. How much does a judge know about the breeds that they are supposedly qualified to judge? In my opinion, the AKC judges’ often display a lack of knowledge of the breed standards. Failure of the AKC to maintain an on going curriculum to verify the qualifications of a judge has helped to create, what I will refer to as, the " out of touch " judges. I will back up these statements by using 7 years of conformation show results from the Working Group. I will not make any statements such as the "judge has not acquainted himself or herself with the substance of the standard ...". I hope to show that the awarding of placements in the group ring, indicate the problem is the judges and their lack of knowledge of the breeds they are supposed to know.

The Project.

or several years I have been keeping track of the Working group and the performance of the working dogs in the group ring. By performance, I mean who - what breed - is winning or not winning, i.e. getting the ribbons. My statistics go back to 1992 when this "little" project started. The impetus of the study was to determine if the chances of getting a group 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 are, for the most part, even for all breeds in the group ring. Does one particular breed or several breeds do most of the winning in the group ring? What I expected to find and what I did find were 2 different "breeds" (excuse the pun).

he "project" is a computer program that I designed, developed, and wrote that allows me to note the breeds being shown at a given show and then save the 4 group winners. I am not tracking or looking for a particular dog such as CH Godiva’s Bedroom Fashions, but I am looking at all of the dogs in the working group. The program, developed to gather the data for the Working Group, has grown from its initial version of several thousand lines of code to over 15 thousand lines of code. This program does not track breed wins nor does it determine any breed standings. It is designed to track group ring statistics for the working group.

ere is a brief technical description of the Himel Program .

he tables shown here and via the links are the overall standings of the Working Group from 1992 through 1998.

Data Tables.

he working breeds listed in each table are shown in winning percentage order (column 4) for any given year. The Doberman, Boxer, Rottweiler, Siberian Husky, and Samoyed are the top 5 winners from 1992 through 1995. The Samoyed dropped to 7 in 1996 and then to 13 in 1997 and back to 10th in 1998. The Great Dane captured the number 5 spot in 1997 but slipped to the number 8 spot in 1998. These breeds mentioned also had the most number of dogs registered with the AKC in the last 6 years, however, that order is slightly different. For a given set of shows, that is, an AKC Events Catalog, this order may change slightly, but the ’Dobe’, ’Boxer’, ’Rott’ and , ’Sibe’ are usually the 4 top dogs.

he data listed in the linked tables at the bottom of this page are as follows. The second column is the number of shows that the breed appeared in. The third column is the sum of its group winnings or placements (1 and 2 and 3 and 4). The fourth column is the winning percentage, the number of placements divided by the number of shows times 100. The fifth column is the number of shows attended divided by the number of appearances times 100. The sixth and last column is the overall popularity of the dog in the Working group as determined by the AKC published data of registered dogs. All of the tables are listed in winning percentage order.

et me reiterate, the data was gathered from the results from the Working group ring. The dogs being judged are already the best of breed winners, the best representation of their breed for the day at the show. Tomorrow things may change. Each dog in the group ring should have an equal chance of getting that big blue group 1 ribbon. If the judges were completely unbiased in their opinions of the breeds and judged each breed against its AKC standard, assuming they know the standard, and not based on who is at the other end of the leash, then I, or anyone for that matter, would expect to see an even distribution of winning in the group ring, possibly skewed only by the number of appearances. However, I do not see any even distribution and if this study were expanded to the other groups, I would probably see the same thing that the Worging Group displays - a few breeds do most of the winning in the group ring.

ach April the AKC GAZETTE magazine publishes a list of all of the AKC breeds and the number of dogs registered for each breed for the previous year. This list allows me to determine the popularity of the breeds based on the number of dogs registered for each breed. For the most part, the top 8 dogs in popularity are also the top 8 group winners. The order may be slightly different, but the breeds are the same.

he relationship between popularity and winning poses an interesting question. Does the breed popularity mean that the judges see these breeds more often, so these dogs receive group placements more often? In the confirmation ring we pay our money to get the judge’s "opinion". If the judge thinks that our Standard Schnauzer is the best Standard of the day, then we get our money’s worth. As a bonus we go onto the group ring to get a second opinion. Based on my findings, the Mastiff people are getting the "brush off". From the tables, the Mastiff has, on the average, a 92% attendance rate at shows, but only an 11.5% winning rate in the group ring. The Mastiff attendance rate is position 8 or 9, depending on the year you examine, and was 9th in "pupularity" among working group breeds in 1997. The Rottweiler was in first place in 1997 for the number of registered dogs.

he Mastiff example can be applied to other breeds. However, this poses another question regarding popularity. Do some judges know the standards for the more popular breeds better than they do for the less popular breeds? If so, then this somewhat explains why the top 4 group winners are the same for the last 6 years. But it does not explain the Mastiff. Do some judges pick the top 4 consistently because the dog looks good and they do not know the breed standard? But in the group ring, is the judge giving the placement to the dog or to the handler? One piece of data that is not in the Events Catalog is the person at the other end of the leash. Do more of the top 5 breed owners use handlers because it is more difficult to earn points when there are entries of 30 to 50 dogs per show? Is the political factor (however one may wish to interpret the term ’political factor’) greater in the more popular breeds?

A Solution ?

he AKC needs a system where the judges are re-tested periodically to determine their knowledge of the breed and any changes that may have been added to or removed from the AKC breed standards. When I hear a judge in the group ring ask "is it a boy or girl?", it is at that time when I know that there is something wrong with the system.

he bar chart below is a pictorial representation of the tables shown in the links at the bottom of this page. 1995 is shown since that is the first year for the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. The winning percentage is shown for each breed. The color bar represents the position and group ribbon color for that position.

Conclusion.

he table below is extremely interesting. It lists the standings based on the group winnings. The breeds are listed in alphabetical order. The Doberman is a consistent number 1. The Boxer and Rottweiler have traded on position 2 and 3. The Siberian Husky and Samoyed have traded off on position 4 and 5. However watch out for the Great Dane, it pulled into 4th position the past 2 years, replacing the Samoyed.

owever, note the Standard Schnauzer. In 1996 one particular Standard Schnauzer was heavily campaigned and its handler was given the Best in Show at Westminster in 1997. But then after Westminster the dog was retired and so the Standard Schnauzer went from position 11 in 1996 to position 17 in 1997. Was this particular Standard Schnauzer and outstanding example of the breed or were the judges awarding the ribbon to the handler? This is the second largest drop in one year of any breed in the 7 years of my statistics. The Komondor owns the ignominious prize for the largest drop of 7 positions between 1993 and 1994. On the other hand, the Giant Schnauzer went from 14th place in 1994 to 8th place in 1995. This shows that one or two dogs were on the campaign trail with their handler.

So to answer the question posed at the top of this article, the Doberman Pinscher is on first and goes home with a group placement in 1 out of every 2 dog shows.