As of this last weekend, Nago completed his ASDR Elite Grand Championship. While we are very proud of this accomplishment, we have decided that pursuing titles in this venue doesn’t align with our current priorities.
While I appreciate the beginner-friendly atmosphere of ASDR and the association’s wonderful open studbook, I have found it increasingly political and problematic. We will continue to dual register with the association to support them and may participate in some ASDR herding instinct when available but we are unlikely to continue conformation.
Here is a breakdown of our reasons: -ASDR has started to lean more heavily into utilizing AKC judges. Granted, UKC does this too, but UKC shows are generally multi-judge clusters which means that usually at least some of the judges present will be more friendly towards working/sport type dogs. ASDR used to have multi-judged events too but has now moved towards a single judge per day, and only 1 day of showing. This isn’t worth the time and effort for us to drive the distance to the shows. We are seeing more and more judges who are looking for AKC show type at ASDR and our dogs are not of this type.
-ASDR allows the person hosting the show to compete. This is inherently problematic. ASDR shows aren’t hosted by a “club”. They’re sponsored by individuals. When the host of the show is allowed in the show ring, this is a conflict of interest. It’s fine if someone else shows their dogs for them, but for the judge to be evaluating the person who is cutting their check isn’t an ethical situation. I also notice show hosts consistently picking judges who they are quite friendly with outside the show and this is also lending itself to the appearance of politics. People say AKC is political, but it’s political in a “big city” way. ASDR is political like a small town where everyone knows everyone.
-ASDR is not enforcing its own rules. I was incredibly disappointed to see a dog with their ears taped/glued walking through the show grounds like it was no big deal. We know the ASDR rule book does not allow this behavior. I have literally heard an ASDR judge TELL PEOPLE to glue ears. This is very disheartening to see judges promoting rule breaking and cheating.
-The ASDR breed standard is problematic. It’s worded in a vague way that allows for grossly mis-marked dogs to both compete and be awarded. There is currently a dog with predominantly white ears that has been awarded many best in show/reserve best in show/best female awards despite having this glaring health-related fault. This would be a DQ in AKC MAS.
-Despite professing to be tail-neutral, we have had anti-tail comments from ASDR judges, most likely due to the aforementioned trend to move towards AKC judges.
-ASDR titles hold almost no weight outside of the ASDR community. Because of the pass/fail nature of the judging, most people do not put much stock in these titles.
We are giving serious consideration to bowing out of conformation all together as we feel it has limited value to us as sports competitors and may actually be hurting our program as we try to maintain enough “show ring traits” to title our dogs. These traits often hamstring us in the sport arena. At this point, we plan to finish Sonic’s UKC championship as she is very close to completing it. We will likely take Ness and Basil with us to the UKC Southern Classic in November. At that point, we will reevaluate whether we would like to continue putting time and money into that venue for conformation. I do hold UKC in high respect; I’m just not sure that conformation showing is worth the time and money it takes away from our sporting career. This is still up in the air for us.
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