Solving the Mysteries of AKC Points and Divisions

Pure Dog Talk is the voice of purebred dogs. We talk to the legends of the sport and give you the tips and tools to create an awesome life with your purebred dog. From showing to preservation breeding, from competitive obedience to field work, from agility to therapy dogs, and all the fun in between - your passion is our purpose! LAURA REEVES: Welcome to pure dog talk. I am your host Laura Reeves and I have a very special guest for us today. Mr. Alan Slay is joining us from the American Kennel Club. Alan is the Director of Event Operations correct, Alan? ALAN SLAY: Event Programs, but essentially the same. LR: Event Programs. OK very good. And we're coming up onto May when the point schedule changes every year - we all wait for it to see whether we're going to get more or less or how are our majors going to work. And everybody is all excited. And sometimes there's confusion about how that works and why things go the way they do. So Allen is here to help us understand that and I really appreciate your time. AS: You're welcome. LR: Excellent. OK. So as I was mentioning, point schedules, divisions, all of this - this is very intense interest, right, to those of us that are showing our dogs and we're always looking for, you know, the best advantage or where can I go to find that major. How does this work. So can you give us some of the sort of critical infrastructure that makes this happen. You're the guy that does this, this is your baby if you will. AS: I'm responsible for it yeah, I work closely each year with our technology team. The AKC technology services - ATS. And so there are really two components here. There's the one is that each year we formulate the point schedule for the following year, and then traditionally about every five years we do an analysis of the composition of the divisions to try to make sure we have a fair and balanced division of states across the different divisions. And it just so happens this year was one of the years - we'd last done it in the point schedules released in 2012. And this year we did that realignment. So I'll take you through each of those. LR: That would be amazing! AS: The overall process and then we can discuss more details and each one of them if you if you would like. Because I'll make sure I understand how it worsk. LR: I think it's wonderful and listeners, just a note, I am still a dog breeder here at Pure Dog Talk and that is a bitty baby puppy you might hear in the background so forgive us. So go ahead Alan. I really think this is important for people to understand. AS: Sure. So let's talk about the, just the point schedule we do every year. And that is, our clock for formula that starts somewhere about mid January and because that is the time when we will have processed all the conformation events, the results, from the previous year. So one thing I want to point out is, is that while our point schedule begins usually in May -w e started somewhere on the second or third week of May - we try to pick a date where there are no or few events that for a string there at the point schedule is consistent for the string of events occurring at a site. The point schedule itself is based off the competition that was held in the previous calendar year. And I want to emphasize that is the competition because there are some misconceptions out there that we base it off of the total number of entries or the total number of shows where a breed could compete, or it's the registration - none of that is true, just based purely off of the dogs that competed within a division, a breed, and a sex the previous year. So that's what goes into the process for determining that point schedule. LR: OK AS: So sometime around the second week of January, once we process the results, what we'll do is work with the technology services and we have some software programs that have been programmed to reflect the guidelines that have been set by the board of directors as to how to set the points the number of competitors required at the 1/2/3/4/5 point level and for a refresher for folks. LR: Right cause I think this is new to a lot of people so if we can just kind of break that down just a little bit. AS: I will and I'll say that preparing for the talk, I've been on the AKC since 1996, so in my 20 years this has always been the same and I did a little research trying to find out, you know, when did this go into effect. As far back as we could find, 1971, and it was in effect then so-... LR: Wow. AS: You know it's been in effect for a long time so there's nothing new as far as the percentages at each of the point levels. LR: But what I'm saying is I don't think people understand that those percentages exist, right? Like, I've been in this my entire life and I didn't know this, so I think this is - I want to put a big bold star around this listeners because this is good information. AS: Sure. So in each division - I'm gonna read right off some information from our Web site - I think you're going to include the information you provide associated with the link to this discussion. I'm gonnea read it just right off of that because I think that's the clearest and easy way to do that. And that is for one point, ninety five percent of the shows where there was competition carry one or more points for dogs and bitches. Each one of these is done separately, each division, breed and sex. LR: Which can I just say that's a lot of dogs! That's a lot of work! I mean you're talking about 190 breeds, 50 states, 14 divisions and you have to do this for every single one - I just think it's crazy. AS: Well that's what I'm saying, the software program actually has this information and it puts out our first cut of this before we then do some fine tuning to try to make sure that we benefit the exhibitors all that we can. And the way the software works it figures out the one point, the three points. Three points is as close as possible to 18 percent which should not exceed 20 percent of the shows in a division or to carry major points - that's 3, 4, or 5. And the majors created by best of winners, best of breed, best of opposite, are not counted on this calculation and are effect bonus majors over and above the 18 percent. So the software will determine the one percent - the one point threshold for competitors, the three point threshold, and then the 2 point I said it half the difference between the 1 and 3 Point Break. Then the software begin to calculate the 5 point - the number of competitors required for five points - and that's as close as possible to 2 percent of the shows already carry 5 points. And then the way we get the 4 point is to get the set at two thirds of the difference between the three and five point break. So a software program goes and looks out for each division, breed and sex. It looks that for each of those are you talking about like you said at each breed the 15 Division each of the sexes so you do that math as a lot of looking individually looks at the shows that had competitors, and then it sorts them and then uses those guidelines set by the board of directors to determine what the number of competitors should be required for each of those the 1/2/3/4/5 points. LR: Right AS: Now one thing I want to point out is, is that when it's looking at those shows and I call them candidate - that's how I refer to them -these are shows that are candidates to be included in the point schedule formulation process. Once again there had to be competition and it was only regular classes. If I had three entries in the record classes and they were all absent, that show itself was not counted in the competition or if there were no issues. So that's an important aspect there. LR: And I think it's important to note because I read this in some of your material, national specialties and regional specialties associated with nationals don't bump your points schedule up. Is that a correct statement? AS: It's actually beyond that. Let me read that - I'd like to extrapolate a little bit ... LR: Yeah, that'd be great. AS: Let me read here off the web site and then I'll go a little bit further because it's even further than what you just said there. Competitions offered by parent clubs are not included in the points schedule, so anything offered by the parent club doesn't count. And that includes independent specialties as well as designated specialties. LR: Wow OK. AS: And this is the part that you were speaking of: Breed competition - notice I said breed competition, and I'll loop back around that - held by any club, an all breed group or specialty, within plus or minus three days and 50 miles of the breeds parent club National Specialty are excluded from the formulation. Myself and others working on this saw some disparity of almost a penalty for allowing a National Specialty to come into your division the way the formulation used to work. About four years ago, we went to the board of directors and said this is just not fair. For instance you have a national specialty occurring on a Thursday, maybe a Wednesday and a Thursday, and you have a cluster over the weekend the same side on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - well that Friday/Saturday/Sunday for that breed would have an inflated number of competitors compared to what it would normally have, and those all breed or other specialties were counting toward the point schedule. And so that was almost a penalty for bringing in the national into your division. LR: Yes. AS: So we looked at that, we didn't think that was fair to the exhibitor, and we successfully - the board directors completely agreed. So now we exclude any competitio - it doesn't matter if it's held by a local club, a specialty all-breed group, a designated - it doesn't matter - any competition within plus or minus three days and 50 miles of the National does not count. That also help with things like Montgomery where there's a lot Natinoals held up there. It took those out of the equation. So actually there are more majors being handed out than just the percentages there. And the last thing I'll say is is that any events held in conjunction with the AKC National Championship are excluded. So all of the lead up events which is occurring currently in Orlando, even those events are at excluded because once again that would inflate the point schedule, make it more difficult for the rest of that division. LR: Florida would be in a world of hurt. AS: So the one thing I do want to point out is one thing when you mention a regional specialty, is there is some misconception out there that we don't count regional specialties. Well maybe, maybe not. Once again let's go back to what the board has agreed to there for their guidelines. If that regional specialty is held by the parent club absolutely it is not included in the points schedule formulation. If that regional specialty is held by any club -a local club or a regional club, however the parent club defines it - within plus or minus three days or 50 miles of their national specialty. You only get one National Specialty a year and, you know, some breeds have a National Specialty then a roving. Well they pick which one they want to consider to be their one National per year and that's what we use. So any one between plus or minus three days or 50 miles, that's not included. However, if there's a regional specialty, you know, not within plus or minus three days or 50 miles of a national, and it's not held by the parent club, those are included in the point schedule formulation. LR: Right. OK. So I'm just thinking of, for example, this is - and I'm trying to help the listeners understand this and you can clarify if I'm wrong - for example say the Spinone Club of America doesn't have independent local clubs. And so their parent club hosts regional specialties around different parts of the country and those are not National so those do count for those parts of the country for their point schedules. Is that accurate? AS: Not if it's held by the parent club. If it's on the parent club's name - no event held under the parent club's name counts towards the point schedule formulation. LR: Good. OK, so that's clear. Nice. Very good. OK. So now we've got a handle on that and I think it's important for exhibitors to understand that 95 percent of the shows are going to have one point and 18 percent of the shows in a division are going to have a three point or a major and only 2 percent of them are supposed to have a five point major - is that - just barebones. AS: That's correct. That's correct. And the software program will then use that algorithm and give us a file of the proposed point schedule. And then we - and I will say this used to be done manually - it's not anymore. LR: I bet you're happy about that, Alan. AS: Yeah I am. Because you get some blurry eyes looking over here. You get to about that twelfth division and you know you want to treat everybody fairly but it used to be about a two day deal with a door closed. We've written a series of database queries that will show us some anomalies. For instance depending on the way competition was held, sometimes the software will put something out that will say something like two competitors for one point, four for two points, and four for three points. You can't have a duplicate there so we'll go and have that adjusted to make that two points down to three. So we run a series of queries to do that and a few other things. We're running it through there to try to make sure we are as fair as we can be to the exhibitor because up until 2012, there used to be - the other thing I want to emphasize here about that point schedule formulation is, right now and since 2012 it has been based off just the previous calendar year. It used to be, prior to 2012, a rolling 3 year. And we saw that having problems because what was happening is, once again, if you had a large event come through your area - like a roving specialty, a large, you know, just a large event - you were kind of penalized for three years. You know because it was the average across that. AS: Well that's not how it is anymore. It's only off the previous year. And also in there, there were some like we have some governors where we try to not have any division, or any division breed sex, go up by more than a certain percentage in a given year. So even if there's something coming in there we try to soften that a little bit and that's been, you know, we discussed that with the board. We try to make sure there's a fair and balanced point schedule, but adhering to what the guidelines - what the board has directed us to do - we have to do that. That is our job - to implement and support the board policy. LR: Well and I think too, part of this is you know everybody wants to finish their dog and they want to, and I know this is outside your purview, but for me it's like well just because you've got a major - you know what I'm saying, that cheap major thing I think, is something we talk about in this sport as exhibitors and I think it's good to know that the American Kennel Club is aiming to make sure that you know a show championship means something. Right. That's what these points are designed to do. AS: And they adjust. We've seen for the most part, we've seen - and it's not across the board - but for the most part, the number of competitors has dropped through the number of years as the number of competitors has dropped. So the point schedule is actually doing its job, whether it's going up or down because it's reflecting what is happening in the sport, and trying to reflect that...