Page 116 - ShowSight - May 2020

THE OLD, THE NEW, AND THE
LOW ENTRY BREEDS
BY WALTER J. SOMMERFELT
Have you ever wondered why over the past 20 or so years we seem to be adding new breeds into competition at a rapid pace? Have you also wondered just how do those new breeds compare to the established breeds already recognized? I don’t know the answer,
but I do know that the number of low entry breeds seems to be increasing on an annual basis.
The latest low entry breed list that went into effect on March 1, 2020, now con- tains 98 individual breeds. This number means that 49% of all breeds now recognized for competition within the AKC are considered “Low Entry Breeds”.
According to the AKC, a low entry breed is defined to be one in which fewer than 3,500 entries of that breed were made at AKC Licensed and Member Dog Shows throughout the United States during the preceding calendar year.
These numbers made me wonder if we are going wrong by admitting all these new breeds into competition. Might we need to review the criteria for which breeds are added to the current Groups?
We hear never-ending conversations on the sizes of our various seven Groups and the discussion that some may need to be split to make them more competitive or fair for some of what are considered the rarer “breeds.”
I decided to look a little further into when a breed was admitted into AKC compe- tition and how those considered “low entry” today compare over the years.
BREEDS ADDED THROUGH THE YEARS:
From 1878 until the year 2000, only 34% of all breeds admitted during that 122– year span appear on the list. However, if you look at the 48 breeds added since the year 2000 you will see that 90% of those breeds are currently on the list. In fact, now there are only five breeds (the Miniature American Shepherd, Leonberger, Cane Corso, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, and the Toy Fox Terrier) that represent newer breeds not on the list. I did not count the Barbet, Dogo Argentino, and the Belgian Laekenois which all made their debuts in the calendar year 2020.
In 1878, the AKC recognized the first nine breeds admitted for competition. Of those nine only three breeds (the Clumber, Sussex, and Irish Water Spaniels) are on the list. Starting with the decade of the 1880’s, 37 new breeds were added with 43% of those, or 16, now on the list of low entry breeds. Taking it even further, if you break down new breeds by the decades, only the 1950’s and the 1990’s have a percentage of low entry breeds at 50% or higher. The 1950’s had 60% with three of the five breeds added during that decade on the list while the 1990’s represent the current trend upward as eight of the 16 breeds admitted are now on the list.
114 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, MAY 2020