Still Standing Episode 4 Too Many Shows, Not Enough Dogs

In Episode 4 Wayne & Kim discuss show entires, attendance, absentees and expenses.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to Still
Standing, the Dog Show podcastbrought to you by the Canine
Chronicle, which is celebratingover 50 years of excellence.
I'm Wayne Kavanaugh, and with meis Kimberly Meredith.
Good morning, Kim.

SPEAKER_00 (00:24):
Good morning, Wayne.

SPEAKER_01 (00:26):
Yeah, well, it's not, is it?
I'm a little stressed.
And as you might be able totell, I just got out of the
garage.
I don't have the I didn't do anyof that.
And it's because we're leavingtomorrow.
We're packing to go to Floridafor the winter, which couldn't
come a day sooner.
It's a little rushed because ofWayne.
You see, I woke up and it was 41and rainy yesterday.

(00:49):
So I said, Nate, we got to getout of here.
It's not 20, it's only 41, butthat's I no, I don't do that
anymore.
Too old for that, Kim.
So I'm a little stressed, butit's gonna be okay.
It's gonna be okay.
At least Kim got her makeup doneand and did something.
I don't know, whatever you do.
You look wonderful.
How are you doing out there?

SPEAKER_00 (01:09):
I got I said the dog's got my makeup on and and a
blouse, you know, like in my45-minute window.
So it's all the record, too.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16):
Usually you're 45 minutes old, very proud of you.
Anyway, I just got back fromCalifornia.
I think it was five minutes ago,could have been two days ago.
I'm exhausted, or as myneighbor, Tommy George to say,
I'm exhaustivated.
But this is the life of a judge,right?
So I don't know how long ago itwas, could have been two years
ago.
I got on a plane and I flew toSan Francisco.

(01:38):
And Ed Foytik was kind enough tomeet me there.
And we went to the shows, uh,Del Val, and it's I think a
20-hour drive from San Franciscoairport to the show.
No traffic, not a car on theroad, just kidding.
And then we get there and theweather was perfect.
And I thought, man, this isgreat.
Eddie Zook was there.
My buddy Allison Sunderman wasthere.

(02:01):
Allison Korn Z.
I don't know.
I think it's Alison.
Sorry, Allison, I've known youall my life, but I don't know
your last name anymore.
I think it's Sunderman.
Okay.
She was there.
Yeah, Eddie.
This is gonna be a good podcast.
And we had a great time.
George Wright was there to tellstories.
It was a lot of fun.
Then you fly back, you see,after a couple days of judging,

(02:22):
and you get home at one in themorning.
I say nay, nay.
I can't go in, I can't go intoour bedroom and wake up the dogs
and Cheryl.
I have to go in the guestbedroom, and the mattress isn't
great.
That's because we don't want theguests to stay too long, you
know.
We always do it that way.
Put a cup in, and it works outgreat every time.
Two days you're out of here.

(02:43):
So this is where I am, Tim.
I'm just trying to get my armsaround why we do this and the
life choices I've made to becomethe geological dog shows.

SPEAKER_00 (02:55):
There, you know, there's no one questioning that
more than myself currently aboutwhy I'm invested most of my life
in this sport and now judging.
And I really am now that I'vebeen home for a while, I'm
questioning my sanity,seriously.

SPEAKER_01 (03:11):
Isn't it great?
Doing your gardening, riverthere, sitting on your front
porch, all the beautiful treesand flowers you have around
there.
But you know, we like airports,that's what we like, and we like
rental car return places, whichare always charming.
And you know, the gl the gloryand romance that you see in the
ring, it's not all scrapped upto be, but we do it because we

(03:34):
love it.
And I can't think of any otherreason it must be because we
love it.
And we're petty.

SPEAKER_00 (03:40):
And we don't make any money.
I mean, there's no money in it.
I mean, you can't supportyourself.
There's absolutely no way, justlike you're saying, long hours,
no money, you know.
And now that we have ownerhandler, which I, you know, I'm
for anything that the exhibitorslike, and I'm very proud of
everybody that I mean, sometimesmy my owner handler groups are
better than my regular groups,you know, depending.

(04:02):
So I I get all of that.
There's a lot of sleeping inairports, taking two days to get
home, all that.

SPEAKER_01 (04:10):
Yeah, the hotel restaurants are another
adventure.
I thought, how bad can you do aBLT?

SPEAKER_00 (04:18):
Pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01 (04:20):
Pretty bad.

SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
What's the Iron Press Lunch Meat?

SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
Yeah, and you know, when it's been in the
refrigerator long enough, itgets a slime on it.
The turkey is a little bit.
Yeah, it's very nice.
Anyway, the show was terrificbecause I mean, well, it's a
nice, it's a nice littlefairgrounds.
And these days, I don't know howthey can do it because we're
gonna talk about numbers fromthe last two weekends.
I just don't know how clubs cando it.
We try to keep our expense, wedo keep our expenses and fees

(04:46):
down to a minimum to help them.
But a dog jumped on my, I justhad this beautiful new sport
jacket, uh, tailored and drycleaned.
And I got a footprint right on,which is fine, right?
Dog jumped up.
But they're thinking, oh, I'm sosorry.
I'm thinking, don't worry aboutthat.
Oh my god, it's the 30 bucks toclean.
You just took a chunk out of myfeet from your dirty dog's foot,

(05:09):
is what you did.
Anyway, it's okay now, becausethe entry was beautiful, the
weather was gorgeous, and thatreally makes a show.
And the details that club does,the little things, they really
are marvelous and muchappreciated by the judges, all
of us.
So a fine time was had.

(05:29):
Here's the part, Kim.
It was the biggest show inAmerica that whole weekend.
Broke a thousand.
That's all it takes.

SPEAKER_00 (05:40):
So amazing.

SPEAKER_01 (05:42):
Uh let's see.
1,077 on Saturday, 987 on 1,077on Saturday, and 997 on Sunday.
The biggest show in the country.
And it drops off pretty quicklyfrom there.
So out of the, let's see howmany shows there were.
I've got to sign my little cheatsheet over here in case you're

(06:04):
wondering what I'm looking at.
There was 27 shows, justSaturday and Sunday.
I'm not taking an off ofThursday mess and Friday and
Monday.
It's just Saturday and Sunday.
So there were 27 shows.
The average entry for thoseshows, the average was somewhere

(06:24):
I wrote it down.
Oh, it was 552.

SPEAKER_00 (06:28):
Okay.
Average.

SPEAKER_01 (06:30):
We had, let's see, one show at 280.
Well, I'll go down the list.
Oklahoma, 350, California, uh1077, Washington, 662, New
England, or maybe that'sNebraska, it is, 289, New
Mexico, 283, Illinois, 599,South Dakota, 366, and at 378.

(06:53):
That was two today.
Don't confuse those numbers.
582 in Pennsylvania,Massachusetts, almost at a grand
at 863.
Texas had 773, Georgia, 642,Virginia, I think that is, at
551, and New Jersey at 304,rounding at the pack for an
average of under 600 dogs.
It's been the trend.

(07:15):
I I posted this another one.
I did this this whole, it's nota it's a pain to do, but get her
through it.
And last week was about thesame.
If you strip out the top twoshows to get and just leave
those two as outliers, thenyou're in the 400s.
Every weekend.
This is I didn't I didn't justpull out a bad weekend.

(07:37):
This is every weekend.
There's always about 20 shows,30 shows a weekend, depending,
usually around 24, 25.
You can look on the AK.
If someone said, is there aspreadsheet to show this?
Look on the AKC calendar ofevents.
And the month, and it'll say 14all breeds, 15 all breeds, it'll
tell you how many on everyweekend.

(07:58):
So it's not hard to compute.
You just have to go through andsay how many dogs competed.
Which was another story, right?
Absentees.
I write a lot of ABSs in mybook.
How about you, Kim?
A lot of absentees.

SPEAKER_00 (08:14):
Yeah, I mean, I think that with the downward
trend of entries that peopleenter, hoping there might be
majors.
Maybe their dog is sitting on amajor.
Um, and I mean, I hear this fromexhibitors all the time.
I mean, you know, it used to bethat uh, you know, you always
had the exhibitor that wouldstand outside the ring if there

(08:34):
was a major in dogs or a majorin bitches.
Hey Charlie, did you hearthere's only a major in girls
today, you know?
To let the judge know.
Of course.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But you know, those days now,I'm telling you, it people there

(08:55):
were majors, and now there arevery few.
And so people are spending notonly the entry fees, which are
you know, some of them now areup to$45,$40.
You're entering a dog hoping fora major and not getting any.
So, you know, you're getting alot of absentees, and you can
kind of look at your judges'book and see, oh yeah, they you

(09:15):
know, they entered and there'sno major.
So it it's it's hard, it'sreally hard.

SPEAKER_01 (09:22):
Yeah, and then it's not fun because you know, you
get just shy of a major inGoldens, and three show up
because they all need the major,right?
Right.
And that just is a challengingday for everybody, but it really
points out the this is a lot ofdog shows, right?
Uh, that was in one day, all theones I read off.
But it is regional, California,you know, certain areas they

(09:44):
just don't have too many shows,although there were too close
together that particularweekend.
There are shows that weren't allthat far away in California.
But typically, it's hard to findshows out there.
And you're driving a longdistance, but that's you know,
part of the geography.
When you live in the Midwest, wehave a concentration of shows:
Michigan, Indiana, Ohio,Wisconsin, Ohio.

(10:06):
There's a lot of dog showsthere.
And there's a lot of qualitythere, too, right now, in all
groups.
Then you have the East Coast,which has always had quality,
but they have so many shows nowthat I mean, look, a 304-dog
show in uh New Jersey, inMassachusetts, 863,
Pennsylvania, 582.
That was unheard of 20 yearsago.

(10:27):
And it's just it's just becomingone of those things that we
should be more concerned than weare about.
Are there too many shows?
In my mind, absolutely,especially in certain areas.
With the caveat that certainregions, that's not the issue
necessarily.
The other issue, like you said,is the money.
You pay to go to these shows,the major's not there, you're

(10:49):
not gonna go.
You're not going there for thecamaraderie, you're not going
there to sit around and talkabout your breed all day.
You get there at 9:15 for your9:30 judging, and you're gone at
9.45 and you're home on thecouch.
So no one's staying around toembrace all that and try to
learn from each other.

(11:10):
We're only learning how to gofind the majors and go find the
points.
And I love it when you give adog winners, it's really a
quality dog, and they say, itjust finished them.
And it just feels great that youwere able to be there for that.
But it's rare.
There weren't a whole lot ofmajors at these at the bigger
shows.
There weren't a whole lot ofmajors.
Now, at the end of the day, theseven dogs standing there,

(11:33):
usually top notch, no matterwhere you are.

SPEAKER_00 (11:36):
You'll have hopefully, hopefully your breed
judges underneath you.
You know, you're actually bestof the show is probably one of
the easiest things to judgebecause everything in there is
absolute quality, and it's youknow, all boils down to
showmanship.
It all depends on in the nuancesof those particular reads.
You know, here's anotherinteresting problem to segue
back for just a minute on theexpense of shows and then not

(11:58):
getting majors and not beingable to go.
I believe, and I may be wrong,that your motor parking is not
refundable.

SPEAKER_01 (12:06):
So I think that's some shows, it might be all
shows.
I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 (12:10):
Uh yeah, it'd be interesting to find out what
percentage of the shows.
So, say you're you know, you'rean owner handler and you have
you either three dogs, you know,you've got one in burby, one in
puppy, you've got a specialbaby, and so you're gonna take
your motorhome because you'vegot more than one dog.
Do you get your motorhomeparking back?
I don't know what that answeris, but that's another big added

(12:32):
expense to people.

SPEAKER_01 (12:33):
Yeah.
How about the gas to get there?
Or if you're staying in a hotelall night, it's really expensive
these days to show dogs.
You know, it always was though.
And I guess it's just a matterof it's never been an
inexpensive sport.
You know, we look at theseprices and go, wow, but adjusted
for inflation.
I don't know how that comparesto 1970.

(12:54):
But I do know that you only wenton Saturday and Sunday.
And when you're going trying togo to five-day shows, the owner
handlers just aren't there tillSaturday and Sunday.
For every reason you can, youknow, all the magic, all the
typical reasons.
They've got to work, they can'tafford it the five days, and
don't really want to be therefor five days.
So it's we've got a lot goingon.

(13:16):
And I don't want to keep beatingthese numbers every week, but
I'm gonna run them through theend of the year because it's
never been over 600.
And last year we were around the600s, 640 almost every weekend.
And there's another thing thatyou know, counting these dogs
and entries is anotheradventure.

(13:37):
So when you're talking about athousand dogs, if 20% of them
are entry or are absent, whichseems like it's about the
number, in some shows.
I did this calculation a couplelast year, and it was almost
30%.
So apparently if you do it onSunday, it's always gonna be
30%.

(13:58):
Yeah, yeah, easy.
Yeah, but 20 to 30 percent.
So now you're talking about thatthousand dog show has got 800.
When the there's a there's aninteresting difference in
nomenclature that I don't knowif the sport needs to understand
or understands, but I think it'simportant.

(14:20):
Uh the AKC publishes the numberof entries per year as their
fuel gauge for the sportsdealing.
So they'll say 1.5 millionentries a year.
Wow, that sounds great.
But when you have almost 2,000shows and dogs are entered at
five shows here and five showsthere in case the major breaks

(14:40):
or they're chasing a record, sothey're multiple entered.
How many individual dogs isthat?
It's not even close to 1.5million.
Not even close.
Right.
Yeah.
So we need to know how many dogsare competing in the sport and
trend that for 10 years.
And I'll bet it's frightening.
I just don't know what's gonnago on in the future.

(15:01):
I'm really concerned.
I've never I've always beenworried about it, a little
concerned.
Now I'm like, man, this is ait's a big deal.
You know, I've got my son, he'sso interested in this, and he
loves it.
What do I tell him it's gonnalook like in 20 years?
He'll only be 50 something.

SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
What's it gonna look like in five years?
I mean, you know, the the trendis is slipping quickly, very
quickly.
And you've got a lot of judges.
Most of your we have very fewAlbre judges.
I don't know what the count isnow currently, and we have a
couple that are approachingbeing Albreed, and I'm sure, but
they're old.
They're old, they're sick, a lotof them.

(15:40):
A lot of them are.

SPEAKER_01 (15:41):
Not like us, Kim.
We are young and vibrant, Samet.

SPEAKER_00 (15:44):
Well, hardly, hardly at all.
I'm gonna include both of us inthis group, okay?
But it's like, you know, youdon't, the judges are tired, you
know, and you truly do it forthe love.
We've talked about this becauseyou know, the travel and the you
don't make any money, and youknow, you're a lot of times
you're just judging mediocredogs all day long.
You're just a ribbon dispenser,and we've had a couple judges

(16:07):
quit, you know, early in theircareer because they're just
tired of it.
And so, where you know, what isthe answer to me, and is when
you have all the facts andfigures, and you've worked
really hard on it.
Is the answer to these clubs?
Look, you have to buddy up withsomebody and make, you know, to
make it a four-day cluster,whatever.

(16:29):
And and I hate five-day clustersmyself.
I they're exhausting for thedogs, the handlers, the judges.
I mean, at the end of the fifthday, you don't care if you ever
judge another box, you're sotired, right?
It takes days to and oh, thenyou get stranded on the way home
and you spend the night at theDenver Airport hotel, you know.
So is the answer, and and I'manxious to hear your take on

(16:52):
this.
Is the answer to say if youcan't hit X number of entries,
you know, by you know, two yearsfrom now, you you're gone.
I mean, you're you're gonna haveto start eliminating, or people
are gonna have to buddy up.
I mean, I don't see any otherviable answers.
Do you?

SPEAKER_01 (17:12):
I don't think there's any one answer.
Uh, I think it's a it's a theissue needs to be studied in
depth by the AKC rather thandoing, they have all the data
that I have to data mine and digfor.
They have it.
And they need to get seriousabout putting some committees
together to figure out what'sgoing on here, or hire

(17:33):
statisticians and evenepidemiologists to see what's
going on in the in the cultureand the and how things are where
people are moving or what thatmeans.
Yeah.
Um I go back to limitedregistration because I think we
spayed neutered the entirepurebred dog population.
If you go from 1994 to now,that's when the registrations

(17:54):
went from 1.4 million to about400 and some thousand now.
And I just got the financials,they're publicly available if
you ask and find them.
And boy, it's not looking good.
It's not looking good at all.
So we spated everything intooblivion, which opened up this
great audience for golden doodlepeople.
Now they can sell them becausewe're not breeding anything.

(18:15):
And we don't have enough dogs tobe shown.
We're not getting peopleinvolved in the sport.
Number shows, yes, I thinkthat's something that needs to
be looked at seriously.
Distance between shows, thatneeds to be expanded
tremendously, in my opinion.
But I don't want the small showsto go away.
I think they're important fortheir community.
Maybe you make them an openshow.

(18:36):
And you say, you can give outall the single points you want,
no matter what is.
If 50 Beagles come, it's stillthree points or five points, but
it's not a major.
So for a major, you can't go toan open show, you got to go to a
regular show.
I don't know.
There's a million thoughts likethat that run through my head,
but I think the two-level thingis gonna have to happen someday.

(18:58):
Or or just figure out what wereally need.
Because I can tell you thatthere are weekends that really
impress.
So the people are there.
When they all come together fora 5,000 dog show, it proves that
if you had one great event,people go.

(19:18):
And Orlando's coming up.
There's gonna be five, sixthousand dogs a day there.
But there's not gonna be anyshows anywhere else.
I'm not saying we can only wehave to make everyone go to
Florida, but there's gotta besome serious study, not just a
couple of people going throughah, no, I'm talking about
serious study about the costanalysis of putting on a show,

(19:40):
how the clubs can be helped bythe American Chemical Club
because they need the money topay us and to put on these
events and to rent thesefairgrounds.
That's gonna come back to themin registrations if they do it
right.
But someone's got to figure thatout.
Someone's got to figure out thedistance and the number of
shows, how that appliesgeographically.
Maybe that distance is differentfor different parts of the

(20:02):
country, but something's gonnahave to pull it all together.
And it's it's almost too late.
This should have been done 10years ago, 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 (20:11):
Oh, 15 or so, exactly.
I mean, and the 200-mile limit,I don't know who originally came
up with that, but that's insane.

SPEAKER_01 (20:20):
Well, so you know, I know someone who lost a breed at
eight o'clock in the morning atone show and went best in show
at the same day at a differentshow.
Four-hour drive, not a big deal.
Judging was at one o'clock, losta breed at eight, got there at
one, not a problem, went bestand show.
So that's craziness.
That's just stupid.

(20:41):
And that's gotta be fixed.
So there's so much to reallylaying out the numbers like this
shows one thing.
We are spread really thin in alot of geographic areas.
Again, I know the people aregonna say, hey, not in my area,
and they're right, that's true.
Fine, some people say it's onlyabout the cost.

(21:03):
I don't know about that becausethey all go to Montgomery and
they all go to Hatboro and theyall go to Orlando, but I think
that's a serious factor for theowner handler, and we need them.
We all were one, right?
I still am.
Yeah.
So we've got to make sure it canbe affordable for these people.
What can we do to encouragethat?
So it's a big giant study.

(21:25):
It almost requires a departmentalone, or uh boy, I'd say a
delegate committee if they canhave enough time to meet with
enough expertise, not juststudent council election, who's
the most popular, people withthat expertise that can make it
happen.

SPEAKER_00 (21:40):
So and how many, how many of their people are have
the expertise and the backgroundand the longevity in the sport
to be able to determine this?
I mean, that's another problem.
It's like, you know, who are yougoing to put on that committee?
There aren't that many peoplethat are capable of it.
And they've also got to benumber printers, you know.
So, you know, it's interestingbecause as you know, I'm

(22:02):
involved with Whipstock inCalifornia, and we were a
four-day cluster with a day ofspecialties, which basically
made us a five-day cluster.
We were the third largest showin the country for years.
First was Louisville, second wasPalm Springs, another California
wonderful show, and ourselves.
And so we are all, I startedWhipstock in 2008, and it's now

(22:25):
2025, almost 2026.
So for a lot of years, we we hadgreat entries, great shows.
We made AKC a lot of money, bythe way.
And we are old and tired anddecided we're oh, we're gonna
take it down to two days.
It won't be as much work, okay?
Well, big surprise.

(22:46):
You still have to get yourpremium list out, and we still
have a specialty day.
We still have, we used to havelike 70 specialties.
Now we have like 40 or somethingor 45.
But it's just as much work toput on a two-day show as it is a
four-day show.
So, but I was really proud of usbecause this year, 2025, was our

(23:08):
first two-day show.
We had 1900 entries both days,right around there, uh unheard
of in this day and age, right?
So now we're gonna go to threedays, which is, you know, we
should have just left it atfour, honestly.
Oh, we should have just left itat four and left it alone.
But you know, what do you dowhen your you know, members are

(23:29):
old and tired?
And we have a lot of new,younger people coming in, which
we're very excited about.
But I, you know, I I think thisthere needs to be committee, and
there should have been it gotran off the railroad tracks
about 15 years ago, probably.

SPEAKER_01 (23:43):
So the start of what was your community back when in
in the heyday?
Over 3,000.

SPEAKER_00 (23:49):
Oh, we over the four days, we'd have like 9,000 dogs.

SPEAKER_01 (23:52):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (23:53):
Over the four days.

SPEAKER_01 (23:54):
There's there's so many things to one thing, and I
get emails and messages aboutthe economy, which is certainly
true.
The cost, it's way expensive.
All these things are true.
Geographic differences and bigspaces out west, not here, not
the east coast.
All that's true.
But one thing is constant.
If you go back to, I think thelast time I did it was 94.

(24:16):
There are twice as many dogshows with half the number of
dogs entered per show.
I don't know if that's causationor correlation.
I can just tell you, twice asmany shows, half the number of
entries per show.
If, like I said, if that's theonly answer, it's simple.
But I don't think it's the onlyanswer.

(24:37):
I think it's more encompassing.
And if I'm the AKC, I'm reallyworried about this, and I'm
doing some studies, and I'mbringing in people from the
sport, not just the delegates,the people that put on the dog
shows, the people that have beenout there in the parking lot,
parking RV, whatever it takes tobring together the expertise of

(24:59):
I am I nominate Tommy Milner foreverything.
I think he should be involved inall this stuff, right?
That guy's got a businessbackground and a great mind, and
he knows the sport.
So, but somebody like that, andjust getting this thing uh done
because we have a short future.

SPEAKER_00 (25:18):
Our own Tom Brady from Canine Chrono Teacher.
There you go.
There's a you can say here juston the top of my mind that I can
you know tick off about five orsix people that certainly would
be on that committee, whetherthey have the personal time to
do it.
But it at this point, uh, Ithink it's an emergency.
You know, it's like you know,we're gonna call an emergency
meeting.

SPEAKER_01 (25:39):
If we don't have the time now, we're gonna have
plenty of time in 10 years.
That's right.
Yeah, I agree.
Anyway, I want to wrap this upby saying that in the next
podcast, we're gonna talk aboutbig shows and how how wonder
this year is proof that it'sright there if we know how to do
it.
That's it for this time.

(26:00):
I'm Wayne Kavanaugh.

SPEAKER_00 (26:03):
I'm Kim Murder.

SPEAKER_01 (26:04):
There you go.
We are still standing.
Until next one.
Thank you from the Q9 Chronicleand Wayne and Kimberly.
We'll see you soon over now.