The Ultimate Silly List

By Wayne Cavanaugh

It’s David Letterman’s fault. On September 18, 1985, he launched a new trend that never quit: the infernal Top Ten List. The very first was: “Top Ten Things that Almost Rhyme with Peas” and it catapulted an infinite string of Silly Top Ten Lists into the stratosphere. To be clear, I’m not talking about verified data-derived lists such as top-winning dog lists; I look forward to, enjoy, and trust those lists because they are real. I’m talking about gems like “Top Ten Signs Your Kid Had a Bad First Day at School” and “Top Ten Rejected James Bond Gadgets.” My personal favorite Letterman list is “Top Ten Numbers Between One and Ten” because of the way it precisely draws humor from the silliness of ranking such mundane items. And, because every January it reminds me of the champion of all silly lists, AKC’s “Top Ten Most Popular Breeds in America.”

Before I explain exactly how silly and bogus that particular AKC list is and why it matters, you all deserve an apology. Mea culpa, I had a hand in the creation and perpetuation of that silly list. Yup, clearly inspired by the popularity of Letterman’s lists when I served as an AKC VP, our team created the Top Ten Most Popular Breeds in hopes it would catch on in the general media. It did, garnering more and more press over the 25 years since its start. The problem was that we didn’t intend it to be silly. We actually believed it to be true. We thought our list represented the most popular breeds in America because we believed AKC registrations represented all of America’s purebred dogs. Silly, I know. We weren’t even close.

At the time, there was a systemic sense at 51 Madison Avenue that New York was the center of the dog universe and that AKC was the only purebred dog registry in North America. Considering their silly list, one could argue that the same myopic sense still prevails. AKC subscribes to the monthly magazines of one or two other century-old purebred dog registries (as I recall, former AKC Secretary Jim Crowley–the best employee in AKC history–was the only one who read them). AKC was also aware that other old, venerable purebred registries existed but didn’t regard them or the breeds they registered as relevant. Of course, they were wrong, and accordingly, the Top Ten Most Popular Breeds list grows more non- sensical every year.

Pop quiz. In the last five years how often have you seen, say, an Irish Setter or Collie (the once ubiquitous Big Red and Lassie) out- side of a dog show? Rarely? Never? It is quite likely, however, that you have seen a retired racing greyhound around town or in the park. Those you see are most likely registered with NGA, National Greyhound Association, established in 1906. NGA registered 20,000 greyhounds in 2007 according to Jim Gartland, NGA’s executive director. The American Greyhound Council (a joint effort with NGA), reported that more than 280,000 retired racers are alive and well in adopted homes across America today. AKC registration stats went mysteriously dark in 2011 after 126 years of being published every month. We do know, however, that AKC greyhound registrations have typically hovered around 200 a year for quite some time. Safe to say that NGA’s 20,000 annual greyhounds added to AKC’s annual 200 would significantly change the AKC’s Most Popular Breed list. By not including NGA registered greyhounds, AKC greyhounds languish among the perennial bottom dwellers. Anyone arguing that data from NGA greyhounds shouldn’t be included be- cause they have “different breed type” than AKC greyhounds should consider the type variation of other breeds. Field dogs vs. show dogs, for example, and commercially bred pets vs. show dogs, none of which are segregated by breed type for AKC registration.

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Posted by Alex on May 24 2020. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.