30 Years Of Decisions And Change – The State Of The Sport Today

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84 – April, 2026

By Wayne Cavanaugh

Changes in the sport over the past 30 years have been staggering to say the least. The number of dogs being shown is at an all-time low, and attracting new people to the sport remains a challenge. While we can’t lose sight of the positives of the same three decades, we must examine the choices that contributed to the decline to ensure a better future. This article has no intent to criticize or blame anyone or anything. Instead, it looks back at 30-years of decisions with the hope of learning from the best and the worst of them.

Some of the most impactful decisions, well-intended or not, ultimately created serious negative consequences. Individually, these each had their own impact. But a bigger picture unfolds when considering how several major decisions came together to shape the sport and the population of purebred dogs in general. How have the last three decades changed the sport? How did they affect many of today’s most serious concerns, including judging?

Before any progress is made, we have to discuss the changes throughout those 30 years to tell the full story. There may be a couple of statistics included that you might have read here before. As my statistician friend says: “we need to torture the data to make it speak!”

Over the past three decades, one of the biggest changes to the sport has been the increased number of shows; that number nearly doubled while the number of entries per show was cut in half. The trend is very real and shows no sign of slowing. But why? How did internal and external decisions contribute to the decline?

Click here to read the complete article
84 – April, 2026

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