Rare Opportunity – Part 2… What’s the Plan?

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150 – October, 2026

By Lori Sternola

We looked last month at the AKC and the notion of owning your narrative. The punchline was: if you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you. My premise is that the AKC has basically told no story, so many people end up viewing purebred dogs and “breeders” through the stories that PETA and other animal activists have told about us.

This month, we look at having a plan. Specifically, what does a good strategy require? And how could a solid, well-publicized strategy put the AKC, and all of us in the purpose-bred community, in a better position? Strategy in a class-leading organization requires four things. For each of these, we’ll paint a practical picture of what the AKC could be saying – if it took the steps to make progress a reality. This article doesn’t suggest that what I write here is the answer, or the only answer… but it goes back to the closing lines of last month’s article: “You don’t always have to be right, but you have to be something, and say it out loud. Otherwise, you’re just whatever the other guy says you are.” Here are the pieces the AKC needs to say out loud:

1. A clear long-term destination. You can’t put yourself on the right road if you don’t know where you’re going. Lay out a 5-year overarching goal: To remake the AKC into the organization that will guide purpose-bred dogs through the 21st century by ensuring our dogs and our community are understood, supported, and protected; and that we welcome new members and grow that community continually.

2. Alignment of the core vision with strategic goals. Once you know what your ultimate destination is supposed to be, you build strategic goals around that. Those strategic goals should be broken into the areas the AKC wants to prioritize, such as:

Click here to read the complete article
150 – October, 2026

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Posted by AnthonyA on Oct 13 2026. 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.