Information Overload – Another AKC Website Overhaul

By Amy Fernandez

How many times has AKC overhauled the website? We all lost count ages ago. But one thing we know for sure is that nobody ever likes the results. Regardless of how many tweaks and revamps, it remains impossible to find what you need. You hunt around, becoming more exasperated and confused.

Finally you give up and reconvene your search to breed specific resources, only to discover another treasure trove of contradictions and dead ends. Eventually, you find yourself inundated with such a avalanche of data overload you don’t know where to start trying to sift truth from fiction. What’s the deal? Is presenting accurate dog-related info such an impossible challenge?

Granted, the subject is vast and complex and maybe the website sucks, and the internet has certainly contributed a dozen more layers of misinformation to this nightmare, but AKC can’t be blamed for the whole problem. In reality, this mess started way, way before that.

The business of collecting and presenting purebred dog data followed a curious historical route. And quite a few diligent historians have delved into the cause-and-effect mechanics of it. Personally, I think that John Marvin did it best. In a 1964 essay for the Gazette he aptly labeled the nineteenth century the “spawning ground” of this big, gnarly horror show we are currently grappling with now. He wrote, “Literature about the dog was in scant supply or demand prior to 1800.” He wasn’t exaggerating.

Marvin cited two significant works that have figured prominently in historical accounts of way more breeds than the handful that were described in either one of these works.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=152596

Posted by Alex on Oct 16 2018. 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.