Maybe I am just a reactionary, uppity, over-reactor. But I have this thing about the AKC. American Kennel Club, my not a dog person friends. Oh wait. I scared you off long ago. Never mind. I used to not really think much about it. AKC, lots of people do agility at all the lots of AKC trials in our area. My dogs, not very AKC looking so never really pursued. Won’t be going for a MACH and DQ’s any time soon. A MACH is your warp speed award, non agility friends, and you need the DQ’s for your warp speed. You can run a Non Purebred dog in the AKC, but you get it a special Indefinite Listing Privilege, which grants you the privilege to run in AKC agility, just as long as you are not trying to pass your dog off as for-sure purebred. It’s for pretty-much-sure purebreds. I Love Purebreds, other way to sound out that acronym of ILP. All fine. My dogs aren’t purebreds, maybe someday I would get a dog exactly customized for me by a breeder, but not really a big deal for me who happy to have an Otterpop found in the street. Most of my agility friends compete in the AKC as well as in USDAA. I like USDAA. I like CPE. All good.

Then a few months ago, AKC ran a survey to see what people thought about allowing Non Purebred dogs to compete in the AKC. But not exactly AGAINST the real AKC dogs. In a special subset, sort of removed, back of the bus, not such a nice neighborhood as regular AKC. So I would be able to actually do AKC agility, but not be allowed to do stuff like go to the Nationals, or compete against all the same dogs I compete against in the USDAA. I’d just be in there, competing against dogs that were a little bit less pure for a different set of prizes. I would be privileged in some ways, but not all the ways. A decidedly lower class of competitor.

I get the whole thing of having standards for purebred dogs. I do. Gives us healthy hips and healthy dogs, right? Not German Shepherds with weirdo backends and fatty labs. AKC, you wouldn’t allow that, right? I get it that the AKC provides useful information for dog owners about how maybe a purebred border collie not the dog for you and the purebred yorkie is. I sort of don’t get the whole confirmation dog show world, but I know some of you don’t get the whole dog agility dog show world. And I am happy to stay out of that world, and you are probably happy to stay out of mine. But when my dog show world is based on training and dogs learning skills and running and not having anything to do with breeds and standards, but not letting all the dogs compete based on that, creepy.

And I couldn’t get it out of my craw that what if people did that with say, kids’ swimming or baseball? And maybe just started a group for kids of a race that was more pure and less melting pot? Even though there were lots of kids out there that tried just as hard in swimming or baseball, but were different or didn’t have the papers? So they could do swimming in a different pool or baseball in a different league. No one was saying don’t swim or don’t play baseball, but just saying don’t play with us. You go swim over there, away from us. And then, when the biggest swimming or baseball league FINALLY said they could compete with them, it would be in a sort of separate and not quite as equal league. Like am I the only person that thinks that is a little creepy? Am I too anthropomorphy with my dog beliefs here? Isn’t equality sort of an important belief, like the whole civil rights deal of the 20th century? Like FINALLY our state said a-ok to gay marriage. Just give everyone the same rights?

The dog club I teach agility for holds AKC trials. They said hey, why dontcha come over and help us since you don’t do the whole AKC deal. I like the dog club and I like all the people in it. I’m not a member, because it’s very AKC and very obedience in orientation, and I am so not. But they are a great community resource, teaching obedience and agility classes to anyone that wants to try. I’m just the fringe teacher way over here, doing the silly wacky running stuff on Wednesday nights. And Rob teaches there and I take his class at the end of the night. But just didn’t seem right to me, to go and volunteer to help fund an organization that holds beliefs that give me the heeby jeebies to think about. Maybe I’m just over-reacting and I’m a big fat meanie. It’s just dogs, right? Right?