I can see what you mean and I can see why, but this is where judges witholding  the CCs come into it.  When you are passed to award CCs you are told that, when judging,  you have to declare a best of sex (and reserve) and THEN decide if your best of sex is worthy of being awarded the CC or not.  It's not an automatic thing that you win a CC if you're the only one there. 

In fact, recently, in one breed the CC in one sex has just been witheld three shows on the trot!

Debs

That's interesting Debs - which breed is that?

M.

Finnish Spitz

Debs

Added to Surannon's sensible explanation, the three CCs must be awarded by three different judges (and at least one after the animal's over 12 months); three CCs from the same judge wouldn't give the title.

Afterthought: I'm fairly sure there are more CCs available each year for the numerically strong breeds than those with enormous entries; plus I should think there are fewer people qualified to award CCs in the numerically small breeds, making it harder to get the CCs from different judges.

Three CC's by three different judges and if the dog gets 3 before it's 12 months old then it cannot be made a champion until it has another after 12 months.

In some ways I'd say that it isn't really that much easier.  Many breeds aren't given CC's over here but I think all breed classes in Ireland get green stars don't they?  Not so sure about that but I think so?

Yes, 3 CCs from 3 different judges make a champion regardless of the quantity or quality of competition. In Cavaliers we have had 3 dogs (all gorgeous and worthy) who have taken nearly every CC for the last 2 1/2 years - they each have about 24 or 26 now I think. Perhaps two or three dogs have been made up in that time - and I can think of at least 5 dogs without even trying that are worthy champions but will now never get their title (including mine, I admit it! :-) ). I think they ought to have the champions class which can't compete for the CC. Then the judge will have to be honest and be certain they only award the CC if they think the dog is worthy, not just 'best of what's there'. Then the Champion winner could challenge the CC winner for BD / BB / BOB or whatever, and if the Champion wins it could be awarded a nominal CC. That way we could get our worthy dogs made up, but the record chasers could still get the records and compete in the Group etc. :-)

perrodeagua - do the dog classes show as few entries as the bitches? Just surely if it's this bitch causing the downturn in entries then the dogs should still have good entries ...

I didn't say that it was due to this bitch.  For many years Chi's haven't seemed to have that good an entry for the numbers that are bred.  Though in Pomeranian's the fashion is similar too. 

At nearly every show in the Open Bitch class there were only 2 entered!

I'm not sure where you're looking but I've just gone through them from 2002 to 2006 and only found two or three with two or less in Open Bitch.  The Open Dog entries seem to have stayed static from around 5 to 10 - the bitch class from 2 to 10 so about the same over four years. 

You have to remember that a lot of factors can affect entries - the judge, the weather, the venue, breeding of bitches, etc.  I can't see any evidence that this bitch winning so much has been detrimental to the breed.

Debs

Now we are getting numbers like this and we are a rare breed!! 

I know how you feel Perrodeagua as I too showed a rare breed :), but it's not about numbers.  The KC take into account not only the number of dogs being bred but also the number of people breeding them, health matters, general interest shown in the breed (all this is based on what's happening not only in the UK but also abroad in many cases), how many make it as winning show dogs, etc.

When I first showed my rare breed there were a good percentage of them that one could say were Champion quality (even though they can't be made up in the UK) - they were quite uniform in type and their conformation was good on the whole.  Then the breed went into the doldrums a bit and type went haywire and conformation naturally followed suit.  If the breed had been of CC status there would have been some pretty poor Champions being made up during that time (we're back to the whole witholding thing now)  OR one or two dogs would have been winning everything.  All this happened within the space of 10 to 12 years.  Things now look as though they're getting better in the breed thank goodness.

It's a complicated matter and IMO, unless a breed really takes off and has the backing of a large genepool and following abroad, they should stay as either rare breeds or import reg breeds for a good number of years.  It's only by doing this that you can guage a breeds' progression within this country.

Debs

P.S. Not getting at your breed in particular just writing in general tems :d

My breed wins a lot at the shows, has many new imports, the breed club insists on eyes and hips being tested etc. although some people don't like this!!  So we are doing all of those.  They are also doing quite well abroad at the moment too.

Other breeds have hardly any being shown abroad, two or three being shown over here and a much smaller gene pool but they were off very quickly!

We now have 400 in the country.  Yes we have taken it slowly because we didn't want the breed to become too popular too soon.  But surely it is better breeding slowly than importing a load of dogs breeding here there and everywhere????

More dogs are soon to be imported to from different lines so we do cover all that the KC ask for. 

The challenge is there to produce better than that dog and nock the dog off.
Fiona