The American Kennel Club is exploring the possibility of expanding the participation of mixed breed dogs in its programs, including agility, obedience and tracking competitions.
The AKC says its staff is researching the possibility of creating a listing service for spayed and neutered mixed breed dogs to help people locate dog breeders in their area. Enrollees in this service would also then be eligible to compete in separate classes at AKC agility, obedience, rally and tracking companion events.
In order to give the dog fancy community the opportunity to give feedback before proceeding with forming any program proposals, the AKC’s put together a mixed breed survey.
And as a companion piece to the survey, the kennel club has created an information packet about mixed breed dogs and AKC’s interest in them, to be used as background information in thinking about survey answers.
To participate in the survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete, visit http://www.akc.org/mixedbreed_survey/. The AKC is asking that all surveys be turned in by March 31.
To download the supplementary information packet as a pdf file, visit http://images.akc.org/pdf/MixedBreedInformationPacket.pdf
There are more than 31 million mixed breed dogs currently living in U.S. households, with at least 1.5 million people becoming new mixed breed dog owners each year, according to the AKC.