The question of an “earned” Championship for Scent Work has just been raised again (January 2026) in the “Friends of AKC Scent Work” Facebook group. On the one hand, I’m glad to see there is still discussion. On the other, I am frustrated because I feel like our efforts are very fractured; while the survey Dave Schneider and I did last spring indicated significant support for creation of an earned championship, all we, as sport participants, seem to do is to bubble the concept to the top of a Facebook discussion every few months, and every such effort seems like the first one ever.
While Dave and I certainly weren’t the first to suggest an earned championship, and I’m sure we weren’t the first to ask the AKC about it, we may be the first to document that whole process (and lack of result). And nobody knows better than Scent Work competitors that “Knowing where you have been is a big part of knowing where you need to go,” right?
To summarize, Dave and I did a survey in April of 2025. We published the raw results as well as some summaries.
In May, we provided the information to the AKC. In the accompanying letter, we highlighted the survey results requesting changes to the Buried element and asked for a calculated Championship. Significantly (I think), and something Dave, in particular, is very passionate about, we suggested the creation of a Working Group, incorporating (and led by) AKC personnel but also including sport representatives and whose mission would be to identify methodologies and make recommendations about a calculated Championship. Cross-functional working groups have considerable precedent within the AKC, often helping to bring about progressive changes in the companion and performance sports, in particular, in the past.
Between the time the Survey was created in March and when our letter was sent in mid-May, the AKC had announced the Inaugural AKC Master National Scent Work Competition. On September 1, they announced changes to the Buried element to make the sand boxes lighter and eliminate the somewhat ‘specialized’ equipment of the aquarium tubing and suction cup apparatus in the water hides. Encouraged by this, Dave and I sent a follow-up letter — Follow up Letter in September of 2025 — saying (in summary) “hey, you’re doing great, love the changes, now how about Numeric Detective titles — and there are lots of people who would love to volunteer their time to help with things like judges education and the earned Championship we so badly want to see!” The response we received from Caroline Murphy, the AKC’s Director of Performance Events, includes a confidentiality note that prohibits direct publication of it, so I hope that I paraphrase it accurately when I say that it basically, very politely, said, “Yes, we know, you sent us all your information last spring and you can stop nagging us any time now.”
Dave and I both had plenty going on at the time and, while I know that Dave wanted to continue to pursue this, I encouraged him to do so but said I would bow out.
So that’s how THAT went!