How we build our listings

ThePetAdvisor is an independent guide to AKC dog shows and dog events. We gather scattered show information — dates, closing deadlines, judges, venues, hotels, and travel — and organize it into weekend guides you can plan from.

This page explains, in plain language, what we cover, where the information comes from, how a listing is put together, what our review labels mean, and how we count the numbers we publish about our own coverage. If a number on this site has no date next to it, treat that as a gap we still need to close — every coverage number we publish should carry its as-of date and its definition.

We are not the AKC, we are not a superintendent, and we do not take entries. The official premium list for a show is always the final authority for that show. When our guide and the premium list disagree, the premium list wins — and we want to hear about it so we can fix our guide.

What we cover

We cover AKC conformation dog shows and the AKC sports and family-dog programs exhibitors plan around: agility, obedience, rally, Fast CAT, dock diving, barn hunt, scent work, trick dog, and Canine Good Citizen, along with the clubs that put the shows on and the judges named to judge them.

Our core unit is the event cluster — one listing that groups the shows of a single weekend or event together, for example a multi-day cluster of all-breed shows plus specialties. A cluster can contain one show or several. When we count “events listed,” we are counting clusters, not individual shows. The two numbers are different, and we keep them separate on this page.

We also publish breed pages, judge assignment pages, a club directory, articles, and guides. Breed pages and judge pages are planning references built from the same show data. They are not official breed standards and not official judge records.

Where the information comes from

Our listings are built from four kinds of material, and we try to keep them distinct:

• Official source material. The documents the show itself publishes or that the AKC publishes about the show: the premium list, the judging program, and the AKC event detail for that show. Where a guide names one of these documents, it names the document it used.
• Superintendent and club material. Entry information, schedules, and announcements published by the show superintendent or the host club, including the club’s own site.
• Editorial review. A person on our team reading the source material, assembling the guide, and recording that the listing was reviewed, with a date. Editorial review is our own check that a listing is complete and consistent — it is not the AKC or a superintendent checking our work.
• Automated ingestion. Some listings begin as structured records pulled from published schedules and databases, so we can list a weekend early and fill in the detail as the official documents appear. A listing that began this way is labelled accordingly until it has been through editorial review.

A listing can draw on more than one of these. What matters is the label on the listing, explained in the next sections. A label tells you how far that listing has got through our process — it does not tell you the AKC has approved our listing, because the AKC has not.

How a listing is put together

1. We list the weekend. When a show weekend appears in published schedules, we create a listing for it. At this stage it may be a placeholder: dates and host club only, with the detail still to come. Placeholders are published so exhibitors can see the weekend exists, and they are labelled “Verification pending” until they are reviewed.
2. We add the official documents as they appear. As the premium list and judging program are published, we add closing dates, entry fees, the judging panel, the venue, and travel information from those documents.
3. An editor reviews the listing. The editor checks the listing against the sources it cites, confirms it is not a projected placeholder, and records the review with a date. That dated review is what earns the listing its “Listing reviewed” label.
4. We keep the sources with the guide. Guides that have been through this process end with a Sources section listing the documents behind them. Not every guide has one yet — see below — and we are working through the backlog rather than claiming the work is done.
5. We correct mistakes when they are found. See the corrections section below. A correction does not wait for the next rebuild cycle; the listing is fixed and the fix is recorded.

What the review labels mean

Every event listing carries one of three review labels. The label describes the listing as a whole. It does not describe any single fact on the page, and it does not mean the AKC has approved the listing.

Listing reviewed

Listing reviewed means the listing passed our cluster review rule: a dated editor review, sources listed on the listing, and the listing is not a projected placeholder.

It does not mean every fact on the page was checked one by one against an identified official document. Judges, entry fees, ring times, and premium details are checked as part of the review, but the label is a listing-level judgement, not a field-by-field guarantee. If you need a single fact to be certain — above all a closing date — check it against the official premium list or with the superintendent before entering.

Verification pending

Verification pending means the listing has not yet been through editorial review. The listing is published so you can see the weekend exists and plan around it, but its details have not yet passed our review rule. Treat pending details as unconfirmed, and check closing dates with the superintendent before entering.

Not yet reviewed

Not yet reviewed means we have no review record for this listing at all — the review status is missing, or the listing arrived in a form our review process has not classified yet. We never default a listing to reviewed. Until a listing earns “Listing reviewed,” it stays in one of the two unreviewed states above.

Our review labels describe our process. They are separate from the AKC’s own event status for a show. A show can be approved by the AKC while its ThePetAdvisor listing is still “Verification pending,” and a listing can be “Listing reviewed” without that saying anything about the AKC’s status for the show. The two systems answer different questions.

What is — and is not — independently checked

We want to be exact about this, because it is the part most guides leave vague.

What we do check. An editor reviews each “Listing reviewed” listing against the sources it cites, on a recorded date. We check that the listing’s dates, host club, venue, closing date, and judging panel match the source documents we have for that show. We do not publish a judging panel we have not seen in a published source, and we do not guess ring times — ring times come from the official judging program, or they are not published.

What we do not check, fact by fact. We do not re-verify every field of every listing against an identified official document. Our review is at listing level, not field level. That is why the label is “Listing reviewed” and not a promise about any single fact.

What is still incomplete. Not every guide yet ends with a Sources section. As of November 7, 2026, 362 of 748 published show pages carry a Sources section and 386 do not. We are adding Sources sections as guides are reviewed, and we do not claim the work is finished.

What no one has checked for us. No outside body audits our listings. The AKC does not review, approve, or endorse our guides. A superintendent sending us a premium list is helping us get a show right; it is not an endorsement of ThePetAdvisor.

Judge assignments. Our judge pages list judging assignments as documented in judging programs and ring schedules. An assignment appearing on a judge page means the judge’s name appears in a documented assignment. It does not mean we have verified that judge’s identity, credentials, or full assignment history. Judge names are matched by name, and two different people can share a name — see the counting section below for how we count them.

Ring times and judging programs. Ring times on this site come from official judging programs. Our indexed judging-program documents are fingerprinted and counted below. A judging program that exists for a show but has not yet been indexed does not make the ring times on that show’s guide any less sourced — it means the document is not yet in our indexed set, and the guide’s own Sources section is where its provenance is recorded.

How we count our coverage

The numbers below describe ThePetAdvisor’s own listings and records. They are not AKC numbers, and they are not a ranking. Each number carries its definition, its as-of date, and its source, so anyone can check how it was counted. If a definition changes, the number is re-measured under the new definition — numbers computed under different definitions are never compared as if they were the same.

As-of date for every number on this page: November 7, 2026 (America/New_York), unless a line says otherwise. These numbers are regenerated from our data files each time the site is built.

A note on freshness: the event data file these counts are drawn from (events.json, version 20) carries its own internal dates — updated November 7, 2026 and last verified September 30, 2026. Those dates are older than the November 7, 2026 measurement date. We are showing you both dates because the gap is real: the counts below were measured from the file on November 7, 2026, but the file’s own update stamp is November 7, 2026.

• 1,154 event clusters listed (as of November 7, 2026). One cluster is one listing in our event file, identified by its cluster id — the multi-day, multi-show grouping we list as one entry. This counts every cluster in the file, including placeholders and listings still awaiting review. It is a listing inventory, not a verified-coverage count, so read it with the split below.
• 804 clusters Listing reviewed; 350 clusters Verification pending (as of November 7, 2026). The two add up to the 1,154 total. No other review status is in use for clusters.
• 863 upcoming clusters; 291 historical clusters (as of November 7, 2026). Upcoming means the cluster’s last date is on or after November 7, 2026; historical means its last date is before that date. An event ending today counts as upcoming.
• 635 substantive show pages published (as of November 7, 2026), out of 748 top-level show pages. A page counts as substantive when it is a real listing page (not a redirect), names a venue, states a closing date, and gives entry-fee information or a judging panel, and is linked to a cluster record. The other 110 top-level show pages are stubs or redirects and are not counted here. Three further pages pass the content tests but match no cluster record (Beverly Hills, Palm Springs 2026, and Woofstock 2026 — archive/reference pages), so they are not counted here either.
• 807 clusters with documented provenance (as of November 7, 2026), of which 803 are Listing reviewed. A cluster has documented provenance when it or one of its shows cites at least one source. One Listing reviewed cluster currently cites no source, and 101 clusters carry a review date without Listing reviewed status — both are known data-quality items we are clearing, listed here rather than hidden.
• 350 clusters awaiting review (as of November 7, 2026): 261 are placeholders (dates and host club only) and 89 are substantive listings still awaiting review. Most of the queue is placeholders.
• 846 clubs represented in our event listings (as of November 7, 2026). This counts distinct club names appearing as the organizing club of at least one event cluster, after normalizing case and spacing. It is not the same as the club directory below.
• 2,539 clubs in the club directory (as of November 7, 2026). This counts records in our club directory file: 741 all-breed kennel clubs, 258 national parent clubs, 1,469 regional breed clubs, and 71 sport clubs. The directory does not hold every AKC club — it holds the clubs in these four types that we have records for.
• 170 breed pages published (as of November 7, 2026): 81 recognized-breed profiles and 89 Foundation Stock Service and Miscellaneous Class breed directory pages (76 FSS and 13 Miscellaneous). Our breed directory lists 334 breeds in total. We do not publish a single “breeds covered” number, because a breed’s appearances in ring schedules are recorded under many variant labels and we have not yet finished mapping those labels to canonical breeds. Until that mapping is measured, we publish the two separate facts — 334 breeds in the directory, 170 breed pages — and no combined coverage claim.
• 945 judge names with documented assignments (as of November 7, 2026). This counts distinct judge names, after normalizing titles and suffixes, appearing as a judge in our event listings or in ring and group schedules. It is a count of names, not people — two different people can share a name, and we have not yet built the identity check that would turn this into a headcount. Do not read it as “945 judges.”
• 54 judge pages published (as of November 7, 2026). These pages list documented assignments. None of them is a substantive judge profile yet: we hold no judge biographies that meet our profile standard (a biography of at least 100 characters plus a photo, a website, or an identity check, for a judge with a documented assignment). Judges with substantive profiles: 0. We publish the zero rather than substituting the page count.
• 37 distinct source documents indexed (as of November 7, 2026). This counts distinct documents by content fingerprint in our indexed-document record — the same document retrieved twice counts once. All 37 are judging programs. Judging-program sightings and premium sightings that have not been fingerprinted as documents are counted separately in our internal records and are not added to this total.
• 90 articles, 9 guides, and 10 family-dog guides published (as of November 7, 2026). 256 venue records in our venue file (as of November 7, 2026).

What we do not count. We do not count duplicate listings as unique events, database rows as verified information, or a page existing as a profile existing. A club record is not a club at a show. A judge page is not a judge profile. A document sighting is not an indexed document. Each of those distinctions is enforced in the counting rules above, and the full definitions are kept with our build system so a future count can be checked against the same rules.

How updates work

Show information changes — closing dates move, judges change, venues change. When a source document changes, we update the listing from the new document and the listing keeps its review history.

Listings are refreshed as new official documents appear. Every listing carries the dates that matter to it — when its sources were retrieved and when it was last reviewed — so a reader can see how fresh a particular guide is, rather than relying on a sitewide freshness claim. Closing dates can change after a guide is published. Always verify a closing date with the superintendent before entering.

How to report a correction

If you spot a mistake — a wrong date, a wrong judge, a wrong venue, a broken source link — tell us and we will fix it.

Email [email protected] with the show, the page, and what is wrong. Include a link to the official document if you have one; it helps us fix the listing faster, but it is not required. We read every message sent to that address.

What happens next: we check the listing against the official source, fix the listing, and record the correction. If the correction changes a material fact on a Listing reviewed guide, the guide goes back through review before the label stands again. If you tell us we got something wrong and we find you are right, we say so by fixing it — we do not leave a known-wrong fact standing while we work on something else.

Show officials and superintendents: send premium lists and judging programs to [email protected]. Sending us a document helps us get your show right. It does not make ThePetAdvisor affiliated with your show, and it does not make your show’s listing an official publication.

What we do not do

We are not an entry service, and we are not a substitute for the official premium list. The premium list is the final authority for a show. We do not host official results as our own, and we do not present our guides as official publications. Where a guide links to an official document, the link goes to the publisher of that document, and the document — not our summary of it — is the authority.

When this page was last updated

This page was last updated on November 7, 2026. The coverage numbers on it are as of November 7, 2026, measured from our data files on that date. This page and every number on it are regenerated from the data files at build time. A methodology page with an old date and old numbers is worse than no methodology page, because it looks authoritative while being stale.

Questions about this page, or about how any number on this site was counted: [email protected].

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