How NZ Agility Works: The National Level

This post is one of a two-part series on how our sport is administered in New Zealand. DogsNZ are currently conducting consultation on changes to their structure, but I thought an explainer on how things currently work would be helpful for newer agility folk who want to understand what’s going on.

Dogs New Zealand (DNZ/NZKC)

Dogs New Zealand is the new name for what used to be called the New Zealand Kennel Club. It is basically a federation of clubs that are involved in dog showing and dog sports.

All clubs that run agility shows (or any other shows) must belong to Dogs NZ, but not all clubs are considered equal. There are “affiliated” clubs, which run championship all-breeds conformation shows. Then there are “associated” clubs, which are all the rest – the ones that run conformation shows which are limited to particular breeds, and the ones that run shows in any of the other codes under the DogsNZ umbrella – agility, obedience, rally-o, scentwork, tracking/working trials etc.

All people who compete in championship agility events (or in championship shows for most other DogsNZ codes) must be individual DogsNZ members. They must also be members of a DogsNZ member club, and that is how they get representation in DogsNZ decisions – individuals don’t have a lot of power to get things done within the DogsNZ structure.

DogsNZ has a small paid workforce of about 8 people who look after the admin and accounting of the organisation. These are the people who send you the bill for your membership each year, collate and publish the Dog World, do most of the show secretary work for the National Dog Show, and much more besides. Some of them have been with DogsNZ for quite a few years and I’ve usually found them very helpful.

Annual Conference of Delegates (ACOD)

The Annual Conference of Delegates is the DogsNZ equivalent of an AGM – the place where the members get together to discuss the direction of the club, elect a new batch of officials, and vote on any substantial changes that have been proposed. It happens in Wellington each winter.

Remember that DogsNZ is structured as a federation of clubs. It is the clubs rather than individuals that attend and vote at ACOD. Clubs sends delegates to the meeting, hence it’s called a Conference of Delegates.

Once upon a time (remembering that DogsNZ is nearly 140 years old) this was probably quite a simple system where each club sent one delegate. Now it is much more complicated, and how your club is represented depends on what type of club it is:

Affiliated clubs (clubs that run all-breeds conformation shows) has one vote, but may send either one or two delegates.
Associated clubs that run group/multi/specialist breed conformation shows are divided into 10 categories, each of which gets one delegate. The clubs in each category hold an election to choose their delegate. For some reason all clubs including agility clubs receive a lot of correspondence about this process from DogsNZ.
The Dog Training Committee sends four delegates.
The Agility Committee sends four delegates.
The NZ Gundog Trial Association sends four delegates.

To recap, that’s:

53 votes for clubs that run all-breeds conformation shows (based on the club list in March 2024 Dog World)
10 votes for clubs that run group/multi/specialist breed conformation shows
4 votes for clubs that run obedience, rally-o, working/tracking trials, scentwork etc
4 votes for clubs that run agility shows
4 votes for clubs that run gundog trials

Agility holds just over 5% of the voting power, with 4 out of 75 votes. While I don’t have exact figures for how many individual members or DogsNZ are primarily involved in agility, or for the proportion of DogsNZ revenue that comes from agility, but as a conservative estimate I would say it’s at least 20% of members and show levies.

What Actually Happens at ACOD?

ACOD is where:

DogsNZ leadership presents their annual report and plans for the future to the member clubs
Member clubs vote for the Executive Councillors (more on that soon)
Issues that affect the structure of the club, or are seen to have significant strategic impact, are discussed. I can remember two remits from the year I went – one allowing people to compete in championship rally-o events without joining DogsNZ (which passed), and one about showing neutered dogs in championship conformation shows (which failed after lengthy discussion about whether a vasectomised dog was or was not a neutered dog). The showing of neutered dogs is a topic that has come up several times over the past few years; another was the sale of the DogsNZ Exhibition Centre in Porirua.
Delegates get a chance to air their grievances at the Executive Council, although from the one time I attended this appears to be limited to procedural matters about how DogsNZ is being run rather than the strategy and vision.

Executive Council

The most important cog of the DogsNZ governance structure is the Executive Council. The Executive Council has a president, four general councillors for each island (including an island vice president), and one rep each from the Dog Training Committee and the Agility Committee – a total of 11 people.

Agility is guaranteed at least EC member (via the Agility Committee). but could have more. General councillors can be nominated by any club (including an agility club) or even by individual members, and are then elected at ACOD. There has never been a general councillor who was exclusively involved in agility, although there is one at the moment who has a long history of competing in and judging agility alongside other codes.

The Executive Council are the agility equivalent of the Governor-General – they have to ratify a lot of Agility Committee decisions (e.g. changes to regulations, appointments to judging panels) but very rarely overrule the AC. They are also responsible for setting the strategic direction of DogsNZ and future-proofing it against challenges such as the decline in pedigree dog breeding and showing, increased cost of maintaining its exhibition centres, changing attitudes to dog ownership, and increased social pressure for ethical dog breeding.

The EC is also the body that is responsible for the Show Regulations, so spends some of its time discussing things that are very specific to breed showing.

Committees Everywhere

I can’t find a master list of DogsNZ committees but there are a fair few of them – the Risk Audit & Finance Committee, the Health & Welfare Committee, the Breed Standards Committee, the CGC Committee, the Scentwork Committee, the Ardmore (Auckland) and Forrreter Park (Dunedin) Exhibition Centre Committees, the National Dog Show Committee…

The major ones that affect agility clubs are the Agility Committee and (for clubs that also run shows in other codes) the Dog Training Committee.

The Agility Committee

The Agility Committee consists of 8 people (with at least 2 for each island) who are directly elected every 2 years by people on the agility voters register.

Anyone who is a member of any DogsNZ agility club can ask to go onto the register. This includes people who don’t actually have any involvement with agility but are members of a multi-disciplinary club. It’s surprisingly difficult to write a definition of who is and isn’t “involved” in agility. Given that agility is stronger numerically than other disciplines such as obedience or rally-o, this simple approach works quite well.

AC members have a lot of power to make changes to the sport. While the AC does consult with its members before changing the regulations, there is no obligation on the AC to follow the wishes of the majority. This enables are sport to make quite bold changes in direction, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. The election every 2 years offers agility voters a chance to influence that direction, assuming that there is a decent number of candidates for them to choose from.

Agility is organised into 5 Zones – Zone 1 (Northland, Auckland, most of the Waikato), Zone 2 (south Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay), Zone 3 (Taranaki, Manawatu, Wellington), Zone 4 (Nelson, Marlborough, most of Canterbury), and Zone 5 (South Canterbury, Otago and Southland). There used to be zone committees before agility split away from the Dog Training Committee, but these days there isn’t any formal structure to how zones are run except when they form a committee to host the NZ Dog Agility Championship every 5 years. Other zone functions (e.g. organising team trials) tend to be picked up by individuals or small groups of people on an ad hoc basis.

The AC is currently responsible for hoopers, a new code which is starting up this year.

The Dog Training Committee

The Dog Training Committee represents the obedience, rally-o, and working trials/tracking codes. It consists of 7 people – a Chair, and a Rep and Deputy Rep for each of the three obedience regions. The criteria for voting in the DTC election is much stricter than for agility – there are minor differences between codes but effectively they must have competed, judged, or carried out one of a set list of other volunteer roles (e.g. instructing or stewarding) in the past 3 years.

The three regions are Northern (upper NI), Central (lower NI) and Southern (the entire South Island). Each region is a separate entity that holds its own AGM, although these days they don’t have many functions except to host the National Dog Training Assembly every 3 years.

The Dog Training Committee has a Rally-O Subcommittee and a Working Trials Subcommittee, while obedience matters are looked after by the main committee. Individuals get to vote on discussion items (e.g. proposed regulation changes), and this is organised by the region reps.

Scentwork (a code which is quite new in NZ but growing rapidly) has a separate Committee outside of the Dog Training Committee and currently has no representation at the ACOD or on the Executive Council.

Where To Next?

Currently 84% of votes at ACOD belong to one code. The only change to the voting structure in recent decades has been the separation of agility from the Dog Training Committee, resulting in 4 extra votes at the table for non-breed show people, but we are still very under-represented.

Over those decades, pedigree dog registration and participation in breed showing has been declining. I’m not a member of a breed club but I’ve heard a few stories lately about how much these clubs struggle to find volunteers to organise their shows.

In the meantime, other codes have been growing in popularity. Two new codes have emerged – rally-o and scentwork – and soon we will have hoopers trials too. An increasing number of people are involved in multiple disciplines, which makes it difficult to categorise members into distinct blocs for voting purposes.

While I suspect agility is the most numerically strong code, this doesn’t necessarily translate into a big pool of volunteers who are willing to step up and run the organisation. I mentioned that there is one semi-agility person on the Executive Council at the moment, but I don’t recall any other agility people ever standing – is that because they don’t know they can, don’t expect to win, or don’t want to? There is usually a fairly small pool of candidates for the Agility Committee elections every 2 years, and if I remember correctly the current lot were elected unopposed in 2022 because there were only 8 nominations.

Dog breeding trends have changed a lot over this time too. I’m glad to see that DogsNZ now employs a health and welfare officer and made some long overdue changes in health schemes, restrictions on over-breeding from individual dogs etc. There has been a steep rise in intentional crossbreeding (whether it’s a Whateveroodle aimed at the pet market, or a Borderpap for agility), and in people who charge ridiculous money for non-pedigree purebreds that often don’t have the appropriate health tests. For as long as I’ve been a member, DogsNZ strategic direction has placed heavy emphasis on the importance of preserving pedigree dog breeding. This has sometimes been in conflict with what agility members want – for example, when DogsNZ has advocated against the tail docking ban.

I’m looking forward to attending the road show when it comes to Timaru, but here are some of my initial thoughts:

Individual voting would make it easier to represent each member once and only once, and fairly represent all the codes.
It would also require a rethink of how ACOD would work. The best thing about ACOD is that it brings people together from different codes and regions to discuss the future of the club. Last year the AC invited each club to send one delegate to the first Agility Clubs Conference, a great initiative that I’d love to see continue. Perhaps there could be one day of conferences/workshops for individual codes where delegates from each club attend, and then a second day where these delegates come together to discuss the big picture of the organisation and meet the EC (who have been elected by all members via electronic voting).
At the moment some codes (e.g. agility and breed showing) have a two-tier structure of champ shows and ribbon trials, with competitors needing to join DogsNZ to enter a champ show. Others (e.g. scentwork and rally-o) only have one tier of competition, or allow people to “try before they buy” and enter champ shows before they join DogsNZ. It would be great to see more consistency about this across the codes. Small potatoes perhaps, but there are fewer ribbon trials on offer these days so fewer opportunities for people to try these sports without joining up. I’d love to see more options for becoming a member – quarterly or half-yearly renewal options, or the ability for clubs to collect a membership levy (say $20) from non-members entering champ shows. This could lower barriers to getting involved in dog sports but would need to be carefully structured so that an annual membership is the best option for most competitors.
I’d love to see more innovation about what DogsNZ can do to generate revenue from the general pet-owning public rather than just dog show people. The insurance scheme is a promising step. There have been other good ideas too over the years (e.g. the ferry discounts for members, which came from a vision of having a wide range of member discounts like the AA does) but there doesn’t seem to have been a consistent effort to push forward in this direction. Maybe it’s time for yet another committee to drive innovation in this area.
Any change would have to reach a majority at ACOD, which would require a lot of breed clubs to vote for it. This is the ultimate handbrake that has prevented the organisation from making major strategic changes to keep up with the times over recent decades. However, I’ve seen and heard more recently about breed clubs struggling, so maybe they will be more open to change this time around.