If I'm looking for a PL litter I want to know that there's more to this potential dog then simply the word of the breeder and a picture isn't "proof".  If I took everyone at their word, I'd be a salesman's dream and have a closet full of crappy vaccum cleaners. You may have been able to fool me a while back, but not anymore. So my initial checks start with titles. It's the only proven means of indicating which dogs have shown the pointing instinct (or other). So under that philosophy then a CPR x CPR would be relevant right? Wrong. Enter evaluation #2. Consistency, which goes hand in hand with titles. Having been at a couple of APLA tests and also other retriever related tests, I've seen dogs qualify that have no business doing so (IMO). Sure they point, but aren't labs supposed to do more?  So the CPR doesn't mean what it perhaps should. Good dogs have bad days...bad dogs have good days, so how do you weed those bad dogs out....consistency. Show me more then once and at increasingly difficult levels. Unless a dog just goes out and smacks the test, I'm still going to approach it with a level of pessimism. Why? Because I can. There are plenty of quality breedings going on every day, so there's no need for me to even have a hint of doubt about one. CPR x CPR....nice start, but show me more. From there we can then go into pedigree, health etc...but that's where I'm starting, titles. Prove to me that your dog is worthy of my $$.

I see untitled...and I'm out the door. Could this in the long run cost me a potentially tremendous pup/dog, you bet. But again, I can afford that luxury with the # of retriever litters being put on the ground.

If I'm the APLA, my first goal ISN'T numbers. It's about proving to the nay sayers that our dogs are everything we advertise them to be. You'll never change everyone's opinions, but the PL is still looked down upon by the retriever community on a whole (IMO). You want to add credibility to the organization, and I don't believe that you can do that via CPR x untitled or untitled x untitled. Once you get that credibility, I think your numbers will grow accordingly. If your organization holds no credibility, look no further then what's happened with NAHRA and rubbergate. A tremendous program that was played with way more then today took a HUGE hit when their credibility was lost. We're still struggling to recover from that. So I don't believe that the APLA needs to worry about numbers of members as many people elude to, they need to focus on their and the dogs that they promotes credibility. You start campaigning and advertising MPR/SH x APR/SH dogs, and all of a sudden that credibility goes up as does the organizations numbers.

Okay...off my soap box! :-)