What the AKC alludes to, but for the obvious reasons won't mention outright - is that the Airedale men and women have been asking the AKC to let them field trial for a -long- time. They've written exhaustive reports, they've proven their dogs in upland work, waterfowl work, game trailing and treeing in their club's hunting trial program for years. They've jumped through every hoop the AKC has asked, and some they weren't even asked to jump through, and the AKC has turned then down. Through it all, when most others would have thrown in the towel... they haven't given up.
What the AKC may or may not know - It's too much to go into in this blog post, but suffice to say that a few years ago the Airedale Terrier Club put politics before the dogs, and alienated their hunting base within the club. This resulted in a schism which caused the then parent club's Hunting Working Committee to effectively have to form its own independent club. What was left to pick up the pieces were - with a few exceptions - hunters in the HWA on the 'outside', and wannabe non hunters in the parent club on the 'inside'.
You can see the somewhat newly independent HWA web site by clicking on the HWA logo:
You can also see the new 'wannabe' ADTC Hunting and Field website by clicking on the logo:
My hope is that one day these two factions will be reconciled.
In the meantime... AKC, how many times do they have to ask? Let them play already!!!
