I keep finding myself doing this.

I will begin reading something that appears to be about one subject, and somewhere along the way I realize I am no longer thinking only about what is written on the page.

Today it was an article about the history of dog shows and the changes that occurred when the Grand Championship program was introduced.

The author described an earlier time when the primary purpose of the conformation ring was to evaluate breeding stock. Breeders brought out their young, unfinished dogs, competed through the regular classes, earned the necessary points and majors, and once a dog completed its championship, it usually left the ring. That dog might then be bred, while the breeder began developing and showing the next generation.

The system created a natural cycle.

Young dogs filled the classes. Class entries helped build majors. Breeders had a reason to continue raising and presenting new dogs, and the show ring remained focused largely on comparing potential breeding stock that had not yet earned a championship.

Then the incentives changed.

With the introduction of the Grand Championship program, finishing a championship was no longer necessarily the end of a dog’s show career. Exhibitors now had another title to pursue, followed by higher levels of that title, rankings, national recognition and continued opportunities to campaign a proven winner.

Naturally, many people kept showing the finished champion.

The author’s argument was not simply that exhibitors had changed or that people had somehow become less committed to developing young dogs. The argument was that the system itself had begun rewarding a different behavior.

Instead of encouraging people to finish one dog and bring out the next generation, it rewarded them for continuing to invest their money, time and energy into the dog that was already winning.

The predictable result was that more champions remained in competition, fewer young dogs entered the regular classes, majors became harder to build in some areas, and the pathway that had once moved new breeding stock through the ring began to narrow.

Whether someone agrees with every detail of the author’s conclusion or not, I found the perspective fascinating because it moved the conversation away from blaming individual exhibitors and toward examining the structure surrounding them.

And somewhere in the middle of reading it, I realized I was no longer thinking only about dog shows.

I was thinking about almost everything.

I have become convinced that when we genuinely want to understand why something is happening, we often need to stop looking only at the people and begin examining the system in which they are operating.

Most of us ask, “Why are people doing this?”

A question that has served me much better over the years is, “What is the system rewarding?”

That one question has changed how I think about almost everything.

Why do we have so many doodles? Why are preservation breeders disappearing? Why do veterinarians practice the way they do? Why do farmers farm the way they do? Why do people eat the way they do? Why are hospitals structured to treat disease more readily than they are to help people build health?

Maybe we keep asking the wrong question.

Because people generally respond to incentives. Sometimes they do it consciously. Sometimes they don’t even realize they are doing it.

Every system quietly rewards certain behaviors and discourages others. Leave those incentives in place long enough, and a culture forms around them. Eventually, the culture feels so normal that we stop noticing the system that created it.

The article did not convince me that the Grand Championship program alone caused everything that has changed in dog shows. It reminded me of something much more important: when a system repeatedly produces the same behavior, we should at least consider whether that behavior is not simply the problem, but the predictable result of what the system has chosen to reward.

That is the part that fascinates me.

I have learned over the years that if I cannot make sense of something, I need to step back far enough to see the whole picture. Almost every time I do, the pieces begin fitting together in ways they never did when I was focused on the individual parts.

Maybe that is why I have always loved looking outside the box.

Or perhaps there was never a box to begin with. Sometimes all we need to do is climb high enough to see the landscape instead of staring at one path. ❤️🐾❤️