The alphabet of titles: CAC, CACIB, BOB, BIS, WW
The letters after a champion's name: what CAC, CACIB, BOB, BIS and WW actually record, who awards them, and how to read a palmares.
Signed from the field · Joan Merrit · checked by Ellis Ward · 616 words
A golden's registered name can carry more letters after it than in it. Each cluster of capitals records a specific kind of win, awarded by a specific body, under specific rules. Reading them is the Proof stand's basic literacy.
CAC and CACIB
The CAC, Certificat d'Aptitude au Championnat, is the national certificate toward a country's champion title, awarded at championship shows to the best adult of each sex judged closest to the standard. The CACIB, Certificat d'Aptitude au Championnat International de Beauté, is its international sibling, awarded at FCI-sanctioned international shows and required for the International Champion title. Both are certificates: they record that on a date, under a named judge, at a named show, this dog was awarded the class's top certificate. Champion titles then require a set number of these, under different judges, in different places, sometimes across seasons.
BOB, BIG, BIS
Best of Breed records that the dog beat the other goldens present that day. Best in Group records that it then beat the other breed winners of its FCI group, the retrievers and water dogs of group 8. Best in Show records the final step: the dog chosen over every group winner on the ground. A BIS is the loudest line on a palmares precisely because it is the most public: it records a day on which this dog's show career culminated against the whole entry.
WW and the working letters
WW stands for World Winner, the class win at the FCI's annual World Dog Show, and it is the title the historical kennels of this breed chased hardest: a WW'14 suffix records a dog judged best of its class at the 2014 world show. The working side has its own alphabet: field trial champion titles, working test awards, national trial wins, recorded in FTCh-style prefixes or the trial bodies' own certificates. A dog with letters from both systems is rare and legible at a glance: seen on the bench and on game.
What the letters do not say
Titles certify wins, not worth. A palmares full of certificates proves the dog was shown often and read well; it records nothing about health, temperament, or the puppies it will produce. The letters are also country-bound: a national champion title means different work in different registries, and the number of certificates required varies. The record is exact and local, and it should be read that way.
The palmares, read in order
A show record is a ledger, and it reads top to bottom like one. The serious palmares lists the year, the show, the judge and the award, and the order is chronological, not decorative. Reading it, the pattern matters more than any single line: consistent certificates under different judges mean different eyes reached the same conclusion; a single spectacular win means a day. The dog that collected its title across countries and judges has a record that argues for itself.
The palmares also dates the dog. Certificates from five years ago describe a different animal than the one in the current photo, and a stud dog's old wins are records of its prime, not its present. The best kennels kept these pages meticulously, year by year, because the record was the argument: every entry checkable, every judge named. That is still the reading to apply. A palmares is a claim list until it is a dated list; only the second version can be verified.
The mended sentence
The loose sentence reads the letters as glory. The mended sentence reads them as dated certificates: real wins, recorded under named judges, worth precisely the weight of what they document, and no more than that.
