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REGISTRY,
Breed & kennel Club NEWS
AKC REGISTRATION RULE CHANGES
Renaming dogs,
registering dogs with no papers, failure to honor contracts; new AKC Rule
and policy changes harm show breeders while favoring backyard
breeders and puppy mills.
Barbara J. Andrews
©
TheDogPress
04|01|09 -
If you're not feeling foolish yet,
we're working on it.. Like a really bad April Fool's prank, there have been
not-very-funny changes in AKC registration procedures, namely;
1) Allowing subsequent owners to rename a dog,
possibly multiple times, and
2) Registration of progeny from dogs sold as pets or
unregistered “not for breeding.”
3) Refusal to honor disputed contracts until the
matter is settled in court.
We have made every effort to obtain
refutation of the following interpretations but we are on deadline
and so far, no one at AKC has replied to the ten questions we sent
last week,
See Registry Redacted.
AKC also refused to answer similar questions late last year but we
were hopeful that with registration income tanking on a par with the
stock market, AKC might feel some obligation to its customers. We
were wrong.
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I am therefore of the personal belief that much of what has occurred
over the past decade, from AKC’s support of PAWS to weak Animal
Rights resistance to seemingly deliberate alienation of show breeders is part of
a plan to get rid of us while attracting back the puppy mill business
it lost. Just one conclusive example is:
AKC's
Private Letter To Puppy Mills |
As breeder of over 200 AKC champions, many of which are
ROM, Group, and Best In Show winners, I am one of AKC’s biggest
fans. This publication wants me to be wrong - but not at the expense
of looking like a fool.
If anyone has an informed opinion to the
contrary, or information that
refutes anything said here, we will publish it and if requested,
respect and protect your anonymity.
let us hear from you
Hundreds of readers have written to express concern, outrage, or
disbelief as we covered ongoing changes in registration policies.
We're beginning to feel like Fox News but here are even more changes and
how they inflict more damage on purebred dogs and careful breeding programs.
Name Changes. In March 2008, AKC quietly approved a policy allowing owners to
change the name of a dog for $25 provided it was born in the U.S., had not
produced a litter or won an award and the breeder had failed to
individually register the puppy. The only way you can prevent a dog
from being renamed is to individually register each puppy in the
litter before letting it leave your home. This being the
second change already this year, only a fool would
believe there will be no more changes to the Name Change Rule.
Most long-time breeders name puppies according to a theme or like
horse breeders, include part of the sire or dam’s name or the old
German method of naming litters by alphabet. Thus a dog’s name can
instantly signify not only the breeder and kennel but its littermates, making
pedigree study much easier.
For over a century, breeders filled in the puppy’s name and
the new owner’s information on the “blue slip” and no one thought of
it as cheating AKC out of an extra $20 per puppy. Times have
changed. AKC now looks at this practice as a multi-million dollar
loss but the steps taken to discourage it are strange indeed.
Alteration of a blue slip used to be punishable by loss of
privileges. Then as AKC grew and processed so many registrations,
things got sloppy and people began adding to or altering the name
filled in by the breeder. There was no need to complain, I know
because I did but to no avail. AKC denied liability and after a couple of my Canine
Chronicle columns on that subject, AKC simply removed the warning
printed on the blue slips. By the mid-nineties, there had been
multiple changes and disclaimers and finally AKC changed the blue slips
into the full sized legal document currently in use.
Look for changes on the registration application or certificate
notifying buyers they can re-name the dog, for $25.
Enhancing AKC’s new “register anything” policy, properly known as
the Administrative Pedigree Research Service, changing
the dog’s registered name makes it much more difficult to spot
criminal fraud such as getting full registration on a pet puppy sold
with “no papers.”
Obtaining anything of (varying)
value under false pretenses is a felony. But who cares?
So it appears that dishonest owners, including puppy mills, can get
full registration and then change the dog’s name so the breeder
won’t recognize it as the pet-with-no-papers. Not only will your
puppy sale agreement not be honored by AKC, you’ll have a hard time
proving you weren’t complicit when that dog’s progeny start emerging
from a puppy mill or are discovered (by your worst enemy of course!)
for sale at Petsmart!
Regarding registered name changes, AKC judge and long-time breeder
Dany Canino, in her March 2009 Showsight Magazine column says “I
recently experienced this. I had sold two pups that had been named
by me and about a week after I sold them, the new owners changed
their names. Why on earth AKC would think this idea to be good, I
don’t know.”
Dany goes on to point out the difficulty of a breeder tracking a
dog’s winnings which many of us like to do. How can you know that
Ch. Harry’s Fido is actually the standout puppy you and the
buyer agreed to name XYZ’s Great Showdog 2B?
Breeders also want to know when one of our breeding has been resold,
and to whom. Most breeders guarantee puppies; actually, we guarantee
more for less than do the car manufacturers (!) and we want to know
if for any reason, an owner can’t keep the dog. We either take it
back or help get the dog into a good home.
So
let’s quit looking like the fools AKC thinks we are. Defending this
new rule, the Registration Dept. VP actually said pet owners might want to name the dog
after a relative!
April Fools!
For every
one-time dog buyer willing to pay $25 to rename a dog, there are a
hundred show breeders who pay thousands to register hundreds
of
dogs. They are going to be mad as hell when we convince them that AKC is really doing this!
Unfortunately, that’s not all. If you too are beginning to feel a little
bit like an April Fool, you're not alone. There are many more
questions than answers. After placing four calls to AKC last week,
on Friday I was finally able to speak with David Roberts, Assistant
Vice President of AKC Registrations. He was polite, professional,
and personable.
I emailed him the
ten registration-related questions
outlined in Registry Redacted because they are
the most asked by breeders. Under other circumstances, a
PR person would have popped off meaningless answers on the spot but
to his credit, Mr. Roberts seemed to want to do more. He
promised to get back to us by Tuesday's deadline but then Monday he
sent an email to the effect that he had been instructed to refer the
questions to communications.
Maybe someone in communications
knows more about registrations than does the VP of the Registration
Department. Go figure.
Depending on AKC’s position which I predict we won’t know until it
is too late, it looks like you have few alternatives if you care
what happens to your kennel name, your dogs, and your ethics.
You can ignore the direction in which the dog sport, like a giant
oil tanker, is irrevocably headed. Just pretend the rocky shoals
don’t exist. Make believe this is a movie and at the last minute,
we’ll all be rescued with no harm done.
You can say “To hell with this, I’ll just keep a couple of neutered
dogs, enjoy them, and quit agonizing over stupid things like Human
Rights and breeding show dogs.”
Or you can cowboy up and say “I’m mad
as hell and I ain’t gonna take it any
more. I’m joining a march on 51 Madison Avenue! The news media will
be there to cover the protest because their sponsors know that dog
lovers are big spenders and this is going to be a big “media event.”
Shucks, if I’m not training a puppy or going to shows, what else is
there to do? Count me in!”
Actually, there could be two marches, one in Raleigh NC which is
where AKC’s Registration Operations are located, and one in New York
City, where AKC policy is made. Or perhaps the new board members will rethink the current direction and it
will never
be necessary to protect our breeding programs.
At the risk of sounding like a
fanatical dog lover, my horse is saddled.
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