Still Standing

Still Standing Episode 3 Limited Registration

• The Canine Chronicle • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Wayne and Kim discuss the pros and cons of Limited Registration.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Still Standing, the Dog Show podcast with Wayne Kavanaugh and Kim Meredith brought to you by the Canine Chronicle, celebrating over 50 years of excellence. And it really is a super magazine. We all know that. And we also know that Kim Merritt is magnificent as well. Good morning, Kim. How are you?

SPEAKER_02:

How are you, Wayne? Yes, and I agree. Canine Chronicle rocks at the best thing.

SPEAKER_00:

And by the way, you've had such an easy week, Kim. You look so relaxed. No car problems, no windshields, no flat tires, none of that, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no. Yeah, it's it's been uh yeah, I think I'm in a my my universe is in retrograde. It's just one thing after another after another. But you know, you gotta be tough. You gotta be tough to live in the west, as I say.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, but how is your uh housebreaking not of your older dog who's never had a problem? How's that going?

SPEAKER_02:

My older dog's never had a problem.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00:

Didn't you have a little housebreaking issue for the dog who's upset about you leaving the house?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, oh that. Oh, the pea fest. You're talking about the pea fest. Yeah, well, I went to the doctor Friday because I'm old now and I'm getting cataracts. Joy, joy. I can hardly wait. So I went about six months ago to have my eyes checked and not quite ready. Not, you know, so I went Friday to have them rechecked and I left my darling Doberman and my darling French bulldog in the house, God forbid, for three hours. And my Frenchie Rue screams his head off, ran to the front door, flinging himself against the door as I locked it, howling his head off, mad because he didn't get to go. Bye-bye. So I came home and opened the door and there, oh Mom, you're happy. And he had peed. He jumped up on my bed, he peed all over the bed, he peed on the couch, he peed on the chair. He's mad.

SPEAKER_00:

These are you see, you you should have stolen with limited registration because limited restoration stops housebreaking problems, stops everything. We're gonna I'm glad he's all sorted out, but we are gonna talk about limited registration today. That's our topic, but it didn't work for Rue, right?

SPEAKER_02:

It didn't work for can I throw in about the cracked windshield and the front tire on my run around is flat, and you know it goes on and on. Anyway, let's go back to limited registration, which is less less depressing. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I've got I did some babysitting this morning. We don't have babies, but our daughter does, and that ends up being our limited lifestyle registrations, but but they're adorable and I loved it. And yesterday I did jigsaw puzzles, uh Legos, and I don't know, as a princess or whatever. But we're back on track with this, and I've been thinking during all that time about this kerfuffle. So the way it went down is you've probably heard that any minute now you're gonna be in the ring Saturday with your special, and you're gonna get beat by a dog who has limited registration papers because they're now allowed in confirmation classes, right? No, didn't happen. Never came close to happening. So this was one of those wonderful, you know, between our thirst for gossip and and and the internet and social media, we things wildfire. So there was the people were thinking that the AKC was going to pass this or did pass it. You can't pass what's not proposed. It didn't get that far. It happened in a delegate's group meeting, and one of the one of the delegate has groups for each kind of thing they want to explore. And they were talking about it came up. Should we have dogs shown in limited registration with limited registration papers? And the answer was no, no one was for it. So a board member happened to say, Well, I think we should take a vote. This is how it's reported to me, this part, right? That the the board member said, Let's take a vote. I don't know if that board member had straw vote, real vote, whatever, but it was unanimous no. End of topic. There was never a proposal taken to the board for approval. There was never one written and presented to the board. It never got that far. And by the way, you know who votes on rule changes for dog shows? The delegates, not the board. So it it it it just didn't have it didn't get if to get a rule change, because I've been to many of those delegates meetings, to for a rule change, it has to be read, it has to be discussed, it has to be beat up and pressed, it has to be published twice in the Gazette, it takes forever. And then there's a vote, and there's parliamentary procedures and and Robert's rules, it's not simple, so it never got even close to that far. But what it did do is if you can't tell, is fire me up about my favorite topic, Kim.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it fired up everybody because I mean, I think that you know, for years, myself included, we felt that the limited registration protected us as breeders. It prevented people from that have our puppies from breeding them, from showing them. And that was our little uh safety net. Uh, even though we have contracts, most of them are not even, you know, wouldn't hold up in court, or unless you have a lot of money you want to spend trying to defend your contract. So I think that it really riled everybody up quickly because uh losing that protection that we all felt that we had.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it reminded us that this could happen in a rule change, but it's already true. So when I was at at AKC, there were a few of us that were against this rule, this limit in 1994, I think it was, limited registration was proposed. Only a couple of us were against it for business reasons. It was a great, it meant a lot. It was we were compelled, we're gonna end these backyard breeders, we're gonna take control of this population. We just had this glorious thought of how this would work, but a few of us that knew about math knew that you maybe didn't consider the exponential math thing. And as a result, from 1994, first generation after that, 1.4 million dogs were 1.39 million registered dogs were registered in '94. And since then, so why would that happen? Because we wouldn't have to breed the dogs, right? And we'll get to that. Actually, maybe we'll get to that right now, Kim. Let's do it. So the AKC had no choice, right? We're selling all these dogs with very noble, because we're going to get rid of backyard breeders. How'd that work out? Any backyard breeders anywhere anymore, Kim?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, less of good doodles, less of good all-colored Frenchies, do I need to go on?

SPEAKER_00:

On my way to the beach here in Michigan, the big lake, not Florida. There are two signs within two miles of each other: hand painted drippy letters that say AKC, Pugs, Boxers, Corgies, and the one down the road that says something else. They're fully papered. Then they smoke their dogs out. We didn't stop that. No one can stop that. Limited registration certainly didn't stop it. What it did do is shrink the population of purebred pets in America. So the result being that AKC needed somebody to fill that backlog, that void of registration revenue. We had to go to the we had to AKC had no choice. Well, they did, but they went to the commercial breeders. When I was in New York working for AKC, I was vice president of communications as well. And our goal was to hoist this to hoist, to uh host this bunch of seminars and series in in Manhattan press conference, start a campaign called Meet the Mother. And our goal was to tell people when you're buying a puppy, you should go to their house or kennel, meet the mother of the dog, smell the place, see the place, and feel if it feels right, that might be the right place to be. Now we're telling people because those people don't exist at the degree they did, it's okay to go get one in a pet shop or a commercial breeder. In fact, we had to. I proposed in an off-site conference one time uh at the Vanderbilt estate, Jim Edwards and I, I proposed that we pass a resolution that we were going to stop pet shops from selling puppies. The attorneys went crazy. No, they went crazy, rightfully so, I guess. But we were that strong against it, and now we have no choice. So the AKC did a good thing, smart thing. They decided, okay, we can't fight City Hall, but we can teach them. And they went and did a very noble job putting on seminars, I think they still do, teaching commercial breeders how to breed dogs more clean, responsible, genetics classes, animal husbandry classes. And from what I hear, some veterinarians do health testing have told me that some of the nicest kennels they've ever seen are commercial breeding operations that look like palaces. I'm guessing that's a minority.

SPEAKER_02:

But um I think it's a minority. I think there's a lot of them having lived at a farm in Ohio in the middle of the heart of all of that. Uh, there are several that were, you know, spot like just what you're describing, and and many more that are in cages and backyards during the snow, et cetera, which is you would expect of a typical puppy mill or you know, backyard breeder as we call them. But it makes me wonder. I'm just gonna thrust this out here to you. Do you think that in the years you were at AKC, AKC now, AKC in the past, that we've ever really advertised billboards, television commercials, whatever, the advantage of having an AKC registered purebred dog? Do you think that we've pushed it enough? Do you think we've made the public aware?

SPEAKER_00:

Sadly enough, and when I was there, the first year I was there, I started a public education department, didn't have one. And we're doing outreach.

SPEAKER_02:

What does that say?

SPEAKER_00:

There was a children's book. There was a children's book, AKC Complete Dog for Kids. There were school programs in the schools. I don't know if that goes on anymore. But that department grew real quick, and we were pretty proud of it. But there was also a program where we went, we went to every vet school in America, Liz Bodner, the AKC vet and I, to every vet school in America talking about the benefits of purebred dogs to the vet students. Martin, I can tell you those they're not doing it anymore. Those seminars were packed. I remember UC Davis, giant auditorium that opened all the doors because people were sitting out of the grass. There were no seats for them. They were sitting outside listening to us. We were trying to tell them how to identify breed-specific diseases. And I remember one student read their hand. I said, you know, they're like a collie. And one of the what's what's a so you you know, you gotta remember that all vet students don't know all about show dogs and purebred dogs. We were there, yeah. And and unfortunately, now we have a lot of vets that won't crop and duck and spay and do toenails or any do claws because we've lost that that bridge.

SPEAKER_02:

And because let's be honest, PETA's done a better job. Yeah, way better than we have. I mean, and it's tragic. I mean, where all these years, where have we been, the sport, management, etc., to tout our purebred dogs? And why? Because of reliability of temperament for health issues, identifying health issues that you don't get in a backyard bred dog. All of it. And I think a big part of the problem is that it was never done.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, the one of there's a couple of great studies right now that show that crossbred dogs are just as likely to have genetic diseases as purebreds, in some cases, more. Absolutely. But speaking of golden doodles quickly, if there were a really good breeder with excellent golden retrievers, all the health testing, all the temperaments, and the same thing with a poodle, a breeder who had excellent credentials and all the right health tests, and they were beautiful temperaments, and bred them together and had these puppies, that's one thing. Not for it, obviously, but that's one thing. But that's not where golden doodles come from. They come from a commercially bred golden retriever, commercially bred poodle, no health testing, none of it. A lot of amateurs breeding them that don't even know what health testing is. So, yeah, you're going to get genet disease that way. And so it doesn't. Why aren't we running ads about that? I don't know. Anyway, off track. So let's get back to limited registration. So because of this, now we're in the commercial breeding business. I'm not saying it's good or bad. It is, it wasn't just limited registration. It also had pressure from animal rights and societal changes and moving off the farm and all that, whatever. But bottom line is we had this false sense that limited registration was going to solve all these problems. It did not cause more problems. So now let's get to limited registration as we know it, regarding specifically dog shows and breeding. But first, let's take a short break. We'll be right back with still standing.

SPEAKER_02:

We're still standing.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to Still Standing, and thanks again to our sponsors, the Canine Chronicle. Back to limited this is so hard to say. We should say LR because limited registration is not easy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, LR. We like LR. Let's do LR.

SPEAKER_00:

So these LR papers gave us a false sense of security about where we can show our dogs and breed our dogs. And that's a problem. I'm all for it. Don't get me wrong. Great concept. But we thought that with those limited registration papers that a person couldn't show or breed their dog. Let's take confirmation classes and shows first. Kim, are there any other places a dog can be shown besides the AKC?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. Many.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Many, many.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Probably the biggest one is UKC, obviously. And you know, having worked with 4Hers in the past, I will say that the majority, not all, but the majority of the 4-H students all register with UKC. Because UKC, you know, AKC has been kind of late in the game and adding, although they've done it beautifully. You know, barn hunt, I mean, fast cat, dock diving, I mean, you name it, and it's fabulous. But UKC was doing that kind of stuff years ago. And so there was more stuff to do. And I believe uh you would know better than I. One of their taglines was our dogs do stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, that was my own.

SPEAKER_02:

And um, and what a great thing.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a great thing. And the 4-H kids probably feel more comfortable without professional handlers there, but be that you may, we want them too at AKC. But AKC has done a bang up job with performance events.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

And if you look at the entries, the only growth in AKC event is performance. Yeah, they're doing a bang up job, they've got great.

SPEAKER_02:

Myself included. I'm doing agility. I mean, my little Frenchie girl just got her farm dog title and she's got her trick dog title. And it's fun, and the dogs love it. It's better than going in left-hand circles all day, right?

SPEAKER_00:

But and you should, as a breeder, when you sell with your limited registration papers or not, say, hey, we've got the events at AKC that you should go to. You should definitely support them, but it doesn't stop people, nor should it, from registering with other registries, too. So I can tell you that for sure, there was a there was a push years ago that the AKC board was saying they believed, and rightfully so, I guess, that other registries were ruining. That's why the decline in registration was happening. That's not true. It was limited registration, it's paying and neutering. What happens is if you have AKC papers on your iris setter and you want to also do field trialing at American Field, you can also register with American Field. You don't have to ask permission. You can have the right to do that, and you should. You can register with UKC, you can register with International Cannel Club, whatever that is, but you can register your dog with a bunch of registries. No one can prevent you from doing that. So that gives you the variety to show in different venues. And if you live in the middle of nowhere, there's only one AKC event, you might want to do that. Or we have a lot of people that show that a handler shows their dogs at AKC shows. When it retires, the people might want to show them at other registries, UKC, whatever, by themselves. So yeah, you can't prevent puppies you sell from being shown in confirmation classes. You can prevent them, hopefully, from showing in AKC confirmation classes, but there are other registries. So, you know, a subtle difference, but a big one. If you're worried about your dog being in a show ring so people can see it and it's ugly, too bad. So you say, well, not if they being neuter them, nay, nay. There's altered classes in all those registries. And I just had a circumstance a couple weeks ago. I judged an Ask. That's another great registry, right? American Shepherd, Australian Shepherd Club of America. They have a wonderful system, a wonderful registry. And a lot of people that have Australian Shepherds register them with both AKC and ASCA. I judged a beautiful species for them a couple weeks ago, and the altered class was gorgeous. Two group winners, AKC group winners in there, Pio on one. They had to alter them. And I got to see them and I got to see where their breeding was. So I'm looking for a stud dog. I don't care if this one's altered. I see what that stud dog produced.

SPEAKER_02:

So none of the sperm, there may be frozen sperm available you might want to look into, you know, that kind of thing, sure. And then, you know, we've talked about this before. They're like ASCA, like the Australian Shepherd Club, the Cavalier Club, that have had many, many, many years of their own registry and really didn't want to join AKC. It was kind of a battle, basically, to bring them to AKC because most of the club members were against it.

SPEAKER_00:

And the old club, as they called it. And I think you can still register with both the old club and AKC. Yes and compete in both of their events. So don't think your dog. There are other in our world, yeah, all AKC, but there's another world out there and we forget about it. So when we register limited registration and say, well, they can't be shown in confirmation, that's not necessarily true. The worse end of that is when we think that limited registration papers mean they can't be bred. Of course they can be bread. Limited registration papers have no force over biology. Ever had a oops litter, Kim?

SPEAKER_02:

I had two in uh my since 1971. I've had two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And sometimes every single breeder you know, any good breeder you know, not have had I mean everybody knows.

SPEAKER_02:

No, no, if they're honest, they're honest. And sometimes, you know what? They're your best, sometimes they're your best litters. I mean, I think God probably has some knowledge and knows better than we do sometimes, right? He's better at matching, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But yeah, there's always a good one out of noobsler, right? So physically, yeah, your dog can't now. Can you prevent those dogs from being registered with the AKC? Not if they have if they have luminary registration papers, yes. But that's it, they can register with other registries. So you say, Well, not mine, I have a span uter contract. How enforceable are they, Kim?

SPEAKER_02:

Not at all. No contract, you know, unless you're gonna spend the money, hire an attorney, first of all, have it drafted properly by most likely by an attorney, a contract attorney, and then you're gonna spend the money to hire an attorney to take it to court. I mean, how many people? They're usually not worth the paper they're written on, quite frankly, even drafted by an attorney, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money and a lot of time fighting over it. And how many people actually go through with that? I do have a couple of friends that have. I have myself went to court with it and was able to get the dog back, but it was expensive, it was stressful, and wouldn't want to do it again.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and and I'll bet most contracts haven't even seen the the desk of a lawyer. Exactly. But and they are very hard to enforce. I can tell you that from UKC and AKC serving for both as an officer. I can tell you that's very, very difficult to enforce. So you say, well, then they don't get full papers unless they have, you know, they unless they spay their dog and come back and prove it. I don't give them any papers and I don't give them some of their money back or whatever. People don't care, they move, you know, they go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02:

They can't even do that because AKC law bylaws say to the breeder that you must give the papers when the dog is transferred. Yeah, there's no choice. You are or you're breaking AKC's rules, they have to have papers. So are you going to make a full registration or a limited registration? That's when you make that choice. But you cannot withhold papers because if they contact AKC and they say, I bought this dog from Wayne Kavanaugh and he didn't give me my papers, they're gonna register that dog and give them to him anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a good point, that's a real good point. Yeah, the um and there's there's so many things that can happen as far as that goes, which brings us to not only contracts being tough to enforce, but the the crazy battles of co-ownership. So you see, well, I'm gonna co-own it, and that's gonna solve it. Boy, nothing further from the truth. No, the papers that say owner, AKC papers say owner, and you list the owners, they don't hold up real well in court. I've had been involved in plenty of cases where the judge decided the vet bills were a better record because that's who owned the dog, possessed the dog, and spent money to get the dog taken to the vet and checked and went sick or whatever else. They're taken care of. Even if they were the fifth co-owner, if there is such a thing, that's who has the dog, that's who paid the vet bills, that's better than the papers. So they don't always hold up in court. And again, what if they're registered in five different registries? You've got five sets of papers. And by the way, registries don't all have the same number of names available. So you may be owned with, you know, in some registries with two owners, some with five, some with two, some were missing misses, some with just misses. There's a divorce. Stuff happens. So the courts really don't use the most typically don't use the ownership, the registration papers as the only source of ownership. They'll want more than that. So that's not going to help you. And in AKC co-ownerships, there's just plenty of lawsuits. Divorces happen all the time, custody battles. It's they are difficult, real difficult. So thinking that your papers are going to get you ownership, probably not. Probably not. If you don't believe me, I'm writing about this and I pick up the walls returned yesterday. There's a story about just this a case right now is going to the Kansas Supreme Court, the Supreme Court in Kansas, the highest court in the state on a co-ownership battle. And the papers so far, it's been through all the courts. The ownership, the registration papers haven't done it. Well, first of all, they the papers claim that they're co-owners and they both own the dog. So, how's that going to prove anything? Contracts, maybe. I can tell you the judges don't want to take the time to understand what co-ownerships and and show and handlers and taking dogs away to be, they don't want to hear any of that. It's just not the way it works. So it's a messy situation. The only way you can prevent the dog from not being shown or bred is to never sell it. So what we do is we trust people. And we should trust people. We should trust people more. A really good guy who was a former board member. I didn't ask him, so I won't use his name. Super guy. I asked him where he got his first dog. He said the New York Times. And I can tell you that when I was a kid, that's that was the gold standard. Either that or Popular Dogs Magazine. That's where you bought your dog. And he said this show breeder took a chance on him. Took a chance on him, trusted him. He gave them money, they gave him a puppy, and they helped him. He ends up being an AKC board member, former board member, the president of a ton of candle clubs and groups. And uh he's hosted shows, he'd done everything in the sport because someone took a chance on him. Are you gonna get burnt sometimes? Yeah, but you already can. We have to do our due diligence in finding out who we're selling puppies to. Some sort of contract, it's not a bad idea. It encourages people to not, they'll go, oh, maybe I better not do that because there is a contract. They don't know that they're easy to break. So they're a good thing. I'm not saying they're not a good thing, I'm just saying it sets a sense of false security. I would love some new system of limited registration, maybe. I don't know, haven't thought of one. But as it works, there should be some sort of protection.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, for the pure red operator, I think. You know, it was pretty obvious financially, and no one I think bothered to look into that. What it's going to do to your bottom line generations down the road is killing it. I mean, you're, you know, you can scream about registrations are down, registrations are down. Well, but when you're spaying and neutering everything and you're putting everything on limited contracts and they're not being bred, well, yeah, that's what happens, right? So what year? I don't remember exactly what year limited registration came into play. 94. Okay, so 94 to 2025, you know, in in some respects it's a long time, but in other respects it's really not. And look what it's done to the bottom lines killed it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, at one point, now the AKC stopped showing the registration stats when they were diving. They used to publish them every year for 100 years. It should exactly not only how many dogs, but how many each breed so the clubs could track it and all that.

SPEAKER_02:

I remember, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So that was in the Gazette every month when there was one. And so we know that it hit around 400,000, according to Ronnie Irving from the Countle Club England, who came over and tried to help. So it went from 1.4 to 400,000. That's a million dollar million dog loss times registration fee. That's millions and millions and millions of dollars. So, yeah, there was that issue. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't lose use limited registration. It does work in many cases. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a contract. They do work or at least encourage people to abide by them in many cases. I'm not saying you shouldn't spame neuter dogs you don't want to be bred. I'm saying that the problem is that limited registration papers send a false sense of security for people who are well-intended. You need to know that going into it.

SPEAKER_02:

So I mean, I it always gave me a false sense of security. I'm sure probably did you at some point as well. Yeah. And so then when the scream started this last couple of months about possibly eliminating that, I mean, that was very real. People were like, what? I mean, that's our only that's our only you know protection right there. So I can understand why it became so heated because we really do need something. But on the other hand, you know, your point about the fact that we haven't done a good job of talking about purebred dogs and the advantages of purebred dogs and really getting it out to the media about health testing, about you know, personality traits are huge. People, you know, will go, well, okay, you have beagles, right? For instance, you know, I bought a beagle and I can't stand it because it barks all the time. Well, hello. You know, it's a beagle, it's because it marks right. Yeah, and and the purebred dog fancy, at least the breeders were very good about saying, okay, you know, well, you don't want that breed because of this. And that should have been carried by AKC and should have been put in the media many, many years ago. And I think it would have helped the situation of people buying more purebred dogs because they would understand what the advantages were.

SPEAKER_00:

So here we're saying the animal rights people are bad because they're telling everybody to spay new to their dogs, and so are we. Yeah. I'm not saying everybody should have them let them free breathe, but you really need to know who you're selling them to, and you need to try to keep track of them, but you cannot. There's an example the AKC now registers dogs from from Nigeria, and I forget the name of the registry, but they just that was last month or this month, they just decided. So, what if a guy moves over here? Really good person with a great, honest reputation as a great dog, moves here from Nigeria, and he's registered the dog with his registry as his only owner. He comes over here, the dog's real nice. He gets two people to sign on to help with showing it. Now you've got three owners with the AKC papers. And then one of those people says, you know, I really like to do lore coursing. And there's an there's the lore coursing red tree that I like. I'm going to throw them in there and do right. Then the guy says, you know what? I got a great job offer back home. I'm leaving Maryland and I'm taking the dog with me because here's the papers that prove I'm the only owner. These are things we just don't think of. Back to a while back with my dad, which is, you know, I never met my grandfather. I was too young when he passed, but he had dogs too. My father and I worked closely together. He was a little kid. I was hooked from day one. So he bred beagles in the kitchen for the first couple of years before he had a kennel. And he'd put their the litters, he would advertise them in the newspaper, New York Times, or the local paper, the Red Bank Register. And uh people would come by the puppies. And he gave them the puppy, they gave him the money. He gave them the papers. There was no spaying neutering no L Peter. This is how we're getting 1.4 million dogs registered, by the way, each year. Those people, he'd sell them all as pets, except a couple of show dogs, right? Maybe he'd run one on or sell one to a good job. But no, there's plenty of them going to petrol. Those people would call him three years later and say, hey, guess what, Ray? My father's cousin's plumber, his daughter's got a beagle, and it's beautiful, right? And they would and we want to breed them together because everybody in the family wants one of these. What is wrong with that? So my father would say, I'll help you. I'll help you welcome if you need help. I'll I'll do what I can, right? I'll give you some tips. You can open up.

SPEAKER_02:

But the female you're referring to is not registered. She's not registered.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it's registered. It is registered. Fully registered. And and their cousins, uncles, nieces, whatever, also had an AKC registered beagle.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so you're talking about two AKC registered animals. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So this novice owner lived in the neighborhood, had this litter. My dad and I would help any way we could. And then those people would sell the puppies to people in the neighborhood with papers. And maybe they did the same thing. Guess what? There were beagle pets everywhere. And we knew them all, most of them. Then they'd come to my father and say, We want to breed to your stud dog. And my father goes, Yeah. These people have been super great people with the they're in the obedience club now, and their kids are involved with the dogs, and everything's wonderful, and the dog's ugly. We want to breed to your stud dog. And my father would say to me, If I don't, an uglier one that's not temperament testing.

SPEAKER_02:

They're going to be an uglier one with no health testing. Exactly. They're going to breed it regardless.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. But as a result, there are a whole lot of purebred AKC registered dogs in pet homes that, oh, heavens to Betsy, had a litter. And by the way, those people that did that would call my dad back and say, that was hard. That was a mess. We're not doing that anymore. They have that one litter. We didn't make any more.

SPEAKER_02:

We're not doing idiot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I don't know. It it was a different time. I get that. But boy, have we changed things? And I'm not sure our high and mighty were the only ones wise enough to breed a litter. No one else that does, by the way, when you do that narrowing down of who can breed a dog. You get that narrow gene pool of eight one stud dog is bred to. I see a golden retriever in the park, and I can walk over and tell them pretty much what pedigree it is. Not hard to do.

SPEAKER_02:

I can't explain it very, especially in Goldwyn's, you can tell. I mean, and thankfully, we have a lot of longtime established breeders that have bred, you know, multiple best and show you know national winners. And you can pick their dogs out, and good for them over the over the centuries, because literally I've been involved for centuries.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, I mean having that little hybrid vigor out there in the pet world isn't the worst thing that can happen. Yeah, but you know, they I don't mean hybrid by bringing two breeds together, fallacy, you know that, right? I mean, yeah, I mean eight. No, I don't mean that kind of hybrid. I mean hybrid vigor, genet diversity, and a breed that's registered, right? But they're not the same parents, is what I'm saying, I guess.

unknown:

Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, there's there's so many things to think about. I think the concept of lunar registration is terrific. I think the execution was bad. I think the business model was was unforeseen by those who didn't want to see it. And I think we've not changed a thing about backyard breeders and puppy mills. Not a thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, more importantly, I mean, so now that we're, you know, litter registrations are down horribly, we've gone to the commercial breeders, a lot of them Amish. And what's the answer here? The answer certainly isn't going to the clubs and trying to raise the fee to AKC to make more money because the clubs are already struggling to put on dog shows. Exhibitors are about, you know, we're up to$40 an entry now. I mean, in a lot of clubs, 35 to 40. It used to be 35, but then it crept up to 38. Now we're at 40 for some of these facilities. And so deeing the exhibitor and the clubs certainly is not the answer. So now we need to start looking at other sources of revenue or cutting expenses.

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's a real conundrum. And this, as you can tell by all our offshoots here, limited registration, co-ownerships, contracts, paying and neutering, other registries, other options for people, golden doodles, puppy mills, commercial breeding. It is such a giant net of just tangles to untie. I don't know. We need a really conscientious effort by an unbiased group who wants to look at the big picture holistically and see how they're all intertwined and what we can do to reverse some of this or at least improve it. Now, there's nothing wrong, also, with having a niche registry where they're only for show dogs. We just have a way fewer employees, way fewer clubs, way fewer people. But if you want to keep your arms around the if you want to own these breeds and control everything about them, that's how you do it. But it's not going to prevent people from breeding your dogs. The border collie people, when I was there at AKC, the Border Collie people were furious because the AKC was registering border collies.

SPEAKER_02:

I went to some of their we forgot about this long time, and besides the Aussies and besides the Cavaliers. There you go. That's a huge one, the border collies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And they were gonna sue, well, they did sue, and you know, and it went on forever. And I was trying to mend fences down the road, and the boy, those guys didn't like it much, but I understood, and I was trying to, you know. So finally I said to them, you know, here's the thing you're not gonna let your beautiful herding dogs jump the fence into a show kennel and pregnant and impregnate them, right? Oh no. I said, Yeah, well, we're not gonna do that either. So, yeah, they're gonna be separate gene pools, but you're not gonna lose your herding instinct, you're not gonna lose your herding gene pool. It's still going to exist. Show dogs will coexist. And by the way, that instinct's not gonna go away. So you're gonna be surprised how good these show dogs can hurt. And that ended up being true. I just don't know how many times we can go to that well, and how many times we can look back and go, that was a good idea or that was a bad idea. If limited restoration was a bad idea, how do we go back and put the genie in the bottle? I don't know. If it was a good idea, we need to look at ways to help the revenue keep flowing to preserve the sport that we love. We love the AKC, we love the sport, we love everything that charter stands for. And unless we come up with better ideas and think more with our mind than our gut, think less politically and more specific about what we think should happen and make those things right. I don't know what the future is. I just don't. Hopefully, it's great and wonderful. And yes, you can still go to dog shows every weekend. 20 of them last weekend. So that's a whole other that's a whole other episode.

SPEAKER_02:

But you know, I think you know what?

SPEAKER_00:

It's all connected, Kim. It's all connected.

SPEAKER_02:

It's all connected. It's all and you know, I think that you know, all of us that have been around for centuries, literally, we take great pride in our purebred dogs, and we take great pride in producing healthy, health-tested dogs that you know that go home to families with kids that love them forever and hopefully they're long-lived. And I think that all of us have that pride of breeding AKC registered purebred dogs. How do we keep this family, this sport that we all love together and do it correctly and have it be financially viable?

SPEAKER_00:

I'll tell you exactly what it takes for the leadership, the board, the staff, whatever. It takes those individuals to be brave enough to do the right thing and not the popular thing. That's the answer. If you're trying to please your delegates so you can get elected, if you're trying to be correct in the eyes of certain clubs or certain registries or certain delegate bodies, you're never gonna find your way home. You have to be bold enough to go, I know this is gonna be terrible. Well, for example, I'm saying that I think limited registration should be changed or adjusted. And what it's been that's an unpopular thing. Uh, there's right now, there's listeners that are gonna write me and go, what are you crazy? Let's the greatest thing in the world. I don't want my dogs. I had a guy tell me, a really good guy, a great breeder, great friend. He said, I don't want dogs with my kennel name that are ugly in the show ring. I that's why I have lunar registration because I don't want them shown in AKC events. I said, That's great. I completely I buy that, I get it, but guess what? I judge ugly dogs every weekend.

unknown:

You know.

SPEAKER_00:

So you're not keeping it out of the ring. But I get his point though. But by doing that, we have fewer entries, fewer breed entries. So there's nothing wrong with the mediocre dogs being in there because maybe they'll see another good one or get tired of getting beaten by a good one. We're all too proud, and I get that. But that's what it takes. The right decision, not the popular one. And I hope that there's ways to do that. And again, we we don't want to, we're not sitting here trying to criticize the limited registration, the AKC, or anybody else. We just want the sport to work, and sometimes you've got to take a deeper look before you can make change. And we hope this helps you think of better ways than we thought of. So until then, we'll see you next time right here because we're still standing. Thank Kim.

SPEAKER_02:

Good night, sweetie.