Registries

This is why there are there are so many little registries out there.
This is a cross post from a forum I was lurking on.

n Canada, ALL puppies are tatooed when the warden comes by and checks your litter. Chaser came from Canada and she has a tatoo in her ear. The only other tatoo on my dogs is Bullet. She has a tatoo in her ears too. Sherry has a tatoo kit and a registration number to use, specific to "her". She can tatoo dogs, use her number and register them with the company that gave her the Registration number. Numerous dogs of hers are tatooed, later she went to Microchips and now uses Microchips to identify her dogs. AKC requires that if you are a breeder and you have more than 20 dogs or any two dogs that are colored and patterned the same, you have to positively identify them. It is not good enough that I can identify, by looking at them, (even barks) which dog is which. At 6 months of age, every dog is supposed to be indentified by tatoo or microchip. I believe that no lab is allowed to have a tatooed or microchiped dog in their possession, if they do, they can be shut down permanently. If dogs are sold at auctions they have to be positively identified by tatoo or microchip. The USDA (and akc for that matter) doesn't care how you identify your dogs, so many puppy mills used livestock ear tags. When they dumped the dog or took it to auction, either they, or the new owner would rip the tag out of the ear and put their own new tag in (also if the dog was stolen by another puppy mill) If a stolen dog was tatooed in the ear they would cut off that portion of the ear. AKC papers was not a problem, they would just use a previously AKC'ed dog or add an extra dog to a litter and have papers for a dog they stole. If the dogs had never been DNA'ed, they could use papers on a dog that had previously died. This is why the puppy mill AKC papers and Pedigrees can be taken with a grain of salt because likely they have no idea who sired a litter additionally because of the above the dogs are probably not even the dog registered to the papers. When AKC started doing inspections and DNA testing of litters, this is when the new registries started popping up everywhere, because AKC suspended priviedges to breeders who lied about the sire of their pups (like I said they probably didn't know) AKC doesn't do inspections very often unless they find a problem on their first visit. Then they will come back for subsequent visits. When I was inspected in January, they said hardly anyone passes their first inspection. I was a bit shocked by this. Well anyway, this is just an FYI.