Still Standing Episode 3 Limited Registration

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

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Still Standing,
the Dog Show podcast with WayneKavanaugh and Kim Meredith
brought to you by the CanineChronicle, celebrating over 50
years of excellence.
And it really is a supermagazine.
We all know that.
And we also know that KimMerritt is magnificent as well.
Good morning, Kim.
How are you?

SPEAKER_02 (00:30):
How are you, Wayne?
Yes, and I agree.
Canine Chronicle rocks at thebest thing.

SPEAKER_00 (00:35):
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 (00:44):
Yeah, no.
Yeah, it's it's been uh yeah, Ithink I'm in a my my universe is
in retrograde.
It's just one thing afteranother after another.
But you know, you gotta betough.
You gotta be tough to live inthe west, as I say.

SPEAKER_00 (00:59):
Wow, but how is your uh housebreaking not of your
older dog who's never had aproblem?
How's that going?

SPEAKER_02 (01:06):
My older dog's never had a problem.

SPEAKER_00 (01:08):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:09):
What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 (01:10):
Didn't you have a little housebreaking issue for
the dog who's upset about youleaving the house?

SPEAKER_02 (01:15):
Oh, oh that.
Oh, the pea fest.
You're talking about the peafest.
Yeah, well, I went to the doctorFriday because I'm old now and
I'm getting cataracts.
Joy, joy.
I can hardly wait.
So I went about six months agoto have my eyes checked and not
quite ready.
Not, you know, so I went Fridayto have them rechecked and I

(01:36):
left my darling Doberman and mydarling French bulldog in the
house, God forbid, for threehours.
And my Frenchie Rue screams hishead off, ran to the front door,
flinging himself against thedoor as I locked it, howling his
head off, mad because he didn'tget to go.
Bye-bye.
So I came home and opened thedoor and there, oh Mom, you're

(02:01):
happy.
And he had peed.
He jumped up on my bed, he peedall over the bed, he peed on the
couch, he peed on the chair.
He's mad.

SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
These are you see, you you should have stolen with
limited registration becauselimited restoration stops
housebreaking problems, stopseverything.
We're gonna I'm glad he's allsorted out, but we are gonna
talk about limited registrationtoday.
That's our topic, but it didn'twork for Rue, right?

SPEAKER_02 (02:26):
It didn't work for can I throw in about the cracked
windshield and the front tire onmy run around is flat, and you
know it goes on and on.
Anyway, let's go back to limitedregistration, which is less less
depressing.
Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 (02:41):
Yeah, I've got I did some babysitting this morning.
We don't have babies, but ourdaughter does, and that ends up
being our limited lifestyleregistrations, but but they're
adorable and I loved it.
And yesterday I did jigsawpuzzles, uh Legos, and I don't
know, as a princess or whatever.
But we're back on track withthis, and I've been thinking
during all that time about thiskerfuffle.

(03:03):
So the way it went down isyou've probably heard that any
minute now you're gonna be inthe ring Saturday with your
special, and you're gonna getbeat by a dog who has limited
registration papers becausethey're now allowed in
confirmation classes, right?
No, didn't happen.

(03:25):
Never came close to happening.
So this was one of thosewonderful, you know, between our
thirst for gossip and and andthe internet and social media,
we things wildfire.
So there was the people werethinking that the AKC was going
to pass this or did pass it.
You can't pass what's notproposed.
It didn't get that far.

(03:46):
It happened in a delegate'sgroup meeting, and one of the
one of the delegate has groupsfor each kind of thing they want
to explore.
And they were talking about itcame up.
Should we have dogs shown inlimited registration with
limited registration papers?
And the answer was no, no onewas for it.
So a board member happened tosay, Well, I think we should

(04:07):
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 boardmember had straw vote, real
vote, whatever, but it wasunanimous no.
End of topic.
There was never a proposal takento the board for approval.
There was never one written andpresented to the board.

(04:29):
It never got that far.
And by the way, you know whovotes on rule changes for dog
shows?
The delegates, not the board.
So it it it it just didn't haveit didn't get if to get a rule
change, because I've been tomany of those delegates
meetings, to for a rule change,it has to be read, it has to be
discussed, it has to be beat upand pressed, it has to be

(04:49):
published twice in the Gazette,it takes forever.
And then there's a vote, andthere's parliamentary procedures
and and Robert's rules, it's notsimple, so it never got even
close to that far.
But what it did do is if youcan't tell, is fire me up about
my favorite topic, Kim.

SPEAKER_02 (05:09):
Well, it fired up everybody because I mean, I
think that you know, for years,myself included, we felt that
the limited registrationprotected us as breeders.
It prevented people from thathave our puppies from breeding
them, from showing them.
And that was our little uhsafety net.
Uh, even though we havecontracts, most of them are not

(05:31):
even, you know, wouldn't hold upin court, or unless you have a
lot of money you want to spendtrying to defend your contract.
So I think that it really riledeverybody up quickly because uh
losing that protection that weall felt that we had.

SPEAKER_00 (05:45):
Yeah, it reminded us that this could happen in a rule
change, but it's already true.
So when I was at at AKC, therewere a few of us that were
against this rule, this limit in1994, I think it was, limited
registration was proposed.
Only a couple of us were againstit for business reasons.

(06:07):
It was a great, it meant a lot.
It was we were compelled, we'regonna end these backyard
breeders, we're gonna takecontrol of this population.
We just had this gloriousthought of how this would work,
but a few of us that knew aboutmath knew that you maybe didn't
consider the exponential maththing.

(06:28):
And as a result, from 1994,first generation after that, 1.4
million dogs were 1.39 millionregistered dogs were registered
in '94.
And since then, so why wouldthat happen?
Because we wouldn't have tobreed the dogs, right?

(06:50):
And we'll get to that.
Actually, maybe we'll get tothat right now, Kim.
Let's do it.
So the AKC had no choice, right?
We're selling all these dogswith very noble, because we're
going to get rid of backyardbreeders.
How'd that work out?
Any backyard breeders anywhereanymore, Kim?

SPEAKER_02 (07:08):
Well, less of good doodles, less of good
all-colored Frenchies, do I needto go on?

SPEAKER_00 (07:13):
On my way to the beach here in Michigan, the big
lake, not Florida.
There are two signs within twomiles of each other: hand
painted drippy letters that sayAKC, Pugs, Boxers, Corgies, and
the one down the road that sayssomething else.
They're fully papered.
Then they smoke their dogs out.
We didn't stop that.
No one can stop that.

(07:34):
Limited registration certainlydidn't stop it.
What it did do is shrink thepopulation of purebred pets in
America.
So the result being that AKCneeded somebody to fill that
backlog, that void ofregistration revenue.

(07:56):
We had to go to the we had toAKC had no choice.
Well, they did, but they went tothe commercial breeders.
When I was in New York workingfor AKC, I was vice president of
communications as well.
And our goal was to hoist thisto hoist, to uh host this bunch

(08:16):
of seminars and series in inManhattan press conference,
start a campaign called Meet theMother.
And our goal was to tell peoplewhen you're buying a puppy, you
should go to their house orkennel, meet the mother of the
dog, smell the place, see theplace, and feel if it feels
right, that might be the rightplace to be.

(08:36):
Now we're telling people becausethose people don't exist at the
degree they did, it's okay to goget one in a pet shop or a
commercial breeder.
In fact, we had to.
I proposed in an off-siteconference one time uh at the
Vanderbilt estate, Jim Edwardsand I, I proposed that we pass a

(08:57):
resolution that we were going tostop pet shops from selling
puppies.
The attorneys went crazy.
No, they went crazy, rightfullyso, I guess.
But we were that strong againstit, and now we have no choice.
So the AKC did a good thing,smart thing.
They decided, okay, we can'tfight City Hall, but we can

(09:17):
teach them.
And they went and did a verynoble job putting on seminars, I
think they still do, teachingcommercial breeders how to breed
dogs more clean, responsible,genetics classes, animal
husbandry classes.
And from what I hear, someveterinarians do health testing
have told me that some of thenicest kennels they've ever seen
are commercial breedingoperations that look like

(09:40):
palaces.
I'm guessing that's a minority.

SPEAKER_02 (09:43):
But um I think it's a minority.
I think there's a lot of themhaving lived at a farm in Ohio
in the middle of the heart ofall of that.
Uh, there are several that were,you know, spot like just what
you're describing, and and manymore that are in cages and
backyards during the snow, etcetera, which is you would
expect of a typical puppy millor you know, backyard breeder as
we call them.

(10:04):
But it makes me wonder.
I'm just gonna thrust this outhere to you.
Do you think that in the yearsyou were at AKC, AKC now, AKC in
the past, that we've ever reallyadvertised billboards,
television commercials,whatever, the advantage of
having an AKC registeredpurebred dog?

(10:26):
Do you think that we've pushedit enough?
Do you think we've made thepublic aware?

SPEAKER_00 (10:31):
Sadly enough, and when I was there, the first year
I was there, I started a publiceducation department, didn't
have one.
And we're doing outreach.

SPEAKER_02 (10:38):
What does that say?

SPEAKER_00 (10:39):
There was a children's book.
There was a children's book, AKCComplete Dog for Kids.
There were school programs inthe schools.
I don't know if that goes onanymore.
But that department grew realquick, and we were pretty proud
of it.
But there was also a programwhere we went, we went to every
vet school in America, LizBodner, the AKC vet and I, to

(11:00):
every vet school in Americatalking about the benefits of
purebred dogs to the vetstudents.
Martin, I can tell you thosethey're not doing it anymore.
Those seminars were packed.
I remember UC Davis, giantauditorium that opened all the
doors because people weresitting out of the grass.

(11:21):
There were no seats for them.
They were sitting outsidelistening to us.
We were trying to tell them howto identify breed-specific
diseases.
And I remember one student readtheir hand.
I said, you know, they're like acollie.
And one of the what's what's aso you you know, you gotta
remember that all vet studentsdon't know all about show dogs

(11:41):
and purebred dogs.
We were there, yeah.
And and unfortunately, now wehave a lot of vets that won't
crop and duck and spay and dotoenails or any do claws because
we've lost that that bridge.

SPEAKER_02 (11:56):
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 ourpurebred dogs?
And why?
Because of reliability oftemperament for health issues,

(12:16):
identifying health issues thatyou don't get in a backyard bred
dog.
All of it.
And I think a big part of theproblem is that it was never
done.

SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
Yeah.
Well, the one of there's acouple of great studies right
now that show that crossbreddogs are just as likely to have
genetic diseases as purebreds,in some cases, more.
Absolutely.
But speaking of golden doodlesquickly, if there were a really
good breeder with excellentgolden retrievers, all the

(12:48):
health testing, all thetemperaments, and the same thing
with a poodle, a breeder who hadexcellent credentials and all
the right health tests, and theywere beautiful temperaments, and
bred them together and had thesepuppies, that's one thing.
Not for it, obviously, butthat's one thing.
But that's not where goldendoodles come from.
They come from a commerciallybred golden retriever,

(13:09):
commercially bred poodle, nohealth testing, none of it.
A lot of amateurs breeding themthat don't even know what health
testing is.
So, yeah, you're going to getgenet disease that way.
And so it doesn't.
Why aren't we running ads aboutthat?
I don't know.
Anyway, off track.
So let's get back to limitedregistration.
So because of this, now we're inthe commercial breeding

(13:31):
business.
I'm not saying it's good or bad.
It is, it wasn't just limitedregistration.
It also had pressure from animalrights and societal changes and
moving off the farm and allthat, whatever.
But bottom line is we had thisfalse sense that limited
registration was going to solveall these problems.
It did not cause more problems.
So now let's get to limitedregistration as we know it,

(13:53):
regarding specifically dog showsand breeding.
But first, let's take a shortbreak.
We'll be right back with stillstanding.

SPEAKER_02 (14:01):
We're still standing.

SPEAKER_00 (14:04):
Welcome back to Still Standing, and thanks again
to our sponsors, the CanineChronicle.
Back to limited this is so hardto say.
We should say LR because limitedregistration is not easy.

SPEAKER_02 (14:15):
Yeah, LR.
We like LR.
Let's do LR.

SPEAKER_00 (14:18):
So these LR papers gave us a false sense of
security about where we can showour 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 thoselimited registration papers that
a person couldn't show or breedtheir dog.

(14:40):
Let's take confirmation classesand shows first.
Kim, are there any other placesa dog can be shown besides the
AKC?

SPEAKER_02 (14:49):
Oh, yeah.
Many.

unknown (14:50):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (14:51):
Many, many.

SPEAKER_00 (14:52):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (14:53):
Probably the biggest one is UKC, obviously.
And you know, having worked with4Hers in the past, I will say
that the majority, not all, butthe majority of the 4-H students
all register with UKC.
Because UKC, you know, AKC hasbeen kind of late in the game
and adding, although they'vedone it beautifully.
You know, barn hunt, I mean,fast cat, dock diving, I mean,

(15:17):
you name it, and it's fabulous.
But UKC was doing that kind ofstuff years ago.
And so there was more stuff todo.
And I believe uh you would knowbetter than I.
One of their taglines was ourdogs do stuff.

SPEAKER_00 (15:30):
Yeah, thank you very much.
Yeah, that was my own.

SPEAKER_02 (15:32):
And um, and what a great thing.

SPEAKER_00 (15:35):
It's a great thing.
And the 4-H kids probably feelmore comfortable without
professional handlers there, butbe that you may, we want them
too at AKC.
But AKC has done a bang up jobwith performance events.

SPEAKER_02 (15:46):
Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 (15:46):
And if you look at the entries, the only growth in
AKC event is performance.
Yeah, they're doing a bang upjob, they've got great.

SPEAKER_02 (15:55):
Myself included.
I'm doing agility.
I mean, my little Frenchie girljust got her farm dog title and
she's got her trick dog title.
And it's fun, and the dogs loveit.
It's better than going inleft-hand circles all day,
right?

SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
But and you should, as a breeder, when you sell with
your limited registration papersor not, say, hey, we've got the
events at AKC that you should goto.
You should definitely supportthem, but it doesn't stop
people, nor should it, fromregistering with other
registries, too.
So I can tell you that for sure,there was a there was a push

(16:29):
years ago that the AKC board wassaying they believed, and
rightfully so, I guess, thatother registries were ruining.
That's why the decline inregistration was happening.
That's not true.
It was limited registration,it's paying and neutering.
What happens is if you have AKCpapers on your iris setter and
you want to also do fieldtrialing at American Field, you

(16:50):
can also register with AmericanField.
You don't have to askpermission.
You can have the right to dothat, and you should.
You can register with UKC, youcan register with International
Cannel Club, whatever that is,but you can register your dog
with a bunch of registries.
No one can prevent you fromdoing that.
So that gives you the variety toshow in different venues.
And if you live in the middle ofnowhere, there's only one AKC

(17:11):
event, you might want to dothat.
Or we have a lot of people thatshow that a handler shows their
dogs at AKC shows.
When it retires, the peoplemight want to show them at other
registries, UKC, whatever, bythemselves.
So yeah, you can't preventpuppies you sell from being
shown in confirmation classes.

(17:32):
You can prevent them, hopefully,from showing in AKC confirmation
classes, but there are otherregistries.
So, you know, a subtledifference, but a big one.
If you're worried about your dogbeing in a show ring so people
can see it and it's ugly, toobad.
So you say, well, not if theybeing neuter them, nay, nay.
There's altered classes in allthose registries.

(17:54):
And I just had a circumstance acouple weeks ago.
I judged an Ask.
That's another great registry,right?
American Shepherd, AustralianShepherd Club of America.
They have a wonderful system, awonderful registry.
And a lot of people that haveAustralian Shepherds register
them with both AKC and ASCA.

(18:14):
I judged a beautiful species forthem a couple weeks ago, and the
altered class was gorgeous.
Two group winners, AKC groupwinners in there, Pio on one.
They had to alter them.
And I got to see them and I gotto see where their breeding was.
So I'm looking for a stud dog.
I don't care if this one'saltered.

(18:35):
I see what that stud dogproduced.

SPEAKER_02 (18:38):
So none of the sperm, there may be frozen sperm
available you might want to lookinto, you know, that kind of
thing, sure.
And then, you know, we've talkedabout this before.
They're like ASCA, like theAustralian Shepherd Club, the
Cavalier Club, that have hadmany, many, many years of their
own registry and really didn'twant to join AKC.
It was kind of a battle,basically, to bring them to AKC

(19:01):
because most of the club memberswere against it.

SPEAKER_00 (19:04):
And the old club, as they called it.
And I think you can stillregister with both the old club
and AKC.
Yes and compete in both of theirevents.
So don't think your dog.
There are other in our world,yeah, all AKC, but there's
another world out there and weforget about it.
So when we register limitedregistration and say, well, they
can't be shown in confirmation,that's not necessarily true.

(19:25):
The worse end of that is when wethink that limited registration
papers mean they can't be bred.
Of course they can be bread.
Limited registration papers haveno force over biology.
Ever had a oops litter, Kim?

SPEAKER_02 (19:44):
I had two in uh my since 1971.
I've had two.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (19:49):
And sometimes every single breeder you know, any
good breeder you know, not havehad I mean everybody knows.

SPEAKER_02 (19:54):
No, no, if they're honest, they're honest.
And sometimes, you know what?
They're your best, sometimesthey're your best litters.
I mean, I think God probably hassome knowledge and knows better
than we do sometimes, right?
He's better at matching, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (20:08):
But yeah, there's always a good one out of
noobsler, right?
So physically, yeah, your dogcan't now.
Can you prevent those dogs frombeing registered with the AKC?
Not if they have if they haveluminary registration papers,
yes.
But that's it, they can registerwith other registries.
So you say, Well, not mine, Ihave a span uter contract.

(20:30):
How enforceable are they, Kim?

SPEAKER_02 (20:33):
Not at all.
No contract, you know, unlessyou're gonna spend the money,
hire an attorney, first of all,have it drafted properly by most
likely by an attorney, acontract attorney, and then
you're gonna spend the money tohire an attorney to take it to
court.
I mean, how many people?
They're usually not worth thepaper they're written on, quite
frankly, even drafted by anattorney, unless you're willing

(20:53):
to spend a lot of money and alot of time fighting over it.
And how many people actually gothrough with that?
I do have a couple of friendsthat have.
I have myself went to court withit and was able to get the dog
back, but it was expensive, itwas stressful, and wouldn't want
to do it again.

SPEAKER_00 (21:11):
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 toenforce.
I can tell you that from UKC andAKC serving for both as an
officer.
I can tell you that's very, verydifficult to enforce.
So you say, well, then theydon't get full papers unless

(21:33):
they have, you know, they unlessthey spay their dog and come
back and prove it.
I don't give them any papers andI 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 (21:45):
They can't even do that because AKC law bylaws say
to the breeder that you mustgive the papers when the dog is
transferred.
Yeah, there's no choice.
You are or you're breaking AKC'srules, they have to have papers.
So are you going to make a fullregistration or a limited
registration?
That's when you make thatchoice.

(22:05):
But you cannot withhold papersbecause if they contact AKC and
they say, I bought this dog fromWayne Kavanaugh and he didn't
give me my papers, they're gonnaregister that dog and give them
to him anyway.

SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
That's a good point, that's a real good point.
Yeah, the um and there's there'sso many things that can happen
as far as that goes, whichbrings us to not only contracts
being tough to enforce, but thethe crazy battles of
co-ownership.
So you see, well, I'm gonnaco-own it, and that's gonna

(22:38):
solve it.
Boy, nothing further from thetruth.
No, the papers that say owner,AKC papers say owner, and you
list the owners, they don't holdup real well in court.
I've had been involved in plentyof cases where the judge decided
the vet bills were a betterrecord because that's who owned

(22:58):
the dog, possessed the dog, andspent money to get the dog taken
to the vet and checked and wentsick or whatever else.
They're taken care of.
Even if they were the fifthco-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 incourt.
And again, what if they'reregistered in five different

(23:18):
registries?
You've got five sets of papers.
And by the way, registries don'tall have the same number of
names available.
So you may be owned with, youknow, in some registries with
two owners, some with five, somewith two, some were missing
misses, some with just misses.
There's a divorce.
Stuff happens.
So the courts really don't usethe most typically don't use the

(23:43):
ownership, the registrationpapers 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, realdifficult.
So thinking that your papers aregoing to get you ownership,

(24:07):
probably not.
Probably not.
If you don't believe me, I'mwriting about this and I pick up
the walls returned yesterday.
There's a story about just thisa case right now is going to the
Kansas Supreme Court, theSupreme Court in Kansas, the
highest court in the state on aco-ownership battle.

(24:30):
And the papers so far, it's beenthrough all the courts.
The ownership, the registrationpapers haven't done it.
Well, first of all, they thepapers claim that they're
co-owners and they both own thedog.
So, how's that going to proveanything?
Contracts, maybe.
I can tell you the judges don'twant to take the time to
understand what co-ownershipsand and show and handlers and

(24:53):
taking dogs away to be, theydon'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 thedog from not being shown or bred
is to never sell it.
So what we do is we trustpeople.
And we should trust people.
We should trust people more.
A really good guy who was aformer board member.

(25:16):
I didn't ask him, so I won't usehis name.
Super guy.
I asked him where he got hisfirst dog.
He said the New York Times.
And I can tell you that when Iwas a kid, that's that was the
gold standard.
Either that or Popular DogsMagazine.
That's where you bought yourdog.
And he said this show breedertook a chance on him.
Took a chance on him, trustedhim.

(25:37):
He gave them money, they gavehim a puppy, and they helped
him.
He ends up being an AKC boardmember, former board member, the
president of a ton of candleclubs and groups.
And uh he's hosted shows, he'ddone everything in the sport
because someone took a chance onhim.
Are you gonna get burntsometimes?
Yeah, but you already can.

(25:57):
We have to do our due diligencein finding out who we're selling
puppies to.
Some sort of contract, it's nota bad idea.
It encourages people to not,they'll go, oh, maybe I better
not do that because there is acontract.
They don't know that they'reeasy to break.
So they're a good thing.
I'm not saying they're not agood thing, I'm just saying it
sets a sense of false security.

(26:19):
I would love some new system oflimited registration, maybe.
I don't know, haven't thought ofone.
But as it works, there should besome sort of protection.

SPEAKER_02 (26:30):
I mean, for the pure red operator, I think.
You know, it was pretty obviousfinancially, and no one I think
bothered to look into that.
What it's going to do to yourbottom line generations down the
road is killing it.
I mean, you're, you know, youcan scream about registrations
are down, registrations aredown.
Well, but when you're spayingand neutering everything and

(26:50):
you're putting everything onlimited contracts and they're
not being bred, well, yeah,that's what happens, right?
So what year?
I don't remember exactly whatyear 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'sreally not.
And look what it's done to thebottom lines killed it.

SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
Well, at one point, now the AKC stopped showing the
registration stats when theywere diving.
They used to publish them everyyear for 100 years.
It should exactly not only howmany dogs, but how many each
breed so the clubs could trackit and all that.

SPEAKER_02 (27:24):
I remember, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (27:25):
So that was in the Gazette every month when there
was one.
And so we know that it hitaround 400,000, according to
Ronnie Irving from the CountleClub England, who came over and
tried to help.
So it went from 1.4 to 400,000.
That's a million dollar milliondog loss times registration fee.

(27:45):
That's millions and millions andmillions of dollars.
So, yeah, there was that issue.
Now, I'm not saying youshouldn't lose use limited
registration.
It does work in many cases.
I'm not saying you shouldn'thave a contract.
They do work or at leastencourage people to abide by
them in many cases.
I'm not saying you shouldn'tspame neuter dogs you don't want

(28:05):
to be bred.
I'm saying that the problem isthat limited registration papers
send a false sense of securityfor people who are
well-intended.
You need to know that going intoit.

SPEAKER_02 (28:20):
So I mean, I it always gave me a false sense of
security.
I'm sure probably did you atsome point as well.
Yeah.
And so then when the screamstarted this last couple of
months about possiblyeliminating that, I mean, that
was very real.
People were like, what?
I mean, that's our only that'sour only you know protection
right there.
So I can understand why itbecame so heated because we

(28:42):
really do need something.
But on the other hand, you know,your point about the fact that
we haven't done a good job oftalking about purebred dogs and
the advantages of purebred dogsand 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 boughta beagle and I can't stand it

(29:04):
because it barks all the time.
Well, hello.
You know, it's a beagle, it'sbecause it marks right.
Yeah, and and the purebred dogfancy, 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 beencarried by AKC and should have
been put in the media many, manyyears ago.
And I think it would have helpedthe situation of people buying

(29:24):
more purebred dogs because theywould understand what the
advantages were.

SPEAKER_00 (29:28):
So here we're saying the animal rights people are bad
because they're tellingeverybody to spay new to their
dogs, and so are we.
Yeah.
I'm not saying everybody shouldhave them let them free breathe,
but you really need to know whoyou're selling them to, and you
need to try to keep track ofthem, but you cannot.
There's an example the AKC nowregisters dogs from from

(29:51):
Nigeria, and I forget the nameof the registry, but they just
that was last month or thismonth, they just decided.
So, what if a guy moves overhere?
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'sreal nice.

(30:13):
He gets two people to sign on tohelp with showing it.
Now you've got three owners withthe AKC papers.
And then one of those peoplesays, you know, I really like to
do lore coursing.
And there's an there's the lorecoursing red tree that I like.
I'm going to throw them in thereand do right.
Then the guy says, you knowwhat?
I got a great job offer backhome.
I'm leaving Maryland and I'mtaking the dog with me because

(30:36):
here's the papers that prove I'mthe only owner.
These are things we just don'tthink of.
Back to a while back with mydad, 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 closelytogether.
He was a little kid.
I was hooked from day one.
So he bred beagles in thekitchen for the first couple of

(30:59):
years before he had a kennel.
And he'd put their the litters,he would advertise them in the
newspaper, New York Times, orthe local paper, the Red Bank
Register.
And uh people would come by thepuppies.
And he gave them the puppy, theygave him the money.
He gave them the papers.
There was no spaying neuteringno L Peter.

(31:22):
This is how we're getting 1.4million dogs registered, by the
way, each year.
Those people, he'd sell them allas pets, except a couple of show
dogs, right?
Maybe he'd run one on or sellone to a good job.
But no, there's plenty of themgoing to petrol.
Those people would call himthree years later and say, hey,
guess what, Ray?
My father's cousin's plumber,his daughter's got a beagle, and

(31:43):
it's beautiful, right?
And they would and we want tobreed them together because
everybody in the family wantsone of these.
What is wrong with that?
So my father would say, I'llhelp you.
I'll help you welcome if youneed help.
I'll I'll do what I can, right?
I'll give you some tips.
You can open up.

SPEAKER_02 (32:00):
But the female you're referring to is not
registered.
She's not registered.

SPEAKER_00 (32:03):
No, it's registered.
It is registered.
Fully registered.
And and their cousins, uncles,nieces, whatever, also had an
AKC registered beagle.

SPEAKER_02 (32:12):
Okay, so you're talking about two AKC registered
animals.
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (32:15):
So this novice owner lived in the neighborhood, had
this litter.
My dad and I would help any waywe could.
And then those people would sellthe puppies to people in the
neighborhood with papers.
And maybe they did the samething.
Guess what?
There were beagle petseverywhere.
And we knew them all, most ofthem.
Then they'd come to my fatherand say, We want to breed to

(32:38):
your stud dog.
And my father goes, Yeah.
These people have been supergreat people with the they're in
the obedience club now, andtheir kids are involved with the
dogs, and everything'swonderful, and the dog's ugly.
We want to breed to your studdog.
And my father would say to me,If I don't, an uglier one that's

(32:59):
not temperament testing.

SPEAKER_02 (33:00):
They're going to be an uglier one with no health
testing.
Exactly.
They're going to breed itregardless.

SPEAKER_00 (33:06):
Right.
But as a result, there are awhole lot of purebred AKC
registered dogs in pet homesthat, oh, heavens to Betsy, had
a litter.
And by the way, those peoplethat 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 (33:26):
We're not doing idiot.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (33:29):
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 andmighty were the only ones wise
enough to breed a litter.
No one else that does, by theway, when you do that narrowing
down of who can breed a dog.
You get that narrow gene pool ofeight one stud dog is bred to.

(33:51):
I see a golden retriever in thepark, and I can walk over and
tell them pretty much whatpedigree it is.
Not hard to do.

SPEAKER_02 (33:58):
I can't explain it very, especially in Goldwyn's,
you can tell.
I mean, and thankfully, we havea lot of longtime established
breeders that have bred, youknow, 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 literallyI've been involved for
centuries.

SPEAKER_00 (34:15):
So yeah, I mean having that little hybrid vigor
out there in the pet world isn'tthe worst thing that can happen.
Yeah, but you know, they I don'tmean hybrid by bringing two
breeds together, fallacy, youknow that, right?
I mean, yeah, I mean eight.
No, I don't mean that kind ofhybrid.
I mean hybrid vigor, genetdiversity, and a breed that's
registered, right?
But they're not the sameparents, is what I'm saying, I

(34:37):
guess.

unknown (34:38):
Sure.

SPEAKER_00 (34:38):
So yeah, there's there's so many things to think
about.
I think the concept of lunarregistration is terrific.
I think the execution was bad.
I think the business model waswas unforeseen by those who
didn't want to see it.
And I think we've not changed athing about backyard breeders
and puppy mills.
Not a thing.

SPEAKER_02 (34:58):
Well, more importantly, I mean, so now that
we're, you know, litterregistrations are down horribly,
we've gone to the commercialbreeders, a lot of them Amish.
And what's the answer here?
The answer certainly isn't goingto the clubs and trying to raise
the fee to AKC to make moremoney because the clubs are
already struggling to put on dogshows.

(35:20):
Exhibitors are about, you know,we're up to$40 an entry now.
I mean, in a lot of clubs, 35 to40.
It used to be 35, but then itcrept up to 38.
Now we're at 40 for some ofthese facilities.
And so deeing the exhibitor andthe clubs certainly is not the
answer.
So now we need to start lookingat other sources of revenue or

(35:43):
cutting expenses.

SPEAKER_00 (35:46):
It's it's a real conundrum.
And this, as you can tell by allour offshoots here, limited
registration, co-ownerships,contracts, paying and neutering,
other registries, other optionsfor people, golden doodles,
puppy mills, commercialbreeding.
It is such a giant net of justtangles to untie.

(36:12):
I don't know.
We need a really conscientiouseffort by an unbiased group who
wants to look at the big pictureholistically and see how they're
all intertwined and what we cando 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 forshow dogs.
We just have a way feweremployees, way fewer clubs, way

(36:34):
fewer people.
But if you want to keep yourarms around the if you want to
own these breeds and controleverything about them, that's
how you do it.
But it's not going to preventpeople from breeding your dogs.
The border collie people, when Iwas there at AKC, the Border
Collie people were furiousbecause the AKC was registering
border collies.

SPEAKER_02 (36:52):
I went to some of their we forgot about this long
time, and besides the Aussiesand besides the Cavaliers.
There you go.
That's a huge one, the bordercollies.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (37:02):
And they were gonna sue, well, they did sue, and you
know, and it went on forever.
And I was trying to mend fencesdown 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, youknow, here's the thing you're
not gonna let your beautifulherding dogs jump the fence into
a show kennel and pregnant andimpregnate them, right?
Oh no.

(37:23):
I said, Yeah, well, we're notgonna do that either.
So, yeah, they're gonna beseparate gene pools, but you're
not gonna lose your herdinginstinct, 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'snot gonna go away.
So you're gonna be surprised howgood these show dogs can hurt.
And that ended up being true.

(37:44):
I just don't know how many timeswe can go to that well, and how
many times we can look back andgo, that was a good idea or that
was a bad idea.
If limited restoration was a badidea, how do we go back and put
the genie in the bottle?
I don't know.
If it was a good idea, we needto look at ways to help the

(38:07):
revenue keep flowing to preservethe sport that we love.
We love the AKC, we love thesport, we love everything that
charter stands for.
And unless we come up withbetter ideas and think more with
our mind than our gut, thinkless politically and more
specific about what we thinkshould happen and make those

(38:30):
things right.
I don't know what the future is.
I just don't.
Hopefully, it's great andwonderful.
And yes, you can still go to dogshows every weekend.
20 of them last weekend.
So that's a whole other that's awhole other episode.

SPEAKER_02 (38:46):
But you know, I think you know what?

SPEAKER_00 (38:48):
It's all connected, Kim.
It's all connected.

SPEAKER_02 (38:50):
It's all connected.
It's all and you know, I thinkthat you know, all of us that
have been around for centuries,literally, we take great pride
in our purebred dogs, and wetake great pride in producing
healthy, health-tested dogs thatyou know that go home to
families with kids that lovethem forever and hopefully
they're long-lived.
And I think that all of us havethat pride of breeding AKC

(39:16):
registered purebred dogs.
How do we keep this family, thissport that we all love together
and do it correctly and have itbe financially viable?

SPEAKER_00 (39:28):
I'll tell you exactly what it takes for the
leadership, the board, thestaff, whatever.
It takes those individuals to bebrave enough to do the right
thing and not the popular thing.
That's the answer.
If you're trying to please yourdelegates so you can get

(39:49):
elected, if you're trying to becorrect in the eyes of certain
clubs or certain registries orcertain delegate bodies, you're
never gonna find your way home.
You have to be bold enough togo, I know this is gonna be
terrible.
Well, for example, I'm sayingthat I think limited
registration should be changedor adjusted.
And what it's been that's anunpopular thing.
Uh, there's right now, there'slisteners that are gonna write

(40:11):
me and go, what are you crazy?
Let's the greatest thing in theworld.
I don't want my dogs.
I had a guy tell me, a reallygood guy, a great breeder, great
friend.
He said, I don't want dogs withmy kennel name that are ugly in
the show ring.
I that's why I have lunarregistration because I don't
want them shown in AKC events.
I said, That's great.
I completely I buy that, I getit, but guess what?

(40:31):
I judge ugly dogs every weekend.

unknown (40:34):
You know.

SPEAKER_00 (40:35):
So you're not keeping it out of the ring.
But I get his point though.
But by doing that, we have fewerentries, fewer breed entries.
So there's nothing wrong withthe mediocre dogs being in there
because maybe they'll seeanother good one or get tired of
getting beaten by a good one.
We're all too proud, and I getthat.
But that's what it takes.

(40:57):
The right decision, not thepopular one.
And I hope that there's ways todo that.
And again, we we don't want to,we're not sitting here trying to
criticize the limitedregistration, the AKC, or
anybody else.
We just want the sport to work,and sometimes you've got to take
a deeper look before you canmake change.
And we hope this helps you thinkof better ways than we thought

(41:19):
of.
So until then, we'll see younext time right here because
we're still standing.
Thank Kim.

SPEAKER_02 (41:29):
Good night, sweetie.