How do Rare breeds obtain the AKC minimum number of 300 individual recordings in order to advance to AKC Misc.?

(which is the first step towards achieving AKC full registration and equality with the worlds breeding population)

1. Importation: Initially breeding stock needs to be imported
2. BREEDING: The initial stock needs to be bred so puppies can be placed into the hands of experienced AKC breeders who have recognized breeds.
3. Promotion: Experienced breeders need to take their rare breed dogs with them to AKC shows while they are exhibiting their recognized breeds. This way, other experienced breeders/handlers can see the dogs and hopefully take interest in them.

If your breed is very rare, every puppy produced needs to be placed with experienced AKC breeders, NOT in pet homes or with people that might breed an odd litter.  

Why is this important? 

Because if imports and their offspring are placed into Pet homes or with inexperienced start up breeders, they will be spayed/neutered, not shown or taken to events where AKC breeders and large numbers of the general public frequent so these individuals will be Lost to the population.

Also, Pet owners rarely individually record or register their dogs with AKC so again, those individuals will be Lost to the breed. Most inexperienced pet owners that do breed their dogs tend to get stuck with the puppies and typically spay/neuter their dogs after 1 or 2 litters.  

Sample example:

Recently someone stated that they had been responsible for the importation of 100 rare breed dogs over a 7 year period. The number of AKC-FSS recordings is less than 200. So this begs the question;

Why are the AKC-FSS numbers so low? 

Lets do some simple math for a moment.

If the 100 imported dogs consisted of 50 breeding quality bitches, and each of those bitches were bred once and produced 3 puppies each, We’d end up with a minimum of: 150+ offspring.  

Now lets again assume that 75 of those offspring (the 150 above) were breeding quality females and they were bred. We’d end up with another: 225 additional individuals in the population.  

So over this 7 year period of time, the population resulting from this one person’s importation of 100 individuals should consist of: 475 individually recorded dogs with AKC-FSS today. 

So why does this example population have less than 200 recorded with AKC-FSS??? 

If appropriate breeding were taking place, we would see exponential growth rates. The fact that we don’t see that with this example population suggests dogs have been placed primarily into pet homes.

It’s absurd to suggest that all of the animals imported were pet quality or that all of their offspring over 7 years were pet quality. The calculation above takes into consideration only half of the animals produced would be Breeding Quality.   

Simple, This sample population never ended up with AKC Breeders. If they had, there would be a large viable breeding population in the US with evidence of exponential growth rates as seen in the UK below.  

Since the first example sample shows neutral or negative growth over 7 years, it’s safe to assume that nearly all of the imports must have ended up in Pet homes where they were spayed/neutered and LOST to the breed forever.  

Once a breed population has sufficient numbers and has achieved Full AKC registration, then breeders can freely place breeding quality dogs into Pet homes if they see fit.

But it’s not advisable to do that at the beginning when the breed numbers are critically low and the breed has no official registration or recognition.

So if you want to know if a Rare breed is being managed properly so as to meet the AKC-FSS minimum 300 number, then look for exponential growth in FSS recordings over a period of time. If the population in question has negative or neutral growth, questions should be raised as to why.

Last updated: May 07, 2008 11:56 AM