Every canine breed is based on a registry, that is, a book of origins, or in more recent years a computer data base, recording the ancestry of breed members and other relevant information. The registry can be an effective tool for breed creation, evolution and management by establishing criteria for breeding eligibility, that is medical screening tests, working trials and related activities. The SV registry, in existence for well over a century, is the foundation of the German Shepherd as a breed. The AKC registry is an entirely different sort of thing, for there are no breeding criteria or standards other than a form and the cash.
In
The success of the SV registry and the success of the German Shepherd as a breed without doubt are opposite sides of the same coin. In the early days of USCA there was a natural desire to emulate German ways, that is, train for and run Schutzhund trials and later the breeding worthiness evaluations. To be one of the big boys, many thought USCA naturally needed to create an independent registry. So we created a registry. But is it really living up to these expectations? Could it be made to live up to these expectations? Right now it does not work well, is not very much supported, is not respected and is a huge cash drain in increasingly difficult financial times.
If the canine world had evolved differently, the SV could
perhaps have been the world wide registering body for the German Shepherd dog,
with each nation within the WUSV adhering to the same standards and all German
Shepherd Dogs being in the same data base, having identical papers and meeting
the same requirements. Importing a dog would have been no different than
selling a dog within
But that is not the way of the real world, for the SV is a member of the German national kennel club, the VDH, which is in turn a member of the international body, the FCI. The SV is only allowed to run their own registry because they are granted this privilege by the VDH, probably because they were running their registry prior to the existence of the VDH.
Within this system, there is one and only one recognized
registry for each breed in each nation. Although the
USCA can not run a real registry in a legal sense for two reasons. In order to run a real registry they would first have to replace the GSDCA as the AKC German Shepherd Club. Then they would have to obtain permission from the AKC to run their own registry with their own breeding standards and requirements. Hell will freeze over long before this comes to pass.
The current USCA registry is in reality a pretend registry. Call it what you will - vanity registry, supplemental registry, ancillary registry - it means exactly nothing in legal terms and the ability to transfer dogs or their progeny to other registration systems. In America, like it or not, in order to be able to register future generations of dogs and sell the progeny to any other nation and transfer registry you must have AKC papers, it is as simple as that.
The only possible way for USCA to run a real registry would be for the SV to break away from the FCI and stand alone at the head of the WUSV as the independent world wide German Shepherd empire. The Belgian Malinois people have done this very successfully in the NVBK, but the influence of this does not extend beyond Belgian borders. So no matter how you slice it, unless there are drastic, virtually impossible, changes in the FCI & AKC, USCA can not and will never run any sort of real registry, never be recognized by any other entity.
Even a supplemental or vanity USCA registry, as it exists today, has insurmountable problems in terms of numbers, logistics and cost. The AKC receives well over a million dollars in fees for the approximately 50,000 yearly German Shepherd registrations, money that is their life blood which they will defend at all costs. Even beyond considerations of world wide uniformity in records, the SV would naturally like a piece of that action for financial reasons. But as long as the AKC is able to con the American people into equating AKC registration with validity and quality they are going to continue to bleed us.
As mentioned, the Germans register 15,000 pups a year – down
from well over 30,000 a few years ago - in a compact country roughly the size
of New England. It
is simply much easier to spread the costs over 15,000 pups than the few hundred
that could be expected to obtain USCA registry even if more members were to
become involved. This makes it
relatively easy to run a system where there is a breed warren and tatooer, not to mention numerous Schutzhund clubs, near
everybody. And when a pup is registered
with the SV, that's the end of it, it is good to go. But in
A reasonable starting guess is that when you add up all of the direct and indirect expenses we are shoving upwards of forty thousand dollars a year down this rat hole. The reality is that the USCA registry can not replace the need for the increasingly expensive AKC registry, people are still brainwashed to believe that "AKC Registered" is some sort of quality indication.
The USCA registry was an idealistic concept at its
inception, but faced insurmountable problems in terms the legal structure of
the international canine world and the impossible cost and logistic structure for services such as tattooing and breed warren examination in
The USCA breed registry is a failure for fundamental structural reasons. It can not be fixed without profound changes in the international world of the FCI and AKC, changes which are beyond our power to influence and extremely unlikely to occur in any useful time frame.
USCA needs to bring this noble but intrinsically flawed venture to an end and direct the financial and human resources toward more useful ends.
European Organizations:
FCI "Federation Cynologique Internationale," or in English
International Canine
Federation, the predominant
organization throughout the world with the
exception of
SV "Vrein fur Deutsche Schaferhunde," The German
Shepherd
Club in
VDH German kennel club, equivalent to the AKC
WUSV World Union of national German Shepherd clubs.