Calhouns Can(n)ons

How Much Is That Doggie In the Window, Part Duh

Bwa-hahahah, The American Kennel Club, ya gotta love ‘em!

As those of you with “purebred” dogs know, the AKC maintains a “Stud Registry” (tax free, I might add. And remember, you, dear tax payer, have to make up for anything “tax free.”). The Stud Registry pretends to be a listing of all purebred dogs and their ancestry and as such pretends to be offering a “service.” Alas, according to a former top AKC Investigator , on ABC World News Tonight a few years ago, fifty percent of that registry is no good, phony, meaningless, primarily because the registry isn’t and wasn’t “culled” when phony entries showed up. And according to a letter I received from the then-AKC Board President a few years ago, the stud registry has never been audited. Never.

But the AKC maintains the delightful fiction that the registry is important enough to keep getting tax free status for it, and that if you want to participate in AKC dog shows, you must “register” your dog, a registration program that most people believe means the dog actually is “purebred,” or at least descended from the parents listed on the form & etc. Bwa-hahahaha. At least 50% of the time – not true.

Oh, and did I forget to mention, the dog owner pays the AKC a fee for that registration form. That form is sent through the U.S. Mails. Sending stuff you know to be worthless to people who don’t know it’s worthless because you, uh, forgot to tell them, and have them pay good money for, and using the U.S. mails to do it is called Mail Fraud. If 50% if that Stud Registry is no good, and the AKC has evidence from their own inspectors as to just what and who on that registry is no good and the registry is not purged or audited so the no-good entries simply keep compounding over the years, well that means you’re knowingly mailing out millions of dollars of worthless paper each year. Ooohhh, naughty, naughty.

The DA for the Southern District of New York knows all about the fraud. He got boxes and boxes of CDs as evidence in a mail fraud inquiry and . . . are you ready for it? . . . “declined to prosecute.” Need I point out that the AKC is a multi-million dollar a year organization whose headquarters are located in . . . yep, you guessed it . . . .the Southern District of New York?

Ah, yes. Well, as Herm David (highly placed and well known dog world personage) once said of the AKC scheme: It’s a perfect scheme. They sell pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. They have an unlimited amount of numbers at their disposal.

But now comes this new AKC scheme – it’s even better than the worthless “Purebred” papers scheme. This one doesn’t even pretend to mean anything about the dog except that it be “distinguishable as a member of an AKC registerable breed,” that is that it sort of looks like some kind of purebred.

In other words, a quasi-purebred-looking MUTT.

So why would you send nice money to AKC to get back a piece of paper with numbers on it? Well, if you wanted to enter your dog in AKC sponsored events such as Agility Trials, Earthdog Trials (where small terrier types compete to show their rat chasing abilities), Junior Showmanship (your kid wants to learn how to “show” dogs), lure coursing, (chasing a “plastic bag bunny” on a cord, high speed, really exciting sport for various sighthounds), obedience trials and so forth. ALL EVENTS WHICH ARE NOT BASED ON CONFORMATION (what the dog looks like) BUT BASED ON ABILITY, WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH “PUREBREDNESS.” Tracking dogs, search and rescue dogs, for example are often mutts. Ditto drug sniffing dogs, mutts rescued from the pound. And so forth.

But here’s where the AKC’s (genetic? inbred?) inability to be truthful comes in. The club had a program called “Indefinite Listing Privilege (ILP) program. This was for folks who for some reason couldn’t “prove” their dog was purebred and so couldn’t get it “registered” in the Stud Registry (you know, the one that’s 50% no good in the first place) but still wanted to participate in the various activities listed above. But ILP doesn’t quite do it, so now AKC, in their eternal trolling for mo’ money, have “enhanced” and renamed the ILP Program as: PAL -- PUREBRED ALTERNATIVE LISTING.

Get it? You want that word “Purebred,” in there for the cachet, even though the dog you’re buying a number for isn’t “purebred”, it just has to look like a purebred, not actually BE purebred.

It’s a perfect scheme. They have pieces of paper with numbers on them, you have the money. And there’s no troubling problem of actually having to have that paper mean anything about “bredness.” It’s a straightforward ID number so you can enter the various events and not end up with two dogs named “Fluffy.”

Or it would be straightforward, if the AKC would finally drop the phony pretense of “distinguishable as a member of an AKC registerable breed” (remember, according to one of AKC’s top inspectors, that main “register” is 50% phony in the first place , i.e. filled with PAL mutts the AKC is pretending are “purebred.” And getting a tax break for that pretense.) and simply allow everyone who wants to, to send them nice money and get an ID number so they could take their pooch – pure mutt or quasi mixed breed “purebred” to various AKC events.

In any event, THIS piece of paper with numbers on it, doesn’t run the risk of being mail fraud like so many other pieces of paper the AKC sells. This one’s at least vaguely honest, i.e. openly worthless.

Which is a step in the right direction, at least.