# America's Pet Registry, Inc. (APRI)



## UrbanBeagles (Aug 13, 2007)

I'm posting this here in the hopes that people who are looking for a pet and trying to decide on breeders will read this ... 
Let me begin by admitting that I *HAVE* used APRI & am a breeder in good standing with them. So I have no reason to be biased against them, no grudges, no hype. Just experience. 
When I purchased my first APRI dog, it was from a good friend who had helped & mentored me when I first decided to get into breeding approx 6 years ago. I trusted this woman and her breeding stock, & subsequently bought an 8 month old APRI male from her. That's how it started. I thought I'd done my homework & gone to a reputable breeder. 
Fast forward a few years later - I bred my first litter, out of a pair I had dual registered AKC/APRI (APRI accepts AKC, not the other way around ... APRI dogs CANNOT be registered with the AKC). This was not the male I'd bought from my mentor - I'd used him for outside stud once, but hadn't used him for my own breeding program. Anyway, it was then I first began to see how a "breeder friendly" pet registry is not all it's cracked up to be. I ordered a pedigree on my litter ... now, when I dual registered both these dogs the year before, I'd provided APRI with a copy of their pedigrees. But when I recieved the litter pedigrees - there were four blank spaces in the third generation!!!!!! "Not available" HUH? I'd provided the pedigree a year before! I contacted APRI & they informed me I needed to re submit the pedigree, and they'd re issue the litter pedigrees, which they did, correctly the second time. But why should I have to provide the registry with a pedigree? Isn't that what we pay them for - to keep accurate records? And furthermore, I'd only submitted a 3 generation pedigree to complete my litters peds - that meant that beyond 3 generations, APRI had no records of my dog's ancestry! Keep this in mind. If my dogs hadn't already been AKC registered, over 100 years of valuable pedigree information would have been obliviated! I'd only have three generations of names, and would never be able to trace beyond that. 
"But I'm only really interested in a nice family pet and don't care about a fancy pedigree! We're going to spay our pet, so what is wrong with a pet registry & why do we need a pedigree anyway?"
The simple answer is, you don't need a pedigree. But your breeder does. See, a pedigree isn't just a bunch of fancy names. To a good breeder, a pedigree is beyond invaluable - a good pedigree will have either several dogs with titles or dogs that were otherwise well known in the breed for what tyoes of pups they produced. A reputable breeder would be able to speak with the owners of those dogs, or to people who owned them or their pups. We can learn what faults, strengths and more improtantly, what health problems they produced. So we can make better breeding decisions and breed away from problems as much as possible. If you have a "no name" pedigree or one isn't available at all, you have no idea what is in your dog's genes and therefore only have a nice pet - NOT a breeding quality dog. 
The next problem arose when my breeding program got started and I was producing some good hunting dogs whom I wanted to field trial. I thought I could register them with UKC, and participate in those hunts, but there were literally no trials ever within 5 hrs of me with that registry. And then some of the homes I sold to wanted to register their dogs in obedience and field trials as well, yet they found they could not, because APRI, a pet registry, does not offer these services. Why would they? As their name implies, they register pets. And shows, trials, etc. are for breeding quality dogs. 
The last straw was very recently when I learned my first APRI male was originally from a pet shop!!!!!!! Although, I shouldn't have been so shocked, because the ONLY breeders who first began using APRI were large scale commercial breeders who sold to brokers/pet stores. Basically, what I've learned is that if a breeder has a dog registered with APRI, maybe that particular dog did not originate from a pet store, but it had to have come from a dog that was purchased from a pet store OR a breeder who was licensed to sell to brokers/pet stores. Because that is how that registry began, plain and simple. And they took off when pet store dogs were bred to each other and sold to the public. People thought they were getting a dog from a breeder, but little did we know that the pedigrees of our dogs were all from pet store dogs  
Lastly, I had always believed APRI to be a closed registry. I recently learned they accept dogs from open regestries - that means all you need to do to register your dog with an open registry is to send in 3 pics of a purebred looking dog and volia - it's registered. I learned of this when my neighbor picked up a stray dog that does appear to be a purebred American Bulldog. He registered the dog with CKC so he could stud the dog out, but CKC is not popular around here. So she submitted his CKC registration papers to APRI, and now has an APRI reg'd Am Bulldog. Isn't that nice?
I am now selling and/or neutering all my APRI only dogs. As I said, I have no personal vendetta against them, but the information I posted above came as a shock to me, because I'd always thought of them as simply an alternative to AKC. Well, they're not. I would strongly encourage anyone in the market for a puppy to inquire what registry the breeder uses, and would be very hesitant to frequent a breeder that used APRI or any other "alternative" registry at all, save for dogs that are dual registered with AKC/UKC ... the latter is a working dog registry and reputable. Though for breeds that are AKC registrable, I'd stay away from UKC as the only source of registration, as they are an open registry.


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## Pai (Apr 23, 2008)

When the AKC started requiring DNA proof of a sire's parentage for people who claimed one male for many multiple litters, the Mills and shady BYBers opened a slew of their own registries so they could continue to easily forge pedigrees. Their registries have NO standards whatsoever and take practicaly any dog that is claimed as any breed. Thery exist for the convenience of the Mills and BYBers only, not for the good of the breeds.

So far as I understand, the UKC is the only other reputable registry in the U.S. besides the AKC. Open registries are not bad in and of themselves (especially for people breeding for working ability above any other factor) -- and closed registries have their own drawbacks as well (in terms of limiting gene pools to the point where inbreeding and health issues become set in stone for a breed with no way to breed them out anymore, because no new blood is ever introduced). Read about the Dalmation Heritage Project to see how people improved the health of their Dalmation lines by backcrossing with a Pointer. 

Some breeds would actually benefit from some controlled outcrossing efforts. After all... every purebreed was initially created by crossing different dogs in the first place. Now that we understand so much more about genetic health than the founders of many of those breeds did when they started, it only makes sense to me that we use that knowledge to improve the overall health of the breeds we love.

But you are right, it is important for people to understand what 'registered' actually _means_ before they buy a purebred pup... so many folks think it is a guarantee of quality, when in reality it is NOT. If the breeder (and registry) of that pup is shady, and doesn't do all they should in terms of health testing and caring for their dogs, those 'papers' won't mean anything.


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## borzoimom (May 21, 2007)

Sounds like to me the dog was improperly registered to start with- either the sire ( s) or dam was not registered right, or the sires were not dna'd at the start. You need to take this up with your " mentor" as something is fishy in here..


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