Removed from article after being added by [[User: ]]; needs more NPOV & more encyclopedic writing. Elf | Talk 19:08, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the above claim regarding "that the dog is purely of one recognized breed," is not backed up by the facts. The registration "papers" not only do not warrant that the dog is healthy, or from show-quality blood lines, registration papers do not warrant much of anything.
For example, the AKC gets a tax-exemption for maintaining the purebred dog registry. However, in a July 15, 1996 letter, David C. Merriman, then Executive Vice President and CEO of the AKC, wrote, "To my knowledge, there has never been an audit of the AKC registry by an outside or independent investigator."
In an ABC World News Tonight Story, as well as a 1995 20/20 investigative piece (as well as numerous newspaper investigative stories) one of the AKC's top investigators estimated that at least half of the AKC's Registry was no good. That is, when the AKC's own investigators go into check on a puppy mill (yes, AKC registers puppy-mill dogs), even if they find a complete mess, with no accurate records, no way to connect parents to offspring or even determine if the dog's are not mixed-breeds, for example, they do not purge the registry and pull out all the (often) thousands and thousands of unproven registered offspring. Nor do they notify all the puppy buyers, past and present, that AKC's own investigators have shown that their dog can't be certified as "purebred."
A few years ago, when the AKC decided to consider offering a higher-tiered paper that involved DNA testing for its registration papers, a secret memo that circulated to the top management of AKC warned that use of DNA would "define the lack of integrity in the Registry," thus "negatively affect the basic cash cow [dog registrations]."
Recently, since revenues are down, AKC has started an Online Breeders Classified Program. Under the section on "legal concerns," # 2 states: "The AKC makes no warranty or guarantee as to health, quality, parentage or value of dogs listed." In other words, AKC won't even warrant parentage, so the claim of the dog being "purebred" has no verifiable meaning. The buying public is simply being sold (through the U.S. Mail) a piece of paper that nobody warrants, not event the AKC.
So, what is the dog buying public actually buying when they send their money into AKC for their "paper?" Buyers get a piece of paper with numbers printed on it, a paper that has nothing to do with health, quality or even guarantees the dog's parentage, let alone whether or not it's "pure-bred." The Registry has never been audited, the AKC's own top investigator estimates that at least 50% of the "paper" sold is worthless. And the AKC has never purged that registry of "disallowed" dogs, not even in the case of brokers who were selling thousands of dogs (see the John & Sandra Maike case:John Rau Maike, et al, Debtors; J.R. Maike v AKC, Case No. 87-10376; Adversary proceeding 87-0090, Kansas, March 20, 1987), for example.
For another interesting overview of what AKC is really selling, see case # 4:CV-93-122l (Judge McClure)American Kennel Club, Inc, vs Gladstone& Watkins, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, June 14, 1995. In this action, Steven D. Gladstone stated, "But even though AKC knows better, they continue to register dogs of 'dubious lineage,' which have no records to support the AKC registerable claim. In so doing AKC and its lawyers know that it 'perpetrates a fraud on the dog-buying public.' They simply do not care."
Gladstone later dropped his lawsuit and is now serving on the AKC's Board. The lawsuit's claim, made in a sworn affidavit, by an attorney in good standing with the Pennsylvania bar, makes for very interesting reading.
And, along with other lawsuit evidence, is why one federal attorney refered to AKC dog registrations as "the mother of all mail frauds."