Any breeders around? KC registration query

[MyFairKitten]

I am buying a puppy soon. I want my puppy to be KC registered as it's a pedigree breed. Breeder told me that both parents are KC registered (I've checked the names he gave, they are) and therefore that puppy can be KC registered too. He said it takes ages (months) at the moment for paperwork to arrive (ie indicating without saying so that registration documents would not be back in time to go home with the puppy at collection) but still, so far so good. Except we are now drawing closer to collection date and I don't think he has registered the litter yet. Which means that on collection I wouldn't have the KC papers and only his word to take for it that he's even applied. I feel that puts me on the back foot somewhat, especially if for some reason he is never planning to register that litter. I don't understand why he wouldn't have done it sooner if he was going to and if one of his puppy buyers had indicated they wanted it to be KC registered early on. He made it sound like it's something that happens further down the line but I have since read up on it and now I know you can register puppies when they are very young.

If I were to ask him to register the puppy for with KC online prior to collection, would he at least receive an online registration confirmation to show me at collection to prove that he has started the registration process? Should I find this acceptable? Or should I be a bit suspicious that despite talking about registration he's not yet done so?

Thanks in advance.

Ours registered the litter the week before they were due to leave. We got notice of her 'proper' name and the registration number. When you get the dog, you then log into the KC and change the owner - I think it costs £17. You get the certificate about four weeks later. It was all very easy.

Ah thank you so much LostArcher.

When you say you got the notice of her proper name and the registration number, was that when you collected the puppy? What did it actually look like? Did it look official in any way, or was it just a printed-off email to the breeder? (even though it wasn't the actual certificate, I understand that?)

This is meant to be a reputable professional breeder I'm buying from, but even so they have been hazy about a few things along the way which I've put down to personality but I still don't want to take just his word for it re "papers on their way" and say that the KC don't provide any kind of confirmation of registration (even before the certificate arrives).

My breeder told me something very similar and she is a very experienced breeder who has registered litters with the KC before so I have no reason to think she’s pulling anything dodgy. She said something about how COVID is causing delays with the necessary inspections etc.

The breeder could (and should) register the litter online before you take ownership.

You could then be sent screen shots of the registration. Also when you collect, ask that they log on real-time for you to see the registation.

The issues here are data protection and ownership. The litter currently belongs to the breeder, so the KC registration is in the breeders name not yours. The breeder will be unwilling to change the ownership to you until the puppy actually goes (otherwise you could refuse to pay, or whatever). Once that change of ownership happens though, then you get all the paperwork.

I would not collect a KC Reg pup until seeing it's online registration.

Honestly this would ring alarm bells for me. Decent breeders of pedigree dogs normally KC reg the whole litter. It also allows them to put endorsements on the pups. Eg can’t breed.

You can search the kc names of the parents, if the mum has had 4 litters already or a litter that was registered within the last year, they wont be able to register them. He should be able to provide an email or screenshot the registration has been done, KC are taking ages at the moment, it took nearly a month for me to get my papers through when i did a change of ownership

Thanks all. It's hard because on the one hand the breeder has shown at many dog shows (including the top one) over the years and is mentioned in comments online by other similarly reputable breeders, so he definitely has professional standing. But there's been a few things that have registered awkwardly with me. All can be explained away individually, but collectively it makes me slightly edgy. I don't know if I'm overthinking things though. Surely a professional breeder who shows and is known in the breed community is always going to be OK?

No. Not at all. Professional can mean commercial breeder breeding for cash. Did you find them through the breed club?

I'd be wary, more so because you obviously pay some extra for a KC registered puppy and you clearly stated that you wanted a KC registered puppy.

If the litter is registered via the breeders online account, you can ask for your puppies KC name, its the same as looking up the parents. Puppy should come up within 2 weeks of registration.

And yes, paperwork can take 6-8 + weeks to come through...
I would make a decision based on that.

If you go for screenshot variations, be wary of dates...

Allowing that the paper certificates are taking longer than usual at the moment, there's no reason for them not to have registered the litter online and this can be checked by looking up the dam on MyKC (anyone can see this, not just the breeder).

Being a cynical sort, if there is no evidence online that the litter has been registered and no plan to provide you with a certificate on collection, my conclusion would be that the puppy is ineligible for registration and the breeder is trying to gloss over this.

They were recommended by another breeder who was on a website for approved breeders (although "my" breeder isn't, but then it's not a requirement that he would have to be, it's optional).

But he is a member of the breed club online, and although he doesn't often post, the few things that he has posted have been replied to in a personal way by the breed club administrators, and the same names belonging to the administrators/kennel owners come up again and again together in the dog show results alongside this breeder, so although I don't know if they are all friends exactly, he is definitely not a "lone wolf".

This breeder has also bred/provided puppies for other good breeders, when I have searched my breeder's name I can find dog news articles/kennels' own websites detailing past wins such as "My X (dog name) won XYZ show/championship, parents are the lovely X dam (from my breeder) and X sire (from different breeder/own stock).

This is what I find puzzling. If they are well up professionally, which they seem to be, why wouldn't they just automatically register the puppies and dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's"? And the other few fuzzy things I mentioned, just little corners being cut here and there (which I have put down to personal quirk), I still wasn't really expecting from a professional breeder.

My DH thinks that as long as the puppy is happy and healthy when we see it, and the mum is, and I can search the breeder online independently to make sure they exist (which I have) and our puppy is just for being a family pet then I am looking into things a bit too deeply...

currahee I agree if there's been no effort to register by collection then possibly it is ineligible for some reason. However I wonder why the breeder didn't ditch me long before, if that's the case, when I said I wanted it and he said yes it could be arranged?
If I was none the wiser about KC registration, then all good, but clearly if I've been asking about it from early on, he could have said (after a suitable gap) that the puppy was no longer available and here's your deposit refunded - I mean what could I do about it but go and look elsewhere? Why risk a disgruntled customer re: no KC reg ever forthcoming, if he has no plans and never has, to register the puppies?

It takes weeks rather than months, and if the owner of the bitch does not also own the stud then they have to send the documents to the stud's owners who need to confirm that the mating took place. Then it all goes off to the KC, who register the litter to the owner, who then does a transfer of ownership to the buyer.

It's one of those faffy bits of paperwork that everyone puts off, but I would have expected a professional breeder to be on top of it

Being on a website doesn’t mean they are good. How many bitches do they have? How many litters does each have?

I asked, they said they own both the dam and the sire. So no extra paperwork to do there.

I also asked how many dogs they have in total, but they declined to say, citing privacy due to security.

I still don't know their address or even their town, just the general area they (say they) are in. To be fair I haven't asked directly for their address, but they haven't offered either. I felt awkward to ask for their actual address or even town, since asking about the number of dogs they have and being pushed back - as if I was a potential dognapper, and I empathised with the worry all pedigree dog breeders must feel about that. But it makes me feel quite adrift, only really having scant details to go on. At what point does a professional breeder give their address to their puppy buyers? Should I expect it by now? Or is it a "day before" kind of thing for security reasons?

He has never asked for written personal details from me either re name, address, place of work etc. We had some long conversations where a lot was covered (what kind of house I have, garden, kids, other pets etc) but he hasn't asked me to fill in any form. Of course he could have been taking notes, but I didn't get the impression that he was and it didn't cover specifics like my address and so on.

Initially I felt he was just an old-school dog breeder who is more at home with dogs than people and paperwork, and I put a lot down to that but I am finding it harder to reconcile how a professional breeder wouldn't be able or willing to successfully complete all the bits that go with selling a puppy properly and responsibly. I was expecting it to appear along the way (for example asking me to complete a registration form, providing me with more details about them upfront, doing the KC registration, etc), and it hasn't. Everything just feels a bit wooly and incomplete.

Have you been to see the litter in person?

Perhaps they are playing you for chumps and hoping that either you don't know enough about the registration process to question it, will accept "we'll send the papers on when they arrive" and/or don't care enough about it that you'll forfeit taking the puppy over it. There's a good proportion of owners who never even transfer the registration into their own name, unless you're planning to breed yourself or are into showing or dog sports it's a fairly arbitrary thing for 'pet' owners, so I wonder if they might not take your insistence seriously.

That said - there are few good reasons not to register a litter and plenty of bad ones. You haven't been to their house to visit the puppy?

No, Covid etc, etc. Early days he brought visiting up, saying usually visits would be allowed to see puppies beforehand but as it would be lockdown during the waiting time we'd have to make do with Zoom calls. But he hasn't suggested or set up a Zoom call at all. There's been a few photos of the litter (not many, and none specificially identifying the boy we have put our names down for, even though I've asked, which has been annoying as TBH I would have liked to have had regular photos showing him growing up from being a newborn baby puppy), and two short videos of them playing around their mum.

I was working on the basis that we seemed to make a good connection early on, had some long chats, went through things like microchipping, vaccs, KC reg etc so I was happy earlier on with that having checked independently that their name was connected to the breed, but I was expecting as the weeks went by for them to send me forms to fill in, send me pictures of their weekly development, register for KC etc, and they haven't. Just the odd bit of contact here and there, usually instigated by me and responded to by him.

This is red flags all over the place.

How much deposit have you paid? Expect to loose that money.

They will try to get you to take a puppy (and pay for it) but I would be very, very, VERY weary.

The deposit amount was around 10%. The breed isn't one of the more expensive ones out there because it's not a trendy or designer breed. The breeder's prices are the same as the other breeder's prices for the breed.

(I managed to use the word Breed five times in three lines there )

You won't have seen the mother with the litter (at least not "live"). So when you go to collect you will have no idea if the bitch they show you is the mother of the pup they show you. It's entirely possible that you get shown unrelated bitch and pup and you wouldn't know.

(This is how puppy farms get rid of less desirable puppies - by lying).

Without KC Registation then you can assume the KC Reg parents names they gave you were not the parents. Yes, they will be real life dogs, but without paper work they could be random dogs and not actually the parents of the pup you are given. Or they are the parents but the litter is ineligible (which a good breeder wouldn't have bred).

One puppy farm scam is to import farmed puppies from overseas, where breeders can buy a litter for peanuts. Then pretend they have raised the litter by showing new owners the puppies along with an unrelated bitch (who's probably a breeding mother, but not the mother of the imported litter). Then seller offload for a huge price mark up and big profit.

Given the relaxation of covid regulations from tomorrow, I would suggest

(1) You insist on seeing the litter next week, outdoors (due to covid)

• This gets you an address
• If you are not given an address where they puppies actually are (ie they say meet at a park) - big red flag

(2) See the whole litter with the bitch.

• if you're just shown one puppy, red flag. Litter should be together. See how they behave as a litter group.
• see how they respond to the bitch. Litter should be actively chasing her around when she's in with them. If they ignore her, she's not mum.

(3) Set your expectations with KC registration.

• Ask to see online registration.
• Be shown what your pups KC name will be. Look it up on the KC website.

Pre COVID I had a homecheck and needed references before someone would even let me see a pup. Much less buy one.
The not telling you how many dogs they have is dodgy. Sounds like they are all in kennels and they may have lots. Can you see online how many they are licensed to have by council?

Wouldn’t tell you how many dogs he had?!
I’m not being funny, but you can’t honestly tell me that doesn’t ring major alarm bells for you?
Because it certainly does for me!

Kennel Club registration means fuck all, it is no guarantee of a good breeder at all.
The kennel club are perfectly happy to register large scale commercial breeders and always have been....