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The AKC is the largest and most respected purebred dog registry in the U.S. Anyone buying a purebred Bulldog or French Bulldog puppy born in the U.S. should demand AKC registration. A number of years ago, the AKC started inspecting large volume breeders to help ensure that their puppies were being raised with at least a minimum acceptable level of care and to help ensure that the breeders’ recordkeeping was adequate to have confidence that the applications for registration they were submitting were likely to be accurate. Needless to say, many breeders did not meet the AKC’s standards. A number of registries were then formed to provide registration papers to substandard breeders who were not willing to comply with the AKC’s standards. They include American Pet Registry (APR or APRI), Continental Kennel Club (CKC, not to be confused with the Canadian Kennel Club which is the Canadian national dog registry), and others.

Dogs born in foreign countries should be registered with the national registry for that country. (This can be confusing because, just as it happened in the U.S., registries have been formed in foreign countries, to provide registration documents to buyers who do not comply with the requirements of the national registry.) The national registries of foreign countries other than Canada and Great Britain belong to Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI). According to FCI’s website, FCI “includes 84 members and contract partners (one member per country) that each issue their own pedigrees and train their own judges. The FCI makes sure that the pedigrees and judges are mutually recognized by all the FCI members.” Puppy importers make a lot of misleading statements about FCI. First of all, they claim their puppies are FCI-registered. That is false. The FCI does not operate a registry and does not issue registration papers. The papers are issued by the national registries of the member countries and they vary widely in how well they police the accuracy of registration applications submitted to them. In fact, from time to time some FCI member registries refuse to honor registrations from other FCI member registries because of concerns about high rates of fraud. Some importers also misrepresent that the FCI regulates the quality of dogs that can be bred. FCI does not do so, and neither to most of its member registries. In fact the only such policing of which we are aware is done by some German breed clubs. NONE of the registries in the countries from which Bulldogs and French Bulldogs are being imported for resale regulates the quality of dogs that may be bred. To make the situation more confusing, some unscrupulous breeders have formed another organization with a name confusingly similar to FCI’s. FCI states the following with regard to that organization: “The Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) informs all its members and contract partners that it holds no official relations with the Federación Canina Internacional (www.webfci.org <http://www.webfci.org/> ) and its members and that it does not recognise this Federación.”

Many importers have been furnishing fraudulent foreign registration papers with puppies they sell. The rate of fraud is so high that when application is made for AKC registration based on registrations of countries from which Bulldog and French Bulldog puppies are being imported for resale, the AKC routinely forwards copies of the registration documents back to the country of origin to determine whether or not they are genuine. AKC rules require that application for registration of a foreign dog be made in the name of the person who imported the dog and that application then be made for transfer of ownership. Any importer who provides a buyer with foreign registration papers in the buyer’s name and tells the buyer to apply for AKC registration in the buyer’s name is instructing the buyer to commit a fraud on the AKC.