Breeds & registries
Pedigree
A registered record of an animal's ancestors — a family tree issued by a registry, not a guarantee of health or quality.
A pedigree certificate states who the parents and grandparents were and that a registry recorded them. That is genuinely useful: it is what makes a coefficient of inbreeding calculable and what lets a breeder trace an inherited problem back through a line.
What it does not do is certify anything about the animal in front of you. Health testing is separate, temperament is separate, and how the puppies were raised is separate again. A breeder who leads with papers and cannot produce health-test results for both parents has answered the easier question.
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FCIThe international federation of national kennel clubs, which recognises breeds, sorts them into ten groups and lets each breed's country of origin write its standard.AKCThe main US registry, which keeps its own studbook, recognises a shorter list of breeds than the FCI and sorts them into seven groups.Breed standardThe written description a registry holds for a breed — proportions, coat, movement, temperament — and the document judges score against in the ring.MerleA coat pattern that dilutes patches of pigment into a mottled marbling — and a gene with real consequences when two merles are bred together.BrachycephalicShort-headed — a skull bred shorter front to back, producing the flat face of Pugs, French Bulldogs and Persians.OutcrossingBringing in unrelated animals — sometimes from another breed entirely — to widen a gene pool that has become too narrow to breed out of.