David Bartscher and Robert O. Baker can't forget the dead dogs they pulled out of Shirley Myers' kennel.

The humane society officers had traveled to the prairie town of Mitchell, S.D., to raid the kennel with Davison County Sheriff Lyle Swenson. They found three dead Rottweiler puppies in trash bags of excrement. Three other puppies were sick, apparently with deadly parvovirus. Nursing mothers were living in cages without water.

Many of the 150 dogs lived in virtual darkness, while others splashed around in mud tainted with their own excrement. Two small dogs had lost their paws to a male Rottweiler who bit them off, Myers acknowledged. The officers captured the entire raid, including Myers' comments, on videotape.

That they found deplorable conditions at a "puppy mill" was not a surprise. That the Myers kennel dogs had the sanction of the highly respected American Kennel Club is another matter.

Myers was a breeder whose dogs had long been accepted for purebred registration by the AKC. Officials had known for several years that Myers was failing to keep proper records to prove that her dogs were purebred, AKC reports show. AKC delayed taking strong action even after its own staff uncovered evidence of unidentified dogs and sloppy book work, former AKC inspectors said.

{The club recently announced the relocation of its national headquarters from New York City to a 100-acre site on Interstate 40 in Durham County. Construction is expected to begin late this year and be completed in 1998.

{The 111-year-old nonprofit organization is considered the country's leading authority on purebred dogs. Each year, AKC registers a million purebred dogs and sanctions more than 11,000 dog shows.}

In a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation, six former AKC inspectors said in lengthy interviews that the dog registry of the AKC is largely a sham. They say, and records show, that the club does little or nothing to ensure that many of the dogs the club certifies as purebred are legitimately bred.

In the past five years, the AKC has taken in more than $100 million in exchange for papers certifying more than 6 million dogs as purebreds. Much of that money came from large kennels that sell dogs to brokers or to pet stores. The former AKC inspectors say those certifications are often worthless or untrue.

The inspectors say the AKC does not verify bloodlines. What it does is accept applications and fees and send out registration papers, relying predominantly on the word of the breeder that the information submitted is true.

They say the club's primary enterprise - the registry of purebred dogs - has been corrupted. So many dogs without proper papers and proven lineage have been accepted into the AKC "stud book," or registry, in recent years that it's no longer reliable, they say.

In many cases, they say, the AKC knows the registrations are suspect but approves them anyway for a fee. The AKC has never undertaken a thorough study of its stud book.

AKC officials say the club's main duty is to serve as a registry, not as a police organization. The AKC has 15 inspectors for the entire nation.

Allegations and criticisms:

Here are comments from six former AKC inspectors:

- Robert Nejdl, widely considered the dean of AKC investigations, became the club's first investigator in 1973. He retired in 1994. Said Nejdl: "When people buy an AKC dog, they expect it to be of high quality and they expect the papers to truly match the dog. But that's not often true. It's just so much window dressing. The American Kennel Club is in the registration business and not the deregistration business. It's the cash cow."

- Robert E. Hufford, a former AKC manager of field agents who worked for the club from 1986 to 1994, said: "It's a shame. In my opinion, the only thing it {the AKC} is, is a moneymaking operation. A friend of mine hit it on the head: 'The only difference between the AKC and counterfeiters is the color of money.' They sell something that they're never going to run out of, and it doesn't cost them anything. The AKC is shipping out registration and papers daily they knew should have been canceled out. The bottom line is the AKC, they don't give a damn {about conditions} as long as the checks don't bounce."

- Rona Farley, a former AKC inspector based in Pennsylvania from 1991 to 1995, estimated in a court affidavit that in her four years on the job, 90 percent of the breeders she inspected failed to meet AKC record-keeping requirements. "An infinitesimal percentage of those noncomplying subjects were, to my knowledge, ever disciplined, sanctioned or suspended." When breeders failed to comply with AKC rules, Farley said, she was instructed to "assist the subject of inspection in re-creating records."

- Sharon D. Reed, an AKC investigator who covered Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1986 to 1991, said: "AKC management fought me tooth and nail about what cases should be prosecuted and mostly on what dogs {papers} should be canceled. They never wanted dogs canceled, even when I had shown fraud. They said they didn't want to harm the poor consumer. My answer was 'The harm has been done. You are augmenting the harm.' Boy, did that get me screamed at. AKC registration is worthless."

- Mike Reilly, an AKC inspector in California from 1985 to 1994, said: "They didn't want to know anything that would upset the applecart. They wanted everything to run smoothly, get the registration money, don't make waves. The bottom line is get the money."

- Martie W. King, a former AKC investigator from 1986 to 1990 who covered Pennsylvania, said: "The name of the game is don't cancel {purebred certificates}. If they take too many dogs out, they might have to refund money. ... That's going to affect their revenue."

None of the current AKC inspectors who was contacted wished to comment. The AKC has a policy barring employees from speaking to reporters without permission.

Determining the club's role:

AKC President Judith V. Daniels said in an interview that the club's investigations unit was "pretty good" and improving all the time. She said that puppy mills represent "a difficult situation" for the AKC and that she lacks the authority to toughen enforcement. "It's up to the entire fancy {of those who belong to AKC member clubs} to determine how we want to deal with this issue."

Daniels said part of the problem is that the organization, which has 12 board members, is split on what its mission should be. Some, like board chairman Robert Berndt, want to focus on traditional AKC activities, such as dog shows. They say the former inspectors were disgruntled employees. They argue that the AKC is not in the business of policing conditions at dog kennels and, therefore, should not be held accountable for problems at puppy mills.

"It's not that we're not interested in puppy mills," Berndt said in an interview. "We don't encourage them. We're interested in the sport breeder, the person who breeds for the betterment of purebred dogs."

Others on the board say the former AKC inspectors are not disgruntled but genuinely want to help dogs. These board members say the AKC should be more active in detecting improper registrations of dogs because more than 80 percent of the AKC's income comes from registration fees, much of that from puppy mills.

"Yes, we are a registry, but the AKC is more than that," said board member Kenneth A. Marden of Titusville, N.J., a former AKC president. "When you're as big as the AKC, you do have a responsibility to purebred dogs."

The AKC was formed by wealthy dog owners in Philadelphia in 1884. They were men interested in creating standards for purebred dogs and sponsoring shows on the Main Line and elsewhere.

Today the club has headquarters on Madison Avenue costing $971,000 a year to rent, a sprawling registration-processing center in Raleigh and a lobbyist in Washington. The club's president was paid $177,000 in 1993, according to the most recently available federal tax documents.

{AKC says the planned Durham site will include office buildings, a facility for seminars, a dog museum and a large training field designed for use by AKC-affiliated dog clubs.

{The $45 million facility is expected to include more than 100,000 square feet of office/meeting space in a campuslike environment. The museum will occupy another 25,000 square feet. The move is expected to bring the Triangle 370 jobs.}

Registry reputation at risk:

According to AKC rules, all dog breeders must keep strict records detailing their animals' lineage. If the chain of proof is broken at any point, the dogs can be canceled from the registry.

Those rules serve to give AKC dogs cache. An AKC-certified dog can be sold for $100 to $300 more than a dog without papers. Purebreds are more valuable, because their parents are all the same breed and their features conform to a recognized standard.

A puppy mill that loses AKC privileges is in trouble. "They can't sell dogs without registration papers," AKC Chairman Berndt said. "Nobody will buy them."

Even many within the AKC say the old rules need to be updated.

"We're overwhelmed by counterfeit AKC dogs," said Nina Schaefer of Huntingdon Valley, one of 484 AKC delegates who elect the AKC board. "Registration procedures were established over a hundred years ago by people who thought they were creating a purebred dog registry. ... This system is not working in the market-driven world of today, and it is time to change."

Records show that the AKC rarely uses its authority to strike dogs from the registry. The club registered 1.3 million dogs in 1994 and declined to register 1,331 dogs - about a 10th of a percent.

"The AKC really holds the power, much more than federal and state agencies, to shut down puppy mills," said Melanie Volk, former president of the Badger Kennel Club, an AKC member club in Wisconsin. "Those puppy mills wouldn't make a dime on the puppy if they couldn't put the 'AKC' on their dogs."

AKC board member James G. Phinizy said he had experienced firsthand the ineffectiveness of the AKC investigations unit. In a 1989 letter to the AKC board chairman, Phinizy wrote that he and fellow enthusiasts of the Scottish deerhound breed had been "put off, stonewalled and lied to" over a complaint they had made to the AKC.

"The investigations department, as it exists, is ineffective and is unable to resolve a complaint, even when given the basic materials with which to work," Phinizy wrote in 1989.

After he joined the board in 1992, Phinizy wrote another letter to the board chairman in which he reiterated: "The inspections/investigations unit is not being managed at all effectively."

In a recent interview, Phinizy said some improvements had been made, although he acknowledged that problems still plague the registry. He said the former inspectors critical of the stud book were not disgruntled employees. "There are an awful lot of good people who are trying to improve the AKC," he said.

This page is © 1999, 2000 by DS G ra p hi x. Last updated 02 January 2000.

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