The joy of completing a dog's pedigree

Doing pedigree research in The Breed Archive doesn’t only mean to discover ancient relatives. It’s also a pleasure to help complete pedigrees, especially when you can add whole branches to the pedigree tree by entering a missing ancestor. The Breed Archive offers various options to easily contribute data. In this article you will learn how to add dogs to the pedigrees of the ancestors of your favourite breed and you will get tips on how to do it quickly and easily.

Supplement a dog's pedigree

The pedigree on a dog’s profile page allows you to follow designated lines of its ancestors. If you discover a dead end in a pedigree, simply add the missing parent directly in the pedigree tree view.

Once you start typing the name of the dog, you’ll get suggestions of dogs that already exist in the archive. If you are lucky, all you need to do is select the entry and confirm the parenthood. In case the missing parent is not among the existing entries you can add the animal as new entry and assign it to the pedigree at the same time by selecting “Add new sire” or “Add new dam”.

If you are interested in all the pedigree features that The Breed Archive has to offer, read Meet your dog's relatives.

Create a new dog entry

Adding a dog entry in The Breed Archive takes just a few moments. Follow the link DOGS > Add dog in the navigation menu. The first thing to do is to provide the registered name. Once entered you are prompted to verify, if that dog already exists in the archive. If dogs with similar names have been found, The Breed Archive lists them, allowing you to check whether the dog you’d like to create is already there:

Why this? It’s to prevent duplicates. If there are multiple entries for one and the same dog, it is not only confusing for all users, but also falsifies representations and summaries, e.g. the list of litters or the assignments to breeders or owners. Moreover it leads to wrong numbers in our statistics.

In case the entered registered name does not yet exist in our archive, you are directed to provide further information straight away.

Assigning sire and dam

It’s important to note that you can only add sire/dam here, if they already exist in the archive.

When you start typing the name of the dog, you’ll receive a list of suggestions to choose from. If the name is not among the suggestions, the parent is not yet in the archive. If that’s the case, the field will empty itself as it takes no free text input.

You can, however, enter all other dog details, save them and supplement the parents afterwards directly in the pedigree tree view.

Breeder and owner

The fields for adding breeder or owner function the same way as those for adding sire or dam: Start by typing the name (the person’s real name, not the kennel name) and you’ll receive a list of suggestions to choose from. If the name is not among the suggestions, click “add new person” at the end of the list to create a new person entry.

Health information

Please be aware that health information is sensitive data. It may only be entered by the owner or breeder of the animal, by someone with the explicit approval and authorisation of the owner or breeder, or if it has been published previously by a reliable source. That’s why you have to confirm that the information you are supplying is compliant with these rules on health information.

Once you have checked the box for confirmation, you will see two different sections:

• breed relevant health issues: provide commonly known health issues or compulsory tests for the particular breed
• other health issues and screening results: allows you to choose additional health issues or tests (from our list of about 500 health items)

Photos

Everyone loves looking at pictures of their dogs and their dogs’ relatives. In many cases it is the owners or breeders who take and publish beautiful photos of their dogs. However, there are also some cases where this is not possible, e.g. because the persons are not active on the Breed Archive platform or are already deceased. That’s why we allow every user to upload one photo per dog (subscribers can upload an additional 100 photos). However, please keep in mind that the photo should not include identifiable people (other than yourself). Please only upload good quality photos that you would consider valuable to represent your own dog as well!

We also need you to provide the copyright owner of the photo and to confirm that you have the right to upload the picture. In case you take a photo from another website, make sure to ask permission to publish it on The Breed Archive.

Submit a whole litter at once

Submitting a whole litter at once without having to repeat the same data for all litter siblings will save you a lot of time. You can access this feature via the menu DOGS > Add dog > add litter.

First enter all common litter data such as sire, dam, date of birth, country of birth. The Breed Archive then determines whether dogs in the archive meet the specified litter criteria and displays them. If that’s the case, you only have to add the missing ones. That’s it.

Add a missing litter mate

Sometimes you’ll come across an incomplete litter in the archive. In that case you don’t have to go all the way and add a new dog entry with details or a whole litter. Simply go to one of the siblings and click the “Edit” button.

You’ll discover a small button with dots above the edit form fields. If you click on that button, you will see an option to clone this animal entry. If you continue, all litter data (sire, dam, date of birth, country of birth, breeder) will be taken over. Add the additional information on the missing sibling and save the entry.