THE KENNEL Club has registered a Mastiff bitch with details of its sire’s dam as ‘unknown’ on it’s register. The action and enquiries about this prompted a press release last week about the integrity of the Kennel Club registration system.

The fawn bitch Lady Lavinia, owned and bred by Mr & Mrs J Lock, was born on July 8th 2000, by Jengren Mr Milligan out of Ocobo Lana. It was ‘Mr Milligan’s’ dam that was in question and because of concern about the validity of information they had the Kennel Club web pedigree produced from the KC Breed System says that its dam is ‘unknown’.

Issued on Thurday january 17th the K.C. statement says, ‘The Kennel Club has recently received a number of enquiries regarding a case where the parentage of a registered dog has been put in doubt, and where DNA profiling has not been a practicable option.

The result of the investigation was that the registration of the dog concerned was amended to the effect that the dam is shown to be "unknown". ‘The preservation of the integrity of the registration system is of paramount importance to The Kennel Club. The purpose of a pedigree is to confirm all ancestral links in a particular dog.

The premise is reliant upon the integrity of the information provided which forms the source for such pedigrees. On the rare occasion that there is doubt, The Kennel Club is required to resolve that doubt, if possible.

If that proves not to be possible then The Kennel Club is faced with no option but to declare the parentage as unknown. ‘This is not a satisfactory situation but it is a truer statement to declare that a parentage is unknown, rather than to leave a record intact when it is not certain to be factually correct. Occasions such as these are extremely rare and not wholly satisfactory.

However, when decisions such as these are made, it is not carte blanche for other breeders to apply for similar treatment.’ The bitch concerned has had a successful show career, winning four CCs, a reserve CC as well as a best in show at the Old English Mastiff Club show. It is also the breed’s overall winner in the 2001 OUR DOGS/Pedigree Masterfoods Top Puppy Competition.

The sire with no dam, Jengren Mr Milligan, is also likely to be overall winner in the 2001 OUR DOGS/Eukanuba Top Sire competition, the results of which will be announced in the run up to Crufts. The whole issue had been tightly capped by the Kennel Club since June 2001 when it was placed before the Finance & General Purposes Committee, which expressed concern over the matter.

Since then there has been a exchange of letters from other breeders who are similarly effected by the absence of a confirmed and authenticated dam of Jengren Mr Milligan.