Understanding an AKC registration number - Page 1

Breaking down an AKC number

RR00000003 (07-04) Blk AKC DNA #V111111 OFA22G CERF24 OFEL24

 

The First Letter:

W – Working

T – Toy

D – Herding

H – Hound

N – Non Sporting

P – Poodle

S – Sporting

R – Terrier

 

The Second Letter:

The second letter is the rotation in which that dog was born. This means that everytime the number reaches a certain point, the second letter is reset. At this point in time there is A-Z that I have been able to find and the Z is usually a product of a bad gene, like with the Dobermans it is the albino gene something that is not wanted. There are also some letters that are skipped in the sequence like O.

 

The Numbers:

The first six numbers are going to be the litter number that your dog was born in. I believe it goes up to 999999 The last two numbers are the number your dog is in that litter. It isn’t necessarily in the order they were born, but rather the order their breeder registered them in.

 

The Dashed Numbers:

The numbers sometimes between the parentheses, and sometimes not are the month and year in which the dog was entered into the AKC stud book, which means the first time they had a litter.

 

The Abbreviations:

BLK, FWN W MRKINGS

These abbreviations are the color that that dog is/was. For a listing of colors please see: https://www.apps.akc.org/apps/registration/colormarkings.cfm

 

AKC DNA V#:

These are the AKC’s unique number given to that dog meaning they had their DNA tested with them.

 

Health:

The next three letter/number combos are different health testing that dog has had. The number in them is how old the dog was when they had the testing done (in months). The E = Excellent G = Good F= Fair

OFA – Hips http://www.ofa.org/

CERF – Was eye exams, the CERF is no more, and any new eye exams will be listed in a dogs OFA.

OFEL – Is Elbows and will also be listed under the OFA website.

 

Other Registration numbers:

The two registration numbers I am aware of that are different from the system are the numbers that start with Q and UR. The numbers that start with Q are dogs that are on a conditional pedigree with the AKC http://www.akc.org/registration/conditional/ The other registration numbers I’m aware of being different are the UR numbers which mean they are “unregistered” with AKC or an affiliate of them. This does not necessarily mean that your dog is mixed, just that your dog’s ancestors were not registered with AKC.

 

Now these do not apply to every AKC number and I'm sure I'm missing some but this is a great resource for those wondering what all that mumbo jumbo means! Anything else you would like to share about the registration number is welcome if I missed it!