The short answer is: no — there are currently no Silken Windhounds in Australia.

Despite global interest in the breed, it has never been established in Australia. This is not due to lack of interest, but rather a combination of regulatory, structural and practical factors that make introduction difficult.

To understand why the breed has never been established in Australia, we need to look at how recognition systems actually work — and what happens in practice when a breed exists outside those systems.

All Silken Windhounds in the world are registered with ISWS, International Silken Windhound Society. A studbook kept by ISWS since it’s formation in 1999, a studbook that was closed in the year 2000.

It is also a studbook that has a 100 percent DNA-verified parentage line, all the way back to the 1990’s, no Silken Windhound can register offspring unless that Silken in itself has been DNA-profiled and verified against it’s parents.

It is most likely the only complete studbook in the world that contains not only every dog of a breed world wide, but also with 100 percent verified parentage.

But alas – ISWS is not a kennel club, it is a breed club. And as such it is not automatically recognized as an official registry by kennel clubs once they recognize the Silken Windhound breed.

Whether ISWS-registered dogs are accepted depends entirely on how national kennel clubs choose to handle newly recognized breeds.

Let’s take Australia as an example.

Silken Windhounds are not recognized in Australia.
The breed is not currently present in Australia.

Several hundred Australians have expressed interest in acquiring Silken Windhounds and a group of people are working with American breeders, planning for future imports of Silken Windhounds to Australia.

As the situation stands now, Australians are reluctant to spend the exorbitant sums necessary for an import simply because they fear that such a dog will forever remain outside the system in Australia, even if the breed eventually becomes recognized.

Let’s look at how this could happen.

It is actually quite simple.

The Australian kennel club, Dogs Australia (formerly known as the Australian National Kennel Council, ANKC), is a member of FCI.

FCI has one very basic rule: one country – one kennel club.

And the only kennel club in the USA (country of origin of the Silken Windhound breed) that FCI recognizes is AKC.

Not UKC, and certainly no breed clubs such as ISWS.

When it comes to accepting dogs from a newly recognized breed — for example if Silken Windhounds were to be recognized by AKC — it is then up to each national kennel club to decide what to do with dogs that already existed in the country prior to that event.

It is entirely possible that Australia (or any other country within the FCI sphere) might choose the route where only dogs with “acceptable papers” can be registered.

That would mean either AKC registrations, or — if the breed were ever to become fully FCI-recognized — registration papers issued by a national kennel club associated with FCI.

Most kennel clubs have some kind of grace period when a new breed is accepted under these conditions. Dogs that lack “proper papers” must then appear in front of special judges and are evaluated against the breed standard. The judges then decide whether the dog meets the breed standard.

A dog that is found acceptable will then be registered, but usually in some kind of annex register to begin with.

Some countries (like mine, unfortunately) do not allow such dogs to keep their kennel names in the new registration. Nor will they receive any ancestry.

They may also be renamed by their owners to anything they like.

This means the dogs appear as “orphans” — no name that identifies their true identity and no ancestors, making them seem “unrelated” to all other dogs in the breed in that country.

That is, of course, a rather problematic system and shows a blatant disregard for things like inbreeding, COI, and the ability for breeders to make informed breeding decisions.

Some countries — though not many — allow these dogs to keep their full registered name (as recorded in, for instance, ISWS, International Silken Windhound Society) and also allow three generations of ancestry if they come from a registry that is considered reasonably trustworthy.

We have seen Silken Windhounds become orphans out in the world, as well as cases where they have been allowed to keep their names and pedigrees.

In some cases, dogs that were originally registered under established kennel names are recorded under entirely new names in the new registry. The original name — and with it the link to the breeder and the dog’s documented origin — disappears.

It is important to note that FCI itself does not set rules for this.
Each national kennel club decides for itself.

Australia could go either way.

They could ignore dogs without “proper papers” entirely.
They could let them in as orphans.
Or they could allow them in with their full name and ancestry.

But as for now, people in Australia are waiting to see what happens with recognition of the Silken Windhound breed, recognition by AKC (kennel club in country of origin) or full recognition by FCI, would make it possible for Silken Windhounds to be recognized in Australia.

Until then it is unlikely that Silken Windhounds will appear in Australia.

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