Many people assume that once a country recognizes Silken Windhounds, ISWS (International Silken Windhound Society) registrations will automatically be accepted.
In reality, the situation is often more complicated.

Even if a country eventually recognizes the Silken Windhound, this does not necessarily mean that all existing dogs can be registered there.

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.

As the situation stands now, they 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 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.

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