Pedigree Tracer

Horses, dogs, and other animals can be expensive, and there’s often no guarantee that the pets will be healthy. Looking at the pet’s parents could provide clues, however. Animals born to parents that are healthy and have won awards are more likely to win awards themselves. A Pedigree Tracer looks for those clues by researching the lineage of animals.

When pets are registered with formal organizations, such as the American Kennel Club, owners provide the name of the animals’ parents. Often, determining the lineage of an animal means searching through these formal databases, and a Pedigree Tracer is adept at running detailed searches in a short amount of time.

The lineage of animals that are not registered, or of those that come from unregistered parents, is slightly harder to trace. If you’re a Pedigree Tracer, you ask the client for the names of the parents and the date the animal was born. Looking through news reports, animal award show records, and specialty journals may provide clues that you can use to track down the animal’s pedigree.

Building your own database may help you with these tricky searches, so you often attend animal shows to ask Breeders for specific lineage information. You scour the breed lines of the winners when they are printed in trade magazines, then you type the information into the database for your future use.

The pedigrees you provide often go back four generations, and they resemble a tree. If you can provide photographs of the animals in the pedigree, the owners may pay more for the reports. You do what you can to oblige.