What is a pedigree?

A pedigree is a basic summary of an animal's ancestry record. A standard 3-generations pedigree will list the animal's parents, grandparents, and grand-grandparents, as well as some very basic information about each of them. A pedigree is NOT a mark of high quality and does not guarantee that the animal is pure bred. Both purebred and mixed breed animals can and do have pedigrees. Humans have pedigrees, in fact YOU have a pedigree as long as you know the basics of your family history. An animal's pedigree is nothing more then a simplified breeding record and it represents the utmost basic record keeping that should be taking place when breeding. It essentially means that a person put in about 2 minutes of effort to write down the names of the animals they were breeding. 

A pedigree in itself  is not a formal registration document, however registration documents do include a copy of a pedigree. A pedigree is prepared by the breeder. It can be a fancy printout from a computer database program, it can be hand written on a pre-printed form, or it can be written on a restaurant napkin. If it lists the animal's parents, grandparents, and grand-grandparents, it is a pedigree. 

As mentioned above, the existence of a pedigree does not in any way prove the quality of the animal. Some breeders will unfortunately use this as a marketing gimmick when dealing with inexperienced animal buyers. A pedigree is just a list of names, for all you know the animals behind those names could be absolutely wonderful or of extremely low quality. You simply don't know. The only times a pedigree does shed some light on the possible quality of the animal is if the quality of multiple animals in that pedigree has been independently verified. After all, moms always think their babies are the prettiest and the breeder's opinion of their own animals can be equally biased. Some breeders are very realistic and honest about the quality of their breeding stock, while others can be down right delusional and think every thing they own turns to gold. The independent verification of an animal's quality can be seen on a pedigree in the form of registration status or show titles which will be listed under each animal who has earned them.