If you're a breeder, using a breeding software product helps you maintain records of your dogs and their ancestors and print your paperwork such as certificates.
In addition to saving you a great deal of time such products can automatically compute the inbreeding coefficient, keep additional information such as health records, produce related dog papers such as mating certificates or sale agreements, and so on. It is even possible to help with decisions such as selecting prospective matings in order to minimize inbreeding, or to maximize the influence of key individuals in your breed.
Tenset has two products designed for dog breeders: PedPro and Breeders Assistant. These will both store your dog records and print pedigrees with ease.
With Breeders Assistant and PedPro you can keep all your dog data together in one place - starting with the essentials like name, date of birth, details of the sire, dam and color and breed and so on. If there isn't a box for something you need to enter you can set up your own. Once this information is recorded you can easily print those essential documents - pedigree certificates.
Ideal For All Breeds
Whether your passion is breeding Dalmatians, Labradors, Newfoundlands, Great Danes, or any of the other breeds you can use Tenset products for them all. You can have as many separate data files as you like so if you have more than one breed its easy to keep them separate.
If you've ever tried building a pedigree by hand you'll know it can be time consuming. Inevitably you find yourself copying out the same ancestors repeatedly, often multiple times within the same certificate. Whether you've been doing it in longhand or by creating a pedigree template or chart with software such as Excel or Word, you have the same fundamental problem of having to frequently repeat the same information.
Once you have entered the details of any given dog once you don't have to do it again, no matter how many times it appears in other pedigrees. And if you need to change the details for a dog - for example it becomes a Champion, or you need to correct a spelling mistake - then by just changing those details in one place they will automatically take effect whenever that dog appears as an ancestor. It does this by understanding the links between a dog and its parents and so constructs the certificate automatically, tracing the lines of ancestry in your database.
Make Your Pedigrees Impress
When you give a puppy buyer a certificate you want them to be impressed. Its an important document and should look professional. Its more than a basic pedigree chart or ancestor table.
These products print wonderful pedigrees, especially with the 'copperplate' style built into Breeders Assistant.
You can configure the certificate layouts in various ways such as the depth of ancestry included (typically 4 or 5 generations), whether or not to include the inbreeding coefficient, whether to include registration numbers, or to display a watermark background. And of course it will emphasize those important ancestors such as Champions in red.
Stored On Your Computer, Not Online
These products store your information on your own computer, not online, and do not require access to the internet to run. Your pedigree data is not shared on or uploaded online in any form whatsoever (unless you deliberatly opt to store your data online e.g. using some form of shared networked drive).
All you need do is make periodic backups of your data - which means simply copying your pedigree data file(s) to a safe place (such as a USB stick), in just the same way as you might backup any other document or file, or, with Breeders Assistant, using the inbuilt backup facility.
Print All Your Dog Papers
Sometimes you may need to produce other paperwork such as puppy sale agreements or mating certificates, especially if you have dogs at stud.
Breeders Assistant can print these documents and many others such as ancestor listings, descendant reports, etc.
And if you opt for the Professional Edition of Breeders Assistant it even understands the dog color genetics of many of the pedigree breeds, so it can predict the colors you can expect from a prospective mating, and even include that in a trial mating or a mating certificate1.
Helps You Breed Better Dogs
As a serious breeder of course you want to breed healthy dogs but you also need to maintain and protect your breeding lines e.g. to improve their conformity to breed standards and to keep a control on inbreeding. Monitor the relationship between sire and dam, to understand how your dogs are related through their pedigrees.
Calculate inbreeding for any dog or mating using the standard formula (Wright's), and select the number of generations of ancestors used in the calculation. You can also highlight ancestors in your pedigrees instantly e.g. with PedPro you can highlight repeat and common ancestors, and with the Professional Edition of Breeders Assistant it is possible to highlight inbred ancestors and create custom highlighting rules.
No Recurring Fee For Use
You don't pay a recurring e.g. monthly fee with these products. You buy a one-time license to use the current release of the software at the time of purchase, and you can then use that release as long as you like (on a compatible system) without ever having to pay any more.
Register Your Dogs
Remember that to register your dogs and puppies in the normally understood way you have to do that with a recognized, official, dog registry. Such as the AKC in the US, or the Kennel Club in the UK, not to mention others. To properly register your dog/puppy normally involve paying a separate registration fee to the registry.
Free Trial
All these products have free trial versions, including Breeders Assistant and PedPro.
Breeders Assistant is the more comprehensive program as it can store additional data/records - such as show records - and as such tends to be the product of choice for serious dog breeders. If you just need to produce a pedigree quickly and not much more it is recommended that you consider PedPro first.
If you're unsure which one suits you best there is a questionnaire to help you choose. Alternatively use the side by side comparison.
1. Mating certificates are only available with the cat, dog and 'Generic' versions of Breeders Assistant.
